Break/narration in score: how to?

Dorico
1

I’ve been a little stymied trying to find the best Dorico way to accomplish a break in a score, for narration, and I’d be grateful for suggestions. What I’m trying to do is something like this:

Text in score
Text in score734×333 196 KB

Possibilities:

  1. The break in the middle could be one bar rest that’s not included in bar numbering. But in order to make that measure wider, it seems I have to grab its handle in Engrave mode and then use arrow keys and modifiers to nudge it wider, bit by bit; it looks like I can’t drag it wider or explicitly set a numeric width.
  2. Instead of dragging nudging the measure wider, I could introduce a note spacing change and make the default space for a quarter note much bigger. This is easier than dragging nudging.
  3. The break could be multiple bars. This is better for taking up space, but it seems that each bar has to be individually excluded from bar numbering, which is a hassle.
  4. I had an “aha!” moment and tried to use frames. I made the template-provided frame on the page narrower and then added a second frame on the right – but I couldn’t work out how to link that frame to the ones before and after, so it showed the measures from the start of the flow.

At the moment, #2 is looking like the most efficient option, but maybe I’m missing something. Dorico doesn’t seem to have a native way to make the staves disappear in that measure, but I can live with a text frame with an opaque white background.

2

I don’t remember where this is and how to do it exactly, but what you want has something to do with Coda.

3

Ah, I can see where that might be relevant. In my case, I’ve got about 30 of these breaks over the course of the piece, and I’m pretty sure I can only have one coda per flow.

4

No. You can have as many Codas as you want in a flow.

5

Yes, I see that now. Looking to see whether I can adjust barlines and key sigs at the start of a coda.

6

That could be a problem. (I wasn’t advocating Codas as a solution to your OP)

7

Multiple codas is an interesting idea; thanks @Sergei_Mozart and @Janus for suggesting it. It gives me an easy way to get the break I want, but it looks like I can’t easily prevent the coda from showing instrument group brackets (unless I hide the entire systemic barline), clefs, and key sigs.