First new work I’ve done since the most recent update to 6.1.10.6078. This is a work for chorus. Normally, when I enter dynamics for one or all instruments/voices, they go below the staves. Suddenly I have to specify that I want them to appear below in the Properties Panel. Is this a new behavior, and if so, how can I change the default? I can’t think of any scores I’ve ever seen in which dynamics would go above the notes in a staff. This is a work for chorus SATB. Thanks.
By default. Dorico puts dynamics for vocal staves above the staff, so that they don’t collide with lyrics. This is not new behavior.
Got it. Didn’t occur to me since this piece I’m writing doesn’t have lyrics. Thanks. That’s the only dynamic likely to be in the work so no big deal in any case, but wanted to make sure this wasn’t a new default. Thanks!
TBH, I never knew of that convention. Most of the music I’ve composed for chorus tended to not have lyrics. I have composed a small number of works (well, one or two) that involved lyrics for chorus, before I switched to Dorico, and Finale always placed the dynamics below the staves, so I was never aware of that issue, but looking at one of the old scores, Finale did have a near-collision between a dynamic and a lyric at the beginning of the score, which I likely fixed at that time. So it makes sense. Interestingly, Ives didn’t get the memo:
But Dallapiccola certainly did, as did Berio:
Thanks-now at least I understand why Dorico did it that way.
After more than 45 years of singing choral music, I’d say it’s very much the standard.
Most publishers’ Style Guides explicitly call for it; as do Gould and Ted Ross.
I even created a separate category of dynamic for vocals that placed them above the staves in Finale. I grew up as a chorister from the age of eight and knew that was what I saw in all our choral parts.
cool. I just never knew. And clearly some composers also never got the memo.
More likely the publisher/engraver trying to save space (along with shared lyric lines) rather than the composer.
