Changing Bracketing projectwide across Flows

Hi there,

I would like to make a bracketing change that applies to the entire project. The customization I need is more specific than the options available in the Engraving and Layout settings.

If I make the change in Engrave Mode, it only applies to the selected flow, but in the next flow, it reverts to the default settings.

I tried grouping the instruments, but this resulted in a Player Group Label, which I don’t want. I also tried copying the signpost, but it didn’t work and is tedious with 20+ flows.

In my case, I have an SATB choir, a soloist, and a number of individual instruments. By default, the software brackets the choir and the soloist together. However, I would like the choir to be bracketed separately, the soloist to have their own single bracket, and no individual brackets on the instruments.

What is the easiest way to achieve this across multiple flows?

Thank you.

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There’s no way to make a manual bracketing change that will apply to all flows, so you will need to make the change at the start of each flow.

I’m having the same problem as OP at the moment. Is this something that might change in future versions? If the instrumentation remains the same throughout all flows there is generally no reason for the brackets to change, so I’m surprised that this is the default and/or that there is no way to propagate these changes to other flows. The same applies to manual condensing changes for that matter.

Although I can’t say when it might be added, what we envisage in future is a means of specifying a default “semantic” set of brackets for each layout. You could think of it as a custom “bracketing approach” (i.e. what you can choose on the Brackets and Braces page of Layout Options). You would specify the primary and secondary groups by player, rather than by the staves that appear in a particular system, which would allow them to be adaptive in the way that Dorico’s default brackets are, and which bracketing changes created in Engrave mode are not.

3 Likes

If you make the Soprano a “Soloist”, then you get the brackets automatically. (With the right Layout Options for brackets.)

Alternatively, putting the choir in a Group will have the same effect.

Either way, I get this in every flow:

This not only would save me a lot of work, it makes sense not to have bracketing reset at every flow.