I’m posting to ask if anyone can give assistance with a problem in Engrave, Note Spacing. When I select Note Spacing, boxes appear over the notes in measure 12 of the attached project. I then click on the E in measure 12 and attempt to move it slightly to the right by pressing Option – Right Arrow.
The machine then makes the E move too far to the right and the measure appears stretched. I attach the project and also 2 before and after screen shots.
I’m sure this must be an easy fix? What could I do to properly space these notes?
The problem here is that you’ve added manual system breaks and created some very crowded systems. For example, the system containing bar 12 is 156% full. This means that there’s much more music here than Dorico thinks will fit, according to your spacing settings. Anything over 100%, and there’s no guarantee that Dorico’s algorithm will produce pleasing results.
If you really want to move just that note, then after you click the square handle, click the little circle handle on the note and move that. That will just move the note without affecting spacing.
But the better solution is probably to reset all of the changes you’ve made and let Dorico use your spacing settings to get good results. You can do that by choosing Engrave > Format Music Frames > Reset Layout and then Engrave > Note Spacing > Reset Layout.
(You also have a page override on p.1 from making a small change to the music frame and manually inserting the name of the piece. This has only a small effect on spacing, but you could right-click on the page icon in the Pages panel and choose Remove Page Overrides, and then add the piece’s name in File > Project Info so that it shows up automatically.)
I’m getting an error message that I don’t have the latest version of Dorico Pro 6. I have tried to open my Steinberg Download Assistant but this is saying that I need to get my web browser to authorize Download Assistant. I’m stumped! What should I do to to make sure I have the up to date software? After that, I will work on my spacing— Awaiting your replies, Sincerely, —Ben
It’s not an error message, just a banner letting you know that a newer version is available (probably 6.1.10). You can continue working in your current version.
When you launch SDA, if you’re not logged in it should open a web page for you to enter your Steinberg credentials. If you sign in there, you may get a little popup from your browser asking you to allow authorization, and eventually you should wind up back in SDA. At least that’s how it works for me on Windows.
Clicking on the blue circle did work. I also found out how to move lyrics without moving the attached notes. I like to get whole phrases onto one line s o it’s easier for my musicians to read complete phrases without having to jump their eyes from one line to the next. This song has a lot of lyrics. I was wondering if it would help if I could make the Left and Right margins smaller. What do you think?
Changing your margins will certainly give you more horizontal space, but not enough to let that system space well. You can see that there are currently lots of problems on that system.
If you want all of that on one nicely spaced system, you’re probably going to have to use a smaller space size (making all the notation smaller) and possibly change some other settings as well.
Just keep in mind that if the system fullness indicator is over 100%, then you’re working against what you’ve asked Dorico to do.
Thanks for working with me. It looks like the best way to help this will be to break the staff into a five bar line, and move the rest of the line down to the next system. But Dorico is no longer showing me those controls in the Engrave menu. How do I get back those controls?
Click the graphic editing tool (highlighted in blue), and then click the button above it if the panel isn’t showing. You can also select something in a bar and press Shift+S to insert a system break.
