Creating performance technique legend

But IIRC Noteperformer’s Cymbal is not its strongest suit, especially if an orchestral suspended cymbal (much less with soft mallets) is needed. The NP Cymbal is more a Drum Set style sound.

True. I invested in Spitfire Percussion by Joby Burguess for those — the whole percussion map and a template are freely available in the forum. But it’s quite an investment.

The title of this discussion made me optimistic, maybe too optimistic…

So if I understand this correctly the work flow is something like:

  1. Make a Graphic Slice of all the notations you need (using a totally new flow or an existing one)
  2. Create master pages, some of them will be for the title and all that
  3. On the page that you have reserved for this, create (for example on the right hand side of the page) a text frame where you write all the explanations and then on the left, add all the graph slices needed (this can also be done using individual text frames for each technique)
  4. Make sure lay outs are nice.

Some questions/remarks:

-Even after doing this, it seemed rather counterintuitive, why do I have to save it to bring it back to the same document? Somehow I would expect this to be much smoother in Dorico (and sure, in Finale I would be surprised if it would work so smoothly).

-Also, Graphic Slices uses PDF format as a default and also has TIFF as an option among other, neither of these can be used in Graphic frames. A small thing, but makes it even less intuitive if this really is the ordinary way things are done.

-Should there be a video about this? It seems such an important thing and also something that people might need urgently when the situation is on :smiley: (at least I usually do).

You don’t need to create graphic slices of the music, although you can if you want – you can keep the “notation information flows” in the project, but show them in music frames.

It depends on how you like to present this information – in the past, I have done a fairly quick-and-easy method of adding lyrics or text to my notation flow, with the numbers 1-n, and then in a single text frame below used essentially numbered bullet points to describe what the corresponding numbered notation means.

If you don’t want Dorico to display the notation flow again at the end of the layout, remove it from the MA page template frame chain; that way, that flow will only appear where you explicitly draw it in, either on local pages or in page templates.

Hmm, maybe this is also partly a question of the layouts.
I did this test file. Not easily, but with some work I could create a flow that is hidden and then a Music frame that shows the beginning of that music, including the clef and sometimes even name of the instrument. The microtones were done like this.

But the more messy case, which will be much more typical, is one note and one symbol, no context. If I will need to do, say, 10 of them, it would be quicker to do this with the graphic slices than 10 different instruments, and I’m not even sure if I could do it without the clef. Right?

I think it will have to be graphic for me then, unfortunately.

Test for the Legend.dorico (705.4 KB)

  • You can change the length or visibility at all of staff labels independently of the layout’s default settings (to hide the instrument name before the initial barline) – see here

  • You don’t need 10 different instruments necessarily, you could have 10 flows, the same instrument in each, and use the flow filters to determine which appears where

  • You can input invisible clefs – see here

Whether or not it’s quicker for you to use graphics frames depends on your circumstances, workflow, and personal preferences. The benefit of using flows is that if you need to amend the content, the pages get updated automatically – you don’t have to re-export the image.

Thanks for the answer!

So it probably would be possible to do even the weirdest notations like this and then make corrections afterwards, but there is quite a lot of tweaking that needs to be done before. Maybe I will do the work once and then just try to copy it afterwards. Somehow I still see flows as something substantial, almost like sections of a piece, so idea of adding 10 flows seems crazy, but I will retune my brain.

In 95% of the cases I get the Dorico logic immediately and in the 5% I’m just completely lost.

I used flows for this before graphic slices were introduced, and I stick to this workflow to this day. I find it easy to use, and the benefit is of course that everything is easily updatable and quickly changeable.

Here‘s my workflow (from memory, I am on a train), which I don’t find more cumbersome than graphics slices, given the benefit. Also, I already use a custom page template set anyhow for my music, which makes things easy here:

  1. create an additional new layout, just for my playing techniques that will end up in the performance notes. This one usually uses the default master pages, but is anyhow never printed.
  2. create a new flow, no time sig, invisible clef (quick and easy with pop-overs). Create note, hide stem in engrave mode. Add playing techniques I want to present. This flow of course needs to be assigned to the score/part layouts.
  3. duplicate flow like… 10 times. This way I just need to adjust the playing techniques, or adjust it slightly in more ways.
  4. go to my score layout, edit the page template, so the Main music Frame only contains my music flow(s). This is crucial and can also be the second step.
  5. either in page template, but mostly directly in engrave mode, I add the music frames.
    This is actually the part costing the most time, as copying frames and adjusting their position can be heavily improved workflow-wise in my opinion. But this is true no matter if one uses graphic frames or music frames.

Here an example:

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