I think I’ve asked this before but have never really understood it.
I have a musical, where different numbers are different flows. They appear correct with their flow title in both the full score and individual singers parts, when the selection ‘start new flows on new pages’ is selcted. The problem comes when I want to make a piano vocal score (ie. one of the lead characters plus piano part). To save on paper, I want to use the ‘start new flow on existing page’. However, when I do, the names of the flows doesn’t appear in the vocal score? Is this possible?
It’s possible but you have to configure all the frames containing the “front matter” (title, composer, cue line etc.) yourself. This either means setting up new master pages that might have a new flow starting halfway down the page, for example, or by working with the standard master pages but overriding then (in Engrave mode).
You’ll also need to use wildcards like {@flow8Title@} referring to specific flows, as Dorico isn’t intelligent enough to work out which flow you’re referring to if there’s more than one flow (or part of a flow) on a page.
The biggest caveat is that if you have to add or remove a flow from the beginning/middle of the score (Layout) then basically you’ll have to start your layout process again from that point in the score onwards.
It’s all totally possible to do, but for the time being I’ve given up on trying to do this stuff in Dorico. I’m sure improvements will come eventually.
Thanks for the reply. I’m still a little confused. Do ‘master pages’ refer to settings for every layout or do you over-ride them on a per layout basis?
I think maybe for now to leave them as I’ve found over the years in using software scoring you’re forever tweaking something that’s changed as a result of changing something else. At some point, a Dorico instructional video that takes a whole piece (say a 3 minute orchestral arrangement) from beginning (setting up players etc) and inputting all the data and setting playback to final printing would be great. I realise this might be a video broken up into say 4 or 5 one-hour videos, but it would probably cover about 50-60% of what was required in normal use. I find that because I’m not using Dorico everday, I return to the program and have to re-learn some basic stuff. The good thing about an extended piece of inputting would be that you’d probably come across things of which there are Dorico workarounds all contained within the one (series of) video.
It seems you still need to get a better understanding of how to flow music (as one would flow text in a DTP), but, when you do, I suggest creating a custom master page for when you need your music to start in the middle of a page: essentially, a master page with a music frame on top and the appropriate title/subtitle/et cetera text frames in the middle. Just exactly where the music restarts will be unpredictable, but you can override the master in that page and move everything accordingly. It’s still somewhat cumbersome, but hopefully there will be performance updates to make this easier.
Thanks John and LSagueiro it’s a bit clearer now.
I noticed in the video John at 31’ 12’’ you created a new text box and named it ‘Scherzo’. This is what I meant…the name of FLOW2 (Bartok) wasn’t automatically picked up by the new music frame after selecting ‘let flow appear on same page’ option. I’ll have to have a play with it on something that’s not critical and see how it moves everything about. Thanks once again.
Big thumbs up to Anthony and John for the excellent videos that are available online…I might have said this before, but it really makes Dorico a worthwhile investment knowing that if you have the time (which is the biggie) then the resources to really get to grips with what Dorico can achieve are out there. After watching the tokens videos again, I now pretty much understand what’s available in the current version and how I’d use frames and master pages (or local pages) to achieve what I need. It’s a little frightening (and exciting) to think where Dorico might be in two years time…scoring to video with pre-mapped expression templates for awesome libraries…most composers’ Holy Grail.
