I mocked this up in Dorico (5.1.70) to show you but what he gave me was on paper, done long ago (probably 90s Finale). I spoke to him about it, he insists that he wants it to look this way, the grace notes stacked simultaneously with the normal notes. Mine is not to question why…
This simultaneous stacking thing reappears a number of times in the score. So I’m writing to ask the crack Dorico users/designers out there: is this possible in any elegant way? Is there a setting somewhere for grace note placement that I’m missing?
I’m aware there are ways to brute-nudge things, I’m not asking help with that. For example, the attached picture was the result of big adjustments in Note Spacing in Engrave Mode. I’m aware I can use different voices, one up one down, and resize the grace-note voice in the properties panel. However I can’t find a way to put the slash in the quaver’s flag. Second question: is there a way to put a grace-note slash on a note’s flag even when it is not, by normal means, a grace note?
Unless I can put the slash there, the two-voices solution won’t fly with the composer. I’m even aware that I might fake the slash by going into designer and repurposing jazz ornaments or something, I’d need one for each angle up and down, but I guess I’m hoping there’s something more elegant and easily repeatable than that. If it’s possible, my guess is it would either be done by settings or by somehow applying the slash to flags where needed. Otherwise I may just have to Burt-Lancaster this thing, the ol’ “Brute Force.”
If you don’t need fingerings, and you can find a slash glyph you like, repurposing a fingering might be quick. 1 could be angled up and 2 angled down or something. A fingering would at least be centered so you could quickly move it into place. You could even create macros or a SD button to convert to cue size, add the fingering (slash), and make a vertical and/or horizontal adjustment all with one click. I think Dorico actually draws the slash, but I would imagine some music font out there must contain a usable slash.
Thank you @FredGUnn and @jesele for the replies! The fingerings idea, I’m going to give that a try soon as possible. I haven’t used fingerings much and didn’t know that was manipulable. And check, on the alt-click copy trick. As to the single-stroke tremolo I admit I didn’t even think of that. I like the idea because it’s a second voice and thus aligns nicely and neatly without fuss. However the trouble is that the angle of the slash will remain the same when stems are up, so that one ends up not being a solution.
There’s another problem with the “brute force” approach that I didn’t cover in my OP. The Engrave > Note Spacing moves in the score do not translate to the parts, so you can see all the adjusting this will lead to. I’ll be trying the fingering idea. Would love to know if anyone had any other ideas.
Finally, if Note Spacing in both score and parts ends up being the only solution I’ll live with it. Dorico is really an amazing program all told and I only very occasionally come up against problems such as this. Still, if it were possible to have some adjustments particular to grace notes in the Properties Panel, perhaps in a future update… ?
Why are you doing any adjusting that way? With Globally selected, just change the scale of the notes, and it will be reflected in both score and parts. Gif below:
The catch is the finding the easiest way to get the slash.
No no, I’m aware of that. What you’re showing is with the up- and down-stem notes each being a different voice. In that case yes, all is well but the lack of slash. I was talking about leaving the grace notes as actual grace notes in the same voice, but wondering if there were any other way to adjust their position. Unless there’s something I don’t know in a panel somewhere, Note Spacing would be the only way to do this and making properties Global doesn’t make the spacing changes happen in the parts.
Anyway, your earlier fingering solution may be better, I’m almost done experimenting with it…
I am unfamiliar with your representation of an arpeggiated chord using grace notes in some voices but not others. Can you offer some examples of this in general usage?
Okay! I don’t know if anyone will have anything better than substitution for a solution —please post if you do — but I’m attaching my work-up on what @FredGUnn first suggested. I’m grateful to him, I think this looks very nice and it isn’t very hard to do.
In the pic and the attached file, in the first bar, the left notes are done using fingering 1 for upstem and 2 for downstem, and the right notes are actual grace notes just for comparison. There’s a slight difference in the angle of the slashes and even smaller difference in thickness, but that hardly matters to me since the side-by-side comparison won’t be there anyway when I engrave the piece. The second bar shows the solution in actual context; the substitute “grace notes” are just the downstem voice which is ended immediately (stem directions of course adjusted in the cello).
If any viewers are new to the program and unfamiliar with these things, download the file. Dorico has a great Music Symbols editor under Library in the app menu. If using fingering and not something else, find the “fingering 1 (thumb)” and “fingering 2 (index finger)”, which are the default symbols for adding fingering, delete each, then on the right side find Range: Common Ornaments (press the area next to “Range” and start typing “common” and you’ll see it), select the appropriate slash and Add Glyph, scale it on the bottom to 80% for both X and Y, and click OK. This will be a change for this file only, so don’t worry. Then enter the notes in the voice you need, change the scale in the Properties panel to grace, call up Fingering entry with shift-F, then make the properties adjustments needed in Engrave mode to get the slash into place. As @FredGUnn pointed out there’s probably a way to make a macro to reduce time entering. The parts look just the same, nice.
A violinist might struggle to interpret that at sight. The grace note A would have to be before the minim chord (it is impossible to realise as written). Whereas Dorico’s standard notation would be perfectly OK.
Oh I might like to do that, but it won’t happen . I may convince him of a small nudge left for these “grace notes” but definitely not the standard placing. Anyway, trust me I do appreciate your concern.
. I may convince him of a small nudge left for these “grace notes” but definitely not the standard placing. Anyway, trust me I do appreciate your concern.
thanks, I’ll bear that in mind.