Dynamics that Dorico does not have

Dorico
1

OK, I am resigned to the fact that currently Dorico can’t let me create arbitrary dynamics, and I understand why, but it is a shame because I have dozens and dozens that are not in Dorico’s vocabulary. So, how can I achieve this? Whether it is a ‘real’ dynamic or not does not matter, but how can I make it look exactly like the rest of the inbuilt dynamics?

image

[I didn’t write it: it’s not my piece :slight_smile: ]

2

You have (at least) two options:

  1. go into Engrave/Music Symbols/Dynamics and see if there are preconfigured entries you’re sure you won’t ever need. You can then modify/replace those. This will retain placement rules for dynamics.
  2. go into Engrave/Playing techniques… and create whatever you wish. Set the font range to Dynamics and you have the building blocks you need. Dynamics created this way will have to be manually positioned in Engrave mode
    image
2 Likes
3

Rather unsuccesful:

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image1113×969 50.6 KB

What now?

I need dozens of custom dynamics like this, so I think Option 1 is out of the question.

It should be mentioned I am using the Soli font.

4

about to leave the studio, but first step… change TYPE above to GLYPH, and double click the white space…
[EDIT:] select glyphs from the Dynamics font range, here I added them in this order: sf-ff-fz-/-ppppp. Kern them as necessary. I named the PT mcd-1. That’s what I typed in the PT popover to select it.
image

6

I was able to do this with Shift-X and used the musglyph* although I could not kern the letters where you see the small amount of space between them (perhaps they are ligatures) but someone else with more knowledge than me will probably jump in and explain.
(“p” at the beginning, added as comparison)

sffffz|690x276

7

That’s correct, they’re ligatures. There are a finite combination of dynamics that are supported, but I guess the whole point of MusGlyphs is to fill the gap when “regular” dynamics don’t work. I’ll look into improving the flexibility here.