Custom text style for ri-tar-dan-do?

Dorico
1

Hi all,

I’m working on an engraving project of an older score, and would like to keep the older style of showing gradual tempo changes in italics, instead of bold text. I’ve been achieving this so far with the dynamic/hide-intensity workaround, but I’m running into a bit of a wall with longer, dashed continuations, i.e. “ri - tar - dan - do”. I know I can do this with the tempo popover, but that makes it bold text, which I prefer to avoid in this case. I know I could also type it out and tweak the spacing, but I would love for the spacing to be automatic and match other markings like the beautiful native “cresc - en - do”. Is there a way to create a custom text, maybe as a playing technique or some other solution, that can automatically break a word at the midpoints and space it out correctly?

2

Yes, you can achieve this without any workarounds. In Engrave Mode–Engrave Menu–Font Styles, you can change the font style for Gradual Tempo Changes from bold to italic.

3

Thank you so much, Dan! I’ve been hunting all over the engraving options for this, don’t know how I missed the font styles. That’s such a time saver!

1 Like
4

Addendum: is it possible to also categorize “a tempo” as a gradual tempo? That one’s still showing up bold for me. Thanks again for your help!

5

That’s under the category of “Immediate tempo text font,” same list.

6

Thanks! Looks like that also impacts the main tempo markings, I’ll probably just stick to adding a tempo as a fake dynamic. Good to have in my back pocket in case I need it for a future project, though.

7

I recommend creating a paragraph style called “expressive text” or something, and saving it as default. It’ll be accessible in every project. Then you can keep this sort of formatting consistent when you use the text popover.

8

Awesome, I’ll definitely set that up! Thanks again.

9

Dorico categorizes tempo markings into a few different types, as Dan has already mentioned. As long as you either input the required gradual tempo entry correctly in the popover (which has a suggestion menu that appears below it once you start entering letters), or use the Tempo panel and select a gradual tempo marking, it will be recognized & behave as a gradual tempo mark.

Dan’s tip about having a paragraph style for expressive text is a useful one, that I would second (as well as having as many custom paragraph styles as you like - they’re often useful for pre-score information, so you can set the line leading as required etc.)