i’m trying to create custom notehead sets that have open left or right square brackets on them. The first problem I’ve encountered has to do with this note in the dorico help.
"* Optional: Customize the appearance, name, and settings of noteheads.
For example, you can change the stem direction and note durations for which they are used. You can also double-click noteheads to open the Edit Notehead dialog, where you can edit the appearance of the notehead.
Note If you edit a notehead that appears in multiple notehead sets, your changes affect its appearance in all notehead sets that contain it."
If I create a new notehead set in the common noteheads section there is a default round notehead there with a little red triangle on it signifying that it is the default notehead. If I change it in any way modify it in any way, it causes the default round notehead to also change so that it has the modification (i.e. the bracket).
I cannot (apparently) delete the default notehead from the set and when I change, say, the half note shape, it also acquires a red triangle and becomes the default notehead.
Yet, when I look at the other sets in the “common” section, none of them have a red triangle indicating that they are the default.
What I want to know how to do is to create a notehead set that includes “common” normal black noteheads but that have either a right or left bracket attached to them.
The red triangle denotes an override, rather than it being the default.
If you want to edit the standard notehead but only in one notehead set (by adding a left bracket to it, for example), first duplicate the notehead, then edit the duplicate.
You can remove the original, default notehead from the set using the action bar in the top half of the dialog. I think you can only do so if the notehead isn’t being used, and possibly also if no other notehead can be used for the corresponding note durations?
You’ll know if you’re editing the original because in the dialog where you edit the appearance of the individual notehead, the “Name” will be something quite short; custom, new noteheads tend to have longer strings of random characters as their generated name.
I do not want to change every note in my project to have a left bracket on it, therefore, I do not want to edit the standard notehead.
What I want to do is create two notehead sets: one that has a standard notehead but with a left bracket, and one with a standard notehead but with a right bracket. I want to be able to select individual notes in the project and change the notehead to be either the left or right bracket version.
All of this is a workaround for the fact that Dorico does not support bracketing over multiple notes. Of the two options presented (use lines with zero thickness and defined end points — leaving a hairline in print) or create notehead sets, I would like to create the notehead sets since this will not leave hairlines on the printed pages and will not be subject to constantly having to be fiddled with in engraving mode.
What I do not understand how to do, and what is not described in the documentation or the tutorial, is how to create a notehead set that is based on the “normal” noteheads but which does not change the default noteheads.
Please help, this is really important to our project. People keep saying it is possible but there is no description of how to actually do it.
How to do what you’re trying to do at the moment: follow these instructions (Creating custom notehead sets which I know you’ve been referring to already) but crucially:
In step 3, duplicate the standard notehead set (slightly confusingly, the factory default notehead set is the “Larger Noteheads” set)
In step 6, duplicate the black notehead that’s already in the set (also described in this separate set of steps here: Creating custom noteheads)
When you start editing the notehead itself, by e.g. double-clicking it in the top section of the Edit Notehead Sets dialog, first check the Name at the top before doing anything: if it says “comp.noteheadBlackOversized”, that’s the original default one; don’t edit this.
You can also identify your new duplicate notehead by the fact the star “Save as Default” button appears enabled but hollow; the true factory default notehead has this disabled, because it’s already a default.
An alternative method would be to add the bracket as a text item, disable its collision avoidance, then move it into place in Engrave mode. The downside here is it might end up misplaced if you later change the casting off etc.