Custom ornaments

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 arenā€™t going to use, with the music symbol editor.
If the symbols arenā€™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 havenā€™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 donā€™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.

Iā€™m curious to see examples of the symbols you need, and Iā€™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. Iā€™ll give you examples of symbols for Irish ornamentation by Monday.

These are the symbols for the ornaments in Irish flute music.
Irish flute ornaments

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 Larsenā€™s ornamentation style. You can find it at GitHub, search for larsen-font.

I havenā€™t tried bringing the glyphs into Dorico yet, but that will be done soon.

Granted, thereā€™s no specific ā€˜Irish flute ornamentsā€™ chapter in the specification so thereā€™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 Iā€™ll certainly have a look at GitHub and search for Larsen-font. Iā€™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 barrƩ
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I downloaded the Larsen ttf font and the keyboard map to type those symbols. Am I right that itā€™s better to add new ornaments to the Playing Technique Panel or can I add them directly to the ornaments? I guess Iā€™ll have to do some editing in the Library Manager but Iā€™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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Celtic-Clown, have you already succeeded in bringing the glyphs into Dorico? I installed Larsenā€™s ornamentation style (TrueTypeFont) but it doesnā€™t show in the SMuFL range dropdown menu.

See the keyboard map for the font. It is a ā€œpi fontā€ with ornament glyphs in the codepoints for regular ASCII characters such as Latin letters and punctuation. SMuFL uses the Private Use Area of Unicode.

Mark_Johnson may have already addressed your concern. The Larsen font is not a Smufl font. To use it you need to make playing techniques (for example Strike) and then select glyph, instead of text. Once you are in the glyph editor you can choose the larsen font and select the appropriate symbol in the glyph preview. One odd thing is one of the symbols in not in the basic latin set, but hidden away in punctuation marks. If you canā€™t sort it out, let me know and I think I can post a project with the markings already in it.

Also, these wonā€™t effect audio playback, as they are only notation. You can set them up to do that, but you need a sample library that has the various articulations already in it, accessible through keyswithces or midi cc. Native instruments Irish collection has some of them, although they are not always appropriate as they are always at the same tempo and emphasis. Not really how actual Irish players ornament.

Got it! I was looking ing the extensive list with Smufl fonts instead of choosing the Larsen font in the list of fonts at the top of the glyph editor. Iā€™ll see whether I can find that symbol which is hidden away in the punctuation marks.

:+1: :shamrock:

I created all of the glyphs but apparently they donā€™t show up in the playing techniques when starting a new document. Do I have to save a document as template for Irish music? A last question: is it important in which category you put the glyphs: common, wind, brassā€¦?

I put the symbols in wind because they are most often used with flute, whistle, and pipes. I donā€™t think it matters where you put them.

In the project where you created the playing technique symbols, did you click the star at the bottom of the create new playing technique (it will make the hollow star become solid). This tells Dorico to save your new playing techniques to the user library and should make it available in newly created projects. I often forget to click the star, if you donā€™t click it your new creations are only available in the current project.

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