I want to create custom ornaments that are specific to Irish folkmusic. Is there any way I can design them in Dorico 5? I guess composers of avant garde music have the same question.
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Welcome to the forum, Bart. A lot of rare and esoteric symbols are already in SMuFL/Bravura, just not accessible by default. You could have a scroll through the specification to see if the symbols are already present. In that case you can define custom Playing Techniques using those glyphs, or repurpose some existing ornaments that you aren’t going to use, with the music symbol editor.
If the symbols aren’t in Bravura, then in those same dialogs you could also either take them from a different font, or import them as vector graphics. You can also combine multiple glyphs. But for the actual designing of them you will need a vector graphics editor.
Thanks for your reply Hugo. Where in Dorico can I find SMuFL/Bravura? I haven’t found the any symbols on the site with the specifications. I do have a vector graphics editor, but how do I import the symbols I created into the ornaments of Dorico?
We had a thread about this just yesterday:
I don’t see any Irish ornaments particularly. To get additional symbols into Dorico you will probably want to design your own font. Then you could create custom playing techniques that use those glyphs.
I’m curious to see examples of the symbols you need, and I’m sure the team would be too.
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This was very easy to do in Finale as there was an option to create by drawing a new ornament or articulation in a graphic window. I’ll give you examples of symbols for Irish ornamentation by Monday.
These are the symbols for the ornaments in Irish flute music.
Great discussion. I have just started exploring Dorico, as a transition from Sibelius, and I have been exploring the same question of how best to add symbols and markings for Irish music. One option for glyhps that I have previously used is a font that includes markings from Grey Larsen’s ornamentation style. You can find it at GitHub, search for larsen-font.
I haven’t tried bringing the glyphs into Dorico yet, but that will be done soon.
Granted, there’s no specific ‘Irish flute ornaments’ chapter in the specification so there’s some browsing and scrolling involved. But all of these symbols are in there somewhere, easily repurposed as custom playing techniques. (For the fourth one, combine U+E577 and U+E583.)
wstromeyer and hrnbouma, it are the Grey Larsen ornamentations that I reproduced in Finale. I just finished reproducing them in Affinity Designer but I’ll certainly have a look at GitHub and search for Larsen-font. I’ll keep you posted.
I found some fairly good matches. Most are in SMuFL; some are in other areas of Unicode. None would require getting a new font:
| # | Codepoint | Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | U+E57B | Oblique straight line SW-NE |
| 2 | U+E570 | Port de voix |
| 2 | U+E831 | Guitar vibrato bar dip |
| 2 | U+22C1 | n-ary logical OR |
| 3 | U+E577 | Curve above |
| 5 | U+25DE | Lower right quadrant circular arc |
| 6 | U+E848 | Full barré |
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I downloaded the Larsen ttf font and the keyboard map to type those symbols. Am I right that it’s better to add new ornaments to the Playing Technique Panel or can I add them directly to the ornaments? I guess I’ll have to do some editing in the Library Manager but I’m not sure about what and where and want to avoid mocking things up.
I typed one of those codes into a popover for ornaments but nothing happens, nor in the playing techniques popover. Do I have to edit things in the Library Manager?
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You need to create playing techniques in order to place such custom symbols.
Most of the popovers do not accept arbitrary text. Each popover has a syntax.
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