Drawing Lines and hiding Staves in Dorico

Dorico
1

Just getting the hang of Dorico (coming from Finale) and absolutely loving it. There are a few key things keeping me from actually making the switch for my professional work. I know the team is still working on the program but it would be absolutely key for me to add the following (also if anyone knows a way to achieve any of this let me know!)

  1. A way to draw doted lines or lines with arrows to show gradual change (in Finale this takes seconds).

  2. A way to draw glissando lines that don’t have to be connected on both ends (drawing a more complex glissando curve that may go up and down within a measure of a held note (again, takes seconds in Finale).

  3. A way to hide staves when they’re not in use. I love the idea of having ‘players’ that can play multiple instruments in a score, but I don’t always want all those instruments to be displayed in the score.

  4. A simple way to notate the use of looping pedals. I realize I’m in the minority here, but I think the lack of ability of the program to adapt to specific needs (like looping) is evidence of it’s need for much more creative functionality that isn’t rooted in straight ahead, this note goes to that note notation technique. I’ve figured out a pretty ok/ fast way of notating looping in Finale, but with the current limitations of Dorico (especially not being able to draw lines!) it’s basically impossible.

Thanks so much! Keep up the good work, I’ll keep checking in with the program as it gets built out, crossing fingers some of this is addressed soon!

2

You can hide empty staves in Layout Options > Vertical Spacing > Hide Empty Staves.

As for the rest, it’s functionality that is more than likely planned but hasn’t found its way to fruition yet.

3

What are looping pedals? Is that a harp technique, a piano technique, or something else?

4

Not the OP (obviously), but I took it as referring to looping by electronic means, like one would’ve done with tape delays in the old days or with hardware loop machines today — the kinds of independent repetition that Lutoslawski, to mention one, already did in notation quite some time ago. Dorico already does this better by way of its management of independent time signatures and barlines, but something as seemingly trivial as the ability to draw lines in relation to musical content is holding this kind of notation back as of now.