Default placement (above/below) of dynamics: reassign by player/instrument?

Dorico
1

I can’t seem to find this addressed on the forum: is there a way to change which players, instruments, or staves show dynamics above or below the staff by default? Obviously for vocal staves the default is above, and of course it’s generally below otherwise, but I sure could use the option to switch them if it exists, since it’s a little slow to create dynamics (which can’t be linked to other parts) and change their Placement on an individual basis. In my case I need dynamics above a line with figured bass, but I can imagine other situations where something on or below the staff would make it useful to move the dynamics above by default: extended notation, spoken passages, analytical symbols, something education-related…

I know I can just select all, filter by dynamics, and change the placement all at once that way, but A) I have a lot of flows in this project and B) I don’t want all of them above, just lots of them in certain places.

Thanks, all.

2

No, you can’t determine the default placement of dynamics in general. Dorico will place dynamics above the staves of voice instruments, but below all others by default.

3

Aw, rats. Well, I’ll call it a feature request, then. I expect if nobody’s been asking about it besides me, though, it shouldn’t be a priority!

4

One might try making the figured bass instrument a vocal bass and then reassigning the sound file to a true double bass in one’s VST (adding an octave transposition in the VST if necessary). Then all dynamics would appear above the staff.

5

I knew somebody was going to say that! It’s a good idea. Unfortunately, it’s too much work — the layouts are already more or less done, and swapping out instruments could cause me to lose dozens of hours of custom positioning work. Anyway, I’d like the setup to be semantically consistent, which is in the spirit of Dorico itself. The continuo part is an instrumental line, so I want Dorico to “think of it” that way.

6

In that case, make it less work to position the dynamics in the right place: select the first bar of the flow for that instrument, use Edit > Select to End of Flow, filter all dynamics then hit F to flip them all above.

7

Yes indeed. Thanks, @pianoleo. That’s the best solution I’ve found so far.

8

Oh, and in case anybody’s wondering how I ended up calling the layouts finalized before dynamics even got added, it wasn’t my idea. The project requirements took an unexpected turn.