I’m coming back to Dorico after a long pause. I cannot find how to create expression marks such as “con passione” or “grazioso”. A search for “expression marks” in the user manual gets me nowhere.
I tried searching for “espressivo”, which led me to dynamic modifiers, but that’s not what I want: these are expression marks, with no dynamics attached.
add this alongside an immediate dynamic, eg “f con passione”, then hide the immediate dynamic (and change the alignment if needed - both of these options are in the Properties panel). This gives you a dynamic modifier, which is automatically formatted as italic text.
add this as either staff- or system-attached text, depending on where you want it to appear and if you want it in parts. You could create a paragraph style that formats such text in italics, and apply this paragraph style to all expressive texts (and if you save the style as default by clicking the star, you can reuse it in multiple projects)
add this as a tempo mark, although tempo marks are by default formatted as bold text and are system objects
create a playing technique, but you’d need to create an explicit playing technique per piece of text, and consider any potential impacts on playback sounds. For expressive text that you’re unlikely to use as frequently as say “div.” or “unis.” expressions when manually handling divisi, I would personally prefer either of the first 2 options over creating playing techniques.
Many thanks Derrek and Lillie. I’m going to use staff-attached text, which seems to me to be the only logical option. Expression marks are not dynamics, and I’m certainly not going to mess around with creating fictitious dynamics and then hiding them. Nor are they tempo marks, nor playing techniques.
I’m wondering why there is no ready-made category for expression marks included in Dorico. I’m also wondering why the user manual offers no help for this. I first wasted considerable time looking in the manual for all sorts of words that might lead me to the solution of my problem: finally it was much faster to ask the question here, thanks to you friendly people!
I also wanted to mention that once you’ve created your Expressive Text paragraph style, and clicked the star to save it as default, it then will be available to have a keycommand assigned to it. I use Shift+E to create Expressive Text as it’s faster than Shift+X then changing the style.
Hi Lillie! I found this thread while searching the forum because I had the same question as the OP. I have an additional question based on your answer. I agree with @Michael_Cook that expression marks are just that. They’re not techniques, nor dynamics, nor tempo marks. I also don’t get why in the Dorico manual they are referred to as “modifiers”. That’s really a programmer’s point of view and not a musician’s to come up with such a sterile, clinicial term for exactly those items in a score by which a composer, other than through the actual notes, confides the heart and soul and emotional context of their music. So not having an explicit Expression Mark popover/panel (the Shift+E command is right there for the taking) in a music notation program leaves me a bit puzzled. /end rant
Having said that, now to my actual follow up question:
I have created a paragraph style for expression marks and assigned a keyboard shortcut to add them as text. Is it possible to position a text item below the staff by default? Or will I have to flip them individually when I enter one?
This is to keep terminology as consistent as possible between Dorico’s UI and the manual (eg several Engraving Options refer to “modifiers”), to try to help users find what they’re looking for consistently in both places.
I and my colleagues do understand the emotionality imbued in expression marks, you can count on that! We’re all musicians, at heart.