I understand that modern notation conventions demand large, bold text for all tempo indications, with the exception of some rubato text. I believe Dorico’s defaults follow this. I live most of my life buried in classical music, so modern conventions are often lost on me. Older traditions utilize small italic type for all gradual and/or temporary tempo changes, including a tempo. Many publishers still use the older style, and I personally prefer it in most of my scores. I was excited to see the new “Font Styles” panel in Dorico 4 offering the ability to add custom font styles. Then I realized there was no way to assign these custom styles to any tempo categories. If I am wrong, and I often am, someone please enlighten me. With only two font style options for tempo indications (immediate and gradual), I end up hiding most of my tempo marks before adding text objects styled to my preference. As far as I know, hiding tempo marks has to be done by typing a space in the abbreviation box; with no signpost, those can be tricky later. So… if it isn’t feasible to add more default font styles for tempo text, maybe you could consider adding the ability to select a different font style in the properties panel? I made a little demo image. In my imaginary world, the dropdown box in my imaginary screenshot lists all font styles, including the custom styles added by the user.
Pretty please?
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You can hide tempo marks by deactivating all component properties. However I think this doesn’t apply to gradual tempo changes.
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You can just delete the text in the Text field to get a hidden gradual dynamic.
And then create a text object.
This is why I am always so tempted to question you directly, @benwiggy ! I still submit that my request would be a nice addition to the app, but the developers usually know better. Thank you!
Just to clarify, I’m not on the dev team! They are usually receptive to requests. I’ve certainly had some of my needs directly implemented.
Things like rall. are often written on every staff in choral music. (I mean who looks at the other staves, let alone the conductor…?) So there’s a variety of different styles and behaviours to consider.
I am aware that you are not a part of the dev team. However, you are probably the reason I didn’t give up and go back to Finale in my first few weeks as a new Dorico user. Your conversations with other users and your direct responses to my initial queries were beyond helpful and positive. I always tip my hat to you.
I have been at this for about a year now, and I have already been blown away by the Dorico team’s obvious awareness of their users’ wishes. Several things that I wanted were implemented in version 4, though I doubt they were a result of my requests personally.
I agree that there are a variety of different styles to consider. I also understand that, often, there are mitigating factors (unknown to me) that make some feature requests impractical. All that being said, I still hope to see more custom options for the styling of tempo fonts in the future, and I feel reasonably certain that it will happen at some point as Dorico matures.
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