I know I’ve mentioned this before but could not find it in My Posts. It was not answered satisfactorily. It looks like a Coda symbol: an O with a giant plus (cross) through it. Someone suggested a symbol from unpitched percussion might work. This looked promising initially but is not adequate. I’m to the point in my current project where I could use this. I’ve attached a graphic which is found at the top of page 384 of Elaine Gould’s book Behind Bars. Note there are seven of them in this example.
It’s essential that the symbol be moveable as shown, including placing it in the middle of a staff. In Luciano Berio’s score Circles for soprano, harp, and two percussion (which I own a copy of), the vertical line in this symbol is extendable, i.e. the line would have handles on both ends enabling it to specify the extent of the damping.
I don’t suppose there is such a symbol in Dorico, or ability to construct or import one? (A Coda sign might even work if it was a bit smaller than usual and if the vertical line of the cross were made extensible.)
Hi @Lynn_Newton, a custom vertical line would give what you describe:
here an example with two different customised lines: one with a hook down, and one with a hook up and down. You can also hide the hooks and leave only the symbol, setting the properties appropriately:
@Christian_R, I’m blown away by this. It appears to be exactly what I’m looking for. However, the method for creating it appears to be a bit complicated, and as a Dorico newbie (about a month or so now) I’m plowing into this territory for the first time. I’m going to try to reconstruct what you’ve presented here in a scratch file just to see if I can do it. It may take me a while. I’m not ignoring you but acknowledging the solution, which obviously took a bit of time to produce, for which I sincerely thank you.
Don’t worry, it takes a little time to learn the solid logic behind lines creation (eventually I make a video to show the workflow-edit: see at the end of this post * ).
But for the moment you can take advantage of my example file and use the lines I created for your Projects:
Method 1. (import the lines in your current Project from my example file, after you have downloaded it):
You can import the lines in your current Project using the Library Manager (from menu Library). Open the dialogue and follow the numbers:
What generous help! Thank you so much. It’s a bit much to handle right now because I need to do a complete editing pass on my project, which should take a few days. Marking more precisely where and how I want the harp dampening to go is part of that process. (With red pen on a hard copy.)
Therefore, I want to keep this thread open, and I’ll get back to this when I’m more ready than I thought I was when I asked.
@Christian_R, I’m back. I downloaded the example you made and am playing with it. Very nice, I think I can work with that. I’ve figured out that it needs to be manipulated in Engrave Mode. Which is fine.
I gather that I can import those two symbols into my current project. Perhaps even into a library of symbols so it’s permanently available?
In either case, I don’t know how to do that. May I beg for some instructions here?
Wonderful! There was enough information there that I knew where to look in the manual. I’ve never done any of this before, so abbreviated references while obvious to the experts, are mysteries to me. But I was able to forge through it and save those symbols to my library of vertical lines so that they appear in my lines catalog.
I must use dampen signs fifty times in my current project. This has been extremely useful to me, plus I learned about another avenue to explore when I can get some time for it.
I think many of us would agree that the management of custom techniques could be improved. Currently everything gets lumped into one big bucket and if you have a lot of customisations these lists can become unwieldy.
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