Creating blank sketch pad, need help.

Dorico
1

Been whacking this for a while and am stuck. I want a blank sketch pad with the following choirs

  • Woodwinds
  • Brass
  • Percussion
  • Special
  • Strings

I want a grand staff per choir, no rests just blank staves including clefs, with four bar lines per page and the bar lines extend across all choirs.

I did it a couple ways and can get most of it except that Dorico just doesn’t consider my different groups as part of the same instrument family (hence the barline across all of them that I want). There’s some hidden knowledge about what instrument template I originally choose, but I can’t find where to customize that. Any idea?

2

Do you have Pro? You can easily customize bracket and barline changes in Engrave mode.

3

Yes thanks, that’s what I’ve been doing. Unless I’m not getting something, Dorico bracket rules go according to instrument family. So for example, to get the grand staff I just create a bunch of Keyboards and change the names. However internally it considers them still as keyboards, and anyhow won’t do bracketing across grand staffs (documentation says this too).

It seems like I have to create a bunch of, say, Violin and String Bass lines alternating so I get that magical “Same instrument family” setting, then change names and such to map mine, however I still don’t get a grand staff across each treble/bass grouping.

Is there a way to set the instrument family of an arbitrary line?

4

It doesn’t matter what the rules do - you have bracketing and barline changes at your disposal.

5

Aieeeeeee! So simple, that was the clue that I needed, I just have to select all the bars and change the bar style. I feel stupid :smiley: