flows & layouts & parts

Maybe I am asking way too much of Dorico.

I have been toying with a composition in which the A section melody is in changing meters. At the same time the bass plays 5 repeats of a two bar phrase in 5/4.

I thought it should be possible to use one flow for the melody and a second flow for the bass and then use a page layout to show these two flows on the same page. But after hours of trying I am throwing the towel. Either I just don’t understand how flows and layouts work or it’s not possible.

Attached is the messy file which now only shows all the music in Galley View.

Essentially I need the “Bass” flow to show on top of the first page - two staff systems/two stafflines
Below I need to show the “Melody” flow up until and including measure 12.

After that we use all three staff systems in the normal way.
Thanksgiving OLD.dorico.zip (496 KB)

Absolutely possible. I haven’t looked at the file, but what you’re describing is precisely what frame chains are for.

You’ll draw out all the music frames, approximating the layout of the page as you want it to appear, then assign each frame to the particular chain for the desired flow. You can add frame breaks to make sure the bars line up, and you can adjust the size of the frames as you wish.

Have you watched this tutorial? How to Work With Frame Chains | Page Layout in Dorico - YouTube

Ok, I took a look at the project. No offense intended, but I’m afraid it was pretty well muddled, as you have about a half-dozen frame chains and all sorts of flows and layouts. And your master pages are angst-y.

I threw together something to demonstrate, though it’s not at all elegant and could be much clearer. I allowed the flows to continue on the same frame, though individual frames would be better. Project attached.

A few takeaways are:

  • don’t mess with frame chains on your master pages
  • don’t create more instruments than you need
  • assign certain instruments to certain flows
  • learn the difference between master frames and layout frames

TBH, I’d like to see what Leo or someone else could come up with. I rarely need the kind of wizardry you were wanting, and it shows.
Frames.zip (347 KB)

I’ve just taken a quick look. The only point that Dan’s missed, I think, is that in your “first page assembly” master page you’ve got as far as sorting out the left page but you’ve not copied that over to the right page. Page 1 is always going to be a right page so that might be why you hit a stumbling block there.

I’ve had a go at tidying up your original file. Here’s what I’ve done:

  1. Set all frame chains on all master pages back to MA, and removed the filters from the master page frames.
  2. Slightly rejigged the “first page assembly” master page (and copied from left to right!).
  3. In the Full Score layout I’ve gone into Layout Options > Page Setup > Flows and set New Flows to Allow on existing pages.
  4. I’ve added a Frame Break at the start of the Bass flow, and a Frame Break at the start of the Melody flow, and another Frame Break at bar 13 of the Melody flow. I’ve then selected each one of these frame breaks and flicked the “Wait for next frame break” switch in the Properties panel.
  5. Having made the various master page changes above, I’ve removed overrides from the individual pages in the top right panel (Engraving mode) and then reinserted the Master Page Change to page 1, so that it picks up the changes I’ve made to the “First page assembly” master page.
  6. The override you’ll now find on page 1 is where I’ve had to type “melody” into the text frame manually. {@flowTitle@} is present in the master page but (as at November 26th 2018) Dorico doesn’t know that I mean Flow 2’s title rather than Flow 1’s title. And in fact, in this situation, you want to use “melody” rather than “Thanksgiving” so I’ve just typed it manually.
  7. I’ve gone into Setup mode, selected the Full Score layout (right panel) and unticked the third and fourth flows (bottom panel), as I think they’re surplus to requirements. Note that they still exist in the file; they’re just not attached to the Full Score layout. This method is vastly easier than trying to deal with filters on frames.

The result is attached.
Thanksgiving Leo.dorico.zip (361 KB)

Thanks for the help.

This is what I need. Sorry for the mess. Experimenting will do that. I find that the manual for Dorico is not very helpful for many things, hence trying and experimenting.

Much more to learn I’m sure but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Peter,

Don’t be afraid to experiment. I expect a lot of the suggestions you see here result from a combination of reading release notes and forum posts, watching videos, and experimentation, sometimes with just a small proof-of-concept test project. Over time, these practices build experience and familiarity.

You can always experiment on a copy of a file if you think you’ll need a backup just in case. And there continue to be folks here happy to help.

I’m very sorry to hear that, Peter - do you have any particular examples? If there are specific areas that could do with further elaboration/detail that would be very helpful to know. If you mean the overall style/structure, there’s a bit less I can do about that because there is a Steinberg manual style that we all follow, but I’d still be interested to hear so I can pass the feedback on :slight_smile:

In regards to master pages etc, I did recently do some ‘upgrading’ in that area, so I will check that those changes have been published. It can be a tricky thing to explain in words, so Ant’s videos are really helpful for visualising how it works, and writing more “walkthroughs” for these sorts of scenarios is definitely fairly high on the manuals-to-do list.