Hi,
I have been looking for information about automatic frame breaks for page turns in parts, but I have not found anything… Are they implemented or they must be set manually?
Thank you very much in advanced!
No automatic functionality yet!
Add a Frame Break and, if needed, a text frame with instructions for the player.
Xavier, in what way would Dorico know when is a good place to turn a page? (Excluding, perhaps, a few bars of rest.) I doubt that it is feasible to ask a program to know when a human would need a page turn or when one bar of music would be an easier place to turn than the next. Is there something obvious I’m not considering?
Dorico knows how long each measure is, in duration, so it seems to me that it could calculate good places for pages turns.
(Excluding, perhaps, a few bars of rest.)
Romanos, with respect, your “few bars of rest” are virtually always the only consideration for what makes a good page turn. Speaking as a former music publisher, my company moved heaven and earth to make sure players had a multrest before every page turn, including inserting a blank page with the famous “This page left blank to facilitate page turns” message.
That’s the whole point!
fyi, there is some similar content on this subject here that might be helpful.
Thank you for your comments! Yes, I also think that the time to turn the page should be enough to decide if the page turn would be possible or not. We now that page turns should be always manually checked (as many other things), but a previous decision by Dorico probably would safe a lot of time. I only would like to be sure that I was not missing the feature, as I didn’t find it anywhere. Thanks again!
This is precisely what I’m driving at: just because Dorico knows how “long” a bar is doesn’t mean it can know whether or not it’s a good place to turn a page. I think it’s asking the impossible beyond the exception I stated in my first post. A whole note, for instance, might be fine for the the flute if it is certain notes that can be played with one hand only, but not if it takes 2 hands. Heaven help you if you’re trying to figure out good page turns for piano or organ. What makes a “good” page turn completely depends on both content AND the physical act of playing particular instruments. Consider the difference of a page turn for trombone where there’s one or two beats rest after playing a high f. Easy, you can one hand it or use the slide lock. What if it was the same rhythm but an octave lower (low F, slide out)? That wouldn’t be enough time to do it as you’d need both hands on the instrument, you’d need to retract the slide, turn the page, and then go back out if the notes on the new page were in the low octave again. So I repeat, I think this is asking the impossible. The fact of the matter is, we do have to act as editors to the scores we create. There’s simply no way around certain things and I don’t think that is a deficiency of the program.
That’s why I mentioned it as the sole exception in my first post. I agree, that if there was a tick box to prefer placing page turns at extended rests if possible would be a good thing. But anything beyond that is unreasonable to expect of the developers.
I also use the “intentionally left blank” option not infrequently. I’m a real stickler for 2 page piano/organ works not requiring a page turn and laying them on open spreads. I’ll insert 15 blank pages in an edition if I have to to avoid turning a page half-way through a 2 page piece. It drives me nuts! So, if Dorico had an option to automatically prefer open spreads for 2 page flows (and auto-inserting a “page left blank” page with a editable master like flow headings) I’d love it.
One neat idea would be to program-- as a player setting-- what the minimum time it takes for that player to perform a page turn [edit … (or instrument change) ]
Using the current meter, and number of measures of rest dorico could then calculate a safe spot.
It would also be informative feedback to an arranger if dorico couldn’t find such a spot.
Interesting… essentially, have it highlight safe spots the way it does suggested cues. Still, we are essentially limited to a few bars’ rest shifting relative to tempo.
Sorry for reopening the subject, but I wondered what the Dorico team thinks about it, as they already implemented it in Sibelius, where this feature worked pretty fine. Of course, you have parts or instruments in certain orchestra-settings (e.g. Violins, Clarinets, Piano) that have very few breaks, so determining where to put the page turn is crucial. But for the most parts in an orchestra the solution in Sibelius worked fantastic.
Then the idea of shr23, where you add the feedback, that page turn spots could not be found would be a great addition. I know, the Dorico team loves perfect functions, but as Romanos said, a perfect solution probably won’t exist, or will need extensive instrument information.
We do plan to add features to assist in finding page turns in future, certainly, but I can’t say exactly when they will come.
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That’s great, looking forward to it, thank you!