The extract you linked to stops just shy of the bars you’re talking about. However, I found the 2nd part that does include those bars.
You absolutely can show the different time signatures currently in Dorico by inputting them as local (using Alt/Opt-Return to close the popover, rather than Return) and then re-aligning the barlines at the next barline. Although that does essentially “reset” all staves to follow one of the two time signatures rather than both concurrently, the visual result is still as desired and would be read as such, I would guess. The reason this works as it does is because a crotchet/quarter note beat is the same value across all staves - so longer bars are wider. If you didn’t want or need the barlines of independent time signatures to align, what Dorico does by default with independent time signatures is pretty amazing!
Daniel has given you a response in regards to sharing plans ahead of time - I would not expect his answer to change.
It’s March 2025 and we still don’t see this in Dorico Pro 5. Sibelius makes it very easy: It allows us to delete the silences in the bars we want to affect. Then we write (using the text tool) ‘Play 8 bars’. That’s it. The blank bars disappear leaving a large single bar for the expression described above. If anyone knows of a way to do this job I would appreciate it if you could explain it for the benefit of all. Otherwise, Dorico should implement it to continue proving that it is cutting edge software.
@Romanos I think you misunderstand. The way to do it now in Dorico is to leave the say 8 measures empty and then replace the multimeasure rest with a “Play 8” textbox in the part. It is possible to do, it doesn’t look great but works ok, and is very time consuming. What is asked for here is a way of condensing e. g. drum parts (number of pages) by reducing unnecessary information and at the same time increase clarity. Although it is possible with time consuming workarounds, what has been requested since years is an easy (and configureable) way to do it, and what is in the part is also reflected in the score.
Now I don’t know if you mean having 8 bars as 8 one-bar repeats (meaningless in this case), 4 x two-bar repeats (takes space and is fairly meaningless as well), 2 x four-bar repeats (takes unnecessary space) or even higher. Sometimes it should say “Play 16” or “Play 32” or even “Play 31”. This makes it look very ugly and does not increase readability and it doesn’t save so much space either. This is not what I want. I want to replace X bars with a predefined “Play X” box and the parts and score should mirror each other. Very very simple!
If you mean the existing condensing with one-bar repeats, there are 1000 reasons to avoid it. Some of them
I as a writer should decide where condensing should occur and where it should not. This are design choices in some cases and musical choices in other situations. Dorico should never condense anything that I haven’t exclusively requested to be condensed.
Global selections are never great. Not even per part or staff. This is area by area.
I want to be able to configure how it should look when it comes to fonts, styles, boxes etc.
I want to use multiple one-bar repeats sometimes. If one-bar repeats are always condensing, they lose its basic purpose and becomes essentially useless.
Doricos out-of-the-box design for the “condensing one-bar repeats” is not only inflexible and uses one-bar repeats in the wrong way, it is also extremely ugly to the degree that it is misleading for the reader (believe me, I tried and will never to that again).
I can continue with the other 995 reasons next week
If you don’t agree with me, feel free to refrain from writing feature requests and to use what Dorico offers
I’m really curious why you’re getting feisty all of the sudden. What you described previously, was not particularly clear, which is why I asked questions, and then asked if the existing feature would work. Perhaps some actual examples would be more helpful here. In any case, I’ll gladly refrain from responding to your future posts. Sheesh.
I think the original post in the thread gives the clearest idea what dan.h was after. It is (as I understand it) not an uncommon way to abbreviate jazz drum parts, and certainly Dorico does not yet have a way to implement it.
The idea fits in relatively smoothly with @MarcLarcher 's idea for horizontal condensation in parts; only Marc is thinking of ways to use it in concert hall type music.
It’s best to include an image that illustrates exactly what you want, to avoid any misunderstanding; so the devs can clearly see what is wanted; and so that other users can suggest ways to achieve it, if possible.
Oh wow, I would like to remind that this is an almost 4 years old post and the subject has been brought up on the table many times since then but no or very few improvements for “jazz/rock/soul” drum part creation have been added to Dorico during these years.
First, @DanielMuzMurray , what I referred to is this “feature” that has been in Dorico for a while.
It is unfortunately to me completely useless for a number of reasons. Besides all the drawbacks with global configuring (and not area by area) and invalidation of the original one bar repeat function, it is not configurable and “suddenly” just shows a number in an to me (and some drummers I tried it on) incomprehensible way. This is the right idea, but please
do not waste the one bar repeat symbol
do not presume that something is actually to be repeated
let me as a writer decide when and where to consolidate or not
let me configure the appearance (including text)
make sure that the part and and the score always match each other
Secondly, adding @Romanos , I see from your and DanielMuzMurrays reactions that what I intended to express is not what was perceived by you. It was not ment to show a bad attitude or sarcasm. If it did, I apologize for this! On the other hand, if I spend hours over several years writing and drawing do describe something I need (the desired function would save me many hours every week), then I get the answer “No you don’t”. This is … a bit … surprising. And to me, such “suggestions” do not contribute to a good conversation. Besides, the “multibar repeat” is really not something that could replace what I ask for. In some rare cases I can use a written pattern and ask the drummer to repeat it for a number of bars. Then it works. But this is very uncommon in my drum parts. More typically, in a say 16 measures period there might be two measures in the beginning with e. g. brass cues and a measure in the end with some other cues or a “fill” instruction. In between there are 13 bars in which the drummer is free to play “ad-lib” within the style. Here I write “Play 13” and no bar repeats. These measures are not repeats of anything specific, at least not just preceeding the “open” area. Thus, using a bar repeat is not only misleading (and takes a lot of extra space), it is actually directly wrong. But again, if you are happy with this in your drum parts - good for you! Then this feature request - which it actually is - is not something that you need. But why opposing to it? Somebody else might need it (and I know for a fact that this is a functionality that many writers are waiting for).
@benwiggy if you read the first post in this thread there are actually illustrations. Are they not clear enough? If so, there is a later version of the feature request here Feature request: Multimeasure play (elaborate version). Perhaps some things are clearer there. I am not sure. Quite some time has passed…
It seems we had some wires crossed:
My initial reply was to ljuarbe, not to you, who’s description was indeed unclear. Then I didn’t understand your reply, (and I think I read it as coming from ljuarbe) hence my suggestion to use bar repeat regions. I wasn’t disagreeing with your request, just not understanding what you (and indeed ljuarbe) were actually wanting to achieve. So perhaps we were both reading too much into each other’s tone (yay text on the internet!).
OK, but that is not how I see it. The latter I would interpret as “play bar 98 as it is written, then play 15 bars ad-lib in the style”. It if it is really intended that bar 98 should be repeated 15 times, then I would propose to write “repeat for 15 bars” or “play 15 more” or possibly use a multi-measure repeat sign if available (however, to save horizontal space this sign needs to be in an otherwise empty measure [one measure]).
