I know there have been many threads suggesting improvements to slurs involving grace notes, but I’m not sure whether this particular use case has been raised.
In the example below, the slur in the first bar had to be flipped manually, as by default Dorico places it above the notes, presumably because of the presence of the kick note. In the following bars, however, Dorico automatically places the tie below without any intervention.
The automatic placement in the later bars doesn’t match the appearance of the first bar, which, to my eyes, looks more correct given the snare notes are all in the same space (ie there is no vertical shifting of the notes).
Although the tie can be adjusted in Engrave mode, it would be wonderful if this small inconsistency could be addressed in a future update so that the placement is consistent without requiring manual intervention.
You’re spot on, @k_b. With the rests removed from the first measure, the slur looks exactly the same as in the subsequent bars. To my eye, though, it’s still a little off-putting that the slur doesn’t follow the contour of the notes when they all occupy the same space (or line) - as in measures two and three in the screenshot. I’d be interested to know what others prefer…
There must be a setting, if one compares my test with the very first example.
We always ask: why?
why does the player need a slur in this case? Does it carry extra information, or is it replicating another notating convention?
Thanks for taking the time to explore this issue. I’ll guess there is a setting somewhere controlling the position of the slur and will need to investigate and report back.
I’m not a percussionist, but my understanding is that this notation indicates the grace notes are part of a single continuous gesture, which on the snare drum could include a drag or flam, for example. Certainly, when I shared the drum kit part with an experienced drummer, he suggested that I could add the slurs.
I guess there must be a setting that influences the positioning of slurs in situations like this, but I have no idea where to find it! I’ll have a look through the manual shortly.
I’m using the Scoring Express Theatre and Studio template, which might have settings that differ from Dorico’s defaults. Copying in @pianoleo , as I believe he was instrumental in creating this extremely helpful (and easy-to-recommend) product.
Not at my own computer to test anything, but from @k_b’s example it looks like they have grace note slashes turned off while yours are on. Does that make a difference?
Could you post your file so someone can have a look? Alternatively you could use the library manager to compare your project’s settings to factory and revert individual settings to find out which one makes the difference. It could also be a combination of settings though.
Many thanks for this suggestion, @Zalde - much appreciated. I’m unsure where to find the option to turn on/off grace note slashes… are you able to point me in the right direction, please? I can’t see anything in Engrave mode that would influence the positioning of the slur…
They have to be turned off in the properties panel. I wouldn’t really expect them to affect slur positioning, but sometimes Dorico’s settings act in mysterious ways so it couldn’t hurt to check. If it doesn’t make a difference then we can rule that out.
Seeing your file would be the best way to determine this, but from experimenting with my own settings I think this setting under Engraving options>Slurs>Endpoint positioning might be the culprit:
You’ll notice that even these slurs are not perfectly horizontal, the right endpoint sits lower than the left one. Increasing the value for the vertical offset setting pictured above will exaggerate that:
Vertical offset from notehead in space set to 3/4 space.
I think this might be caused by the fact that the grace note noteheads are positioned a bit higher. Scaling the grace notes to Normal in the properties panel will make the slur perfectly horizontal.
So as for a fix, I can’t see any other way than to change this manually (you could edit one slur and alt/opt+click them to the other positions). There are these settings under the Grace note part of Slur settings, but changing them does not influence the slur in this example (I would expect that the second option would do that and I can’t understand why it doesn’t):
If the slurs are needed to indicate that the grace notes should be played by the same hand, I know Gould recommends to only slur the grace notes themselves and not connect the slur to the following note. That will get rid of this problem without the need to adjust the slurs manually.
I do think however that it would be nice if Dorico would calculate the endpoint positioning of slurs attachted to grace notes in a different way to avoid this problem altogether (but obviously I’m not enough informed or qualified to determine if that would result in other problems).
I’m greatly indebted to you @Zalde for going to all this trouble to help. I have a deadline to meet tomorrow, after which I’ll upload a cut-down sample file. In the meantime, here’s a screenshot of my Engraving → Slurs → Endpoints settings. I can’t see anything that relates to my particular problem, though that may simply be because I’m not very familiar with these settings, which I assume to be the defaults as set in the Scoring Express template..
I’d be delighted to discover the setting that’s affecting the slur endpoint positioning in the kit part. I haven’t noticed the issue elsewhere in the current project.
As a non-percussionist, I’m interested in what Gould recommends, but I can’t find her approach reflected in any of the 50+ musical theatre scores I have on my shelf. All of them are consistent in their notation of the drag (where slurs are used, which is not always the case), as shown on this web page:
Thanks for the project! Your endpoint setting is actually slightly smaller than the default of 1/2 space (I didn’t look closely enough at your screenshots, sorry). This one is the culprit:
(found under Engraving options>Slurs>Avoiding collisions)
If you reset that to the factory setting of 1/2 space, your slurs will end up as horizontally as Dorico will make them.
In fact, changing that setting to zero will make that slur even more horizontal, but that will probably have unwanted consequences for the rest of your project. So that’s the trade-off… if you want them to be perfectly horizontal without running the risk of breaking slurs elsewhere, I think the safest bet is to change them manually. If the horizontal-ish slurs that you get with the factory setting (see my screenshot) are acceptable for you, you could try that (I’d still check the rest of the project to make sure other slurs are still how you want them to be).
(I referenced Gould because it seemed like an easy way out of this conundrum but I can totally see why you wouldn’t want to do that - I’m not an expert on this at all).
Edit: I added a screenshot of the wrong setting which is now corrected.
