Hello community,
i dislike the proportion of the first measure vs. the last measure, so i wanted to move the first barline to the left to make it narrower.
This is only possible for a very small amout (5mm realtime?), then the movement stops.
Any ideas?
I also want the rest of the system bars to align/adjust proportionally in general, this is not possible, or?
PS: These are my spacing values:
These work for me so far, and i don’t see a need to change here something in general.
I’m guessing if Dorico stops you it is because it is trying to preserve some lyric spacing. That is why the measure is stretched to begin with. You can select the boxes above each note in the first bar and nudge it too, which will condense the spacing. Better yet, use the marquee tool to select them all at the same time, press alt+left arrow and they will all shrink by the same amount. FWIW, it doesn’t look bad the default way; you don’t want to make the words difficult to read.
If you have a lot of quarter notes that are spaced apart by lyrics, the actual note spacing in those bars will be a lot wider than the default setting. Increasing the spacing between quarter notes from 4 to 5 or 6 would probably space out the final bar without affecting anything else.
You can insert note spacing changes anywhere in the score in Engrave mode - you don’t have to use one setting for the whole document.
But that system is already 97.5% full following the existing spacing rules, and when you hit 100% the final bar won’t be on that system anyway. You run the risk of getting silly-looking systems with not enough “wide” bars.
The answer might be larger paper, or a smaller staff size. The difference between 8.5x11 and 9x12 paper doesn’t sound much, but when you allow for the margins, that extra half an inch of width makes the music systems about 15% longer.
I didn’t know this! Thanks.
Dan, you would certainly want to use that for something like your “Melodia” project, where you have some exercises written in half and quarter notes, and others in 8ths and 16ths. If the default of 4 looks about right for exercises with a lot of 16th-notes, use 3 for the 8th-note ones (mathematically, 2.83 not 3, but this isn’t precision engineering) and 2 for quarter-note ones to save space. If you think that looks a bit too squashed, back off to say 3 1/4 and 2 1/2.
Excellent. Between this and the new coda feature (which I can use to fake-hide cautionaries), I think I have a solution for Melodia. Thanks for your help!
I would suggest to use a condensed font.
“mahnt” and “nachts” will always need much place.
See the attached image, though still wide the first bar is not so wide as in your example.
I use a Garamond Condensed Font in 11 points.
How can i do this?
If i change something in Layout Options it is for the whole Layout, isn’t it?
I can’t select just a portion, telling it to have different settings than the rest of the piece…?
Reducing the gap between syllables may help too. (Engraving Options < Lyrics)
Engrave menu / Note Spacing Change (unless you are running Elements, which doesn’t have Engrave mode)
Heureka!
Hello Dan,
can you explain what you mean here…?
I like your box of tricks, learned a lot so far 
Sure. At the start of each new exercise, create a Coda (Shift-R, “Coda”). Then you can select all Coda markers and hide them.
The coda adds a gap, perfect for if your exercise begins mid-system. And it hides cautionary key signatures!
The only slight bummer is that I can’t filter-select the repeat markers, as far as I can tell. I’d like to be able to select them all (since I’ll have about 400 codas!!) and hide them in one batch. But I can’t. No big deal, as it’s a workaround anyways.
You can copy and paste the signpost for a hidden coda (just like any other signpost) or position it with Alt-click.
Ahh… life is good. Thanks again Rob!
Ha! That’s what i was looking for, great 
