I have seen lots of discussions about spacing of lyrics and staves, but nothing exactly like my needs - I think mine is a special case.
I prepare a lot of slides for projection on screen. The lyrics and staves need to be quite large, so not a lot of music fits on a screen. I have figured out the generally best rastral size, and have the margin of both page and frame figured out. I would like to set the interstaff spacing around the lyrics to not change. In a perfect world, the lyrics and staff would stay exactly in the same horizontal plane from slide to slide. On the rare occasion when the stems would overlap the lyrics, I would be fine shortening the stems in those places just a bit. (This is common in hymnals, anyway).
I have attached two slides and you can see that the first line of each slide has a different interstaff spacing and the lyrics are not exactly centered between the staves. It seems like some collection of the layout settings should give me enough control to fix both staves and the lyrics in the horizontal plane. Is this a correct assumption, or not? If I can, what wonderful mix of settings will do the trick?
In the second slide the tenor has upwards stems, so Dorico has to accommodate for this and make space. Another thing, I wonder where the lyric extension lines are gone, they do help the people having to read these slices.
In general, if your proportions between lyric size and staff/rastral size would be closer to the defaults, you would get a much better balanced view on those slides. This is probably what you are trying to achieve. The sheer size of the lyrics doesn’t make it easier to read, there has to be a good balance, a relation to the music it belongs to, that does not distract or hurt the eye.
“In the second slide the tenor has upwards stems, so Dorico has to accommodate for this and make space.”
I know. That is the point of wanting to fix them in space.
“Another thing, I wonder where the lyric extension lines are gone, they do help the people having to read these slices.”
This seems to be a point of taste. I actually think that the lines clutter up the slides unless particularly long melismas.
I currently have the rastral size set to “Size 0 (0.36)” and the lyric size set to 16 pt. font. When we went to Dorico I organized a focus group; we sat around the room figuring out the best size. This seemed to be the best for everyone – not too big to crowd out long words, and large enough that the back of the room can see.
In essence, the words are most important. Many churches only put up the words to hymns, so I am trying to do what I can to at least marginally expose people to music notation.
Hi @Michael_Dougherty, besides the given useful suggestions, did you try increasing the Inter-system gaps (in Layout Options/Vertical Spacing)?
If you share your Projects I am sure we find some good settings for you.
You can force the staves to be a fixed distance apart by deactivating Automatically resolve collisions between adjacent staves and systems on the Vertical Spacing page of Layout Options. However, Dorico will always adjust the positions of lines of lyrics vertically even if this option is deactivated, so you can’t guarantee a fixed vertical position for the lyrics.
Does your congregation tend to sing in 4-part harmony? If not, putting up melody and words could save space (pages) and let one spread out the notes and syllables if needed.
I have people that do, and it also allows the choir to use the stage monitors to read from. We always sing at least one hymn a capella, and there are congregation members who sing in parts. If a hymn is unison in the hymnal, I keep it unison on the screens. I am not sure they look any better in terms spacing (same issue with changing space depending on how low the notes go on the staff). The only plus is that you can fit more lines of music on the screen.
