Educational book with notation examples - best workflow?

Dorico
1

I’m currently working on a self-published theory book, which I’m typesetting within Adobe InDesign. It’s predominately text-focused, but I will need to insert single-line examples of notation in between paragraphs here and there. Much as you would see in any theory or orchestration textbook.

I’m trying to think of the best workflow, especially in terms of file management. Curious to hear from anyone who has made an educational music book before.

First there’s the option to export as a PDF or an SVG. I assume either will be fine as they’re both vector-based and work well with the Adobe suite. I just tested with a PDF and it looks good.

But now I’m wondering if there is a better and faster way to export just a single measure or few measures, rather than a page. For example my PDF export window:

Music Composition Software
Music Composition Software5984×3414 605 KB

I formatted my layout area to make it much smaller (400pt x 100pt) and therefore the music I need would be as large as possible. But still I need to crop in InDesign. Ideally I could just export only what I need, to use the same example:

Bass Clef Musical Notes
Bass Clef Musical Notes1084×336 5.47 KB

Also, for potentially hundreds of examples like this which need to be manually placed in InDesign, what is the best practice as far as exporting and filenames? Do you create a new flow for every example and export those as files, individually numbered in book sequence (ex 01, ex 02, etc)?

Thank you!

2

I would do 1 sample = 1 project/Dorico file and adjust “page size” to the “music”, then export and import in ID. I don’t use ID anymore as I find it limiting for my needs. @dan_kreider is the real Master at ID+Dorico.

Flows would likely work well, too.

I would not number them 001, 002, unless you are copying a firm manuscript. Try to use some reference to the chapter or section they will be in.

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3

I did a theory text this way. For me, I found it worked well to do one Dorico file per chapter, and each example as a flow, numbered and named as clearly as possible.

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4

Thanks! That aligns with my intuition. For export, did you make the page area (under layout settings) as small and cropped as possible to the example, or did you just use a normal page size and handle cropping and re-sizing within your desktop publishing app?

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I found it much easier to choose a page size in Dorico that matched most examples, at least in page height. And then don’t “fill final system.”

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