Four things that frustrate me

Because of the notation style of the publisher I’m working with, there are a few things I need to be able to do that don’t have a magic Dorico fix. I’m not asking about whether any of these are proper or not, I just need to do them because of publisher demands.

  1. I need to have a double barline at the end of the first system, when the intro is complete, but Dorico won’t let me because the next system starts with a repeat bar. (It equates the repeat bar at the beginning of the 2nd system with the barline at the end of the 1st system.)

  2. For words that break between systems, I need the hyphens at the beginning of systems to be hidden.

  3. There is a melody vocal staff, and a staff below with choral parts. The shared words are between the staves. I need lyric extender lines to appear when the melody has, for example, a whole note, but the lower staff has moving notes (and automatically left-aligning the words would be great too).

  4. If the final note in a system then goes up to a higher note in the next system, the slur at the end of the previous system should tilt slightly up, giving the performer (singer, in this case) the clear indication that the next note is higher. Right now, Dorico doesn’t intuit this. (I know it’s not that hard to adjust it, but…).

I’m constantly running into these four things and hope they can get addressed! Loving Dorico so much!

I don’t remember if there is an engraving option for #1, but double check. My dongle is at work so I can’t check.

#2, you can’t do this automatically, but could you could drag both handles for the hyphen off of the page? I haven’t tried it but it’s worth a shot.

#3, if there is only one line of lyrics in a spot where this occurs, you could try putting the lyrics on the bottom stave and then flipping their position to above the staff.

  1. and this is a kludge: use a hard hyphen at the end of the first system’s last syllable. The next syllable would not be a hyphenated word.

I don’t like this method, because you are kinda locked into where systems breaks are this way.

Could you use two flows for #1?

For #1 there is an option in Engraving Options > Barlines > Repeats to use a double barline instead of a single barline when the next system starts with a repeat barline.

#4 is definitely already on a much bigger todo list of slur-related things.

Thanks for the tip Jester!

  1. If you hold Alt while dragging the endpoint of a slur, it will keep its shape.

I agree completely with points 1, 2 and 4. I’m glad the team added the option for #1 under barlines/repeats, but it would be nice if this weren’t a global setting. It’s conceivable that one would need both in one document, especially in different flows. I remarked on #2 a long time ago and the reaction was, ‘this is the way we’ve always seen it’, despite the fact that I’ve almost never seen it in the vocal music I’m used to reading. Some kind of compensation will always be necessary in a situation like #3 with lyrics applying to multiple non-homophonic voices. I usually prefer to have discreet lines of lyrics but wherever this isn’t possible or desirable, it’s always possible to draw lyric extender lines in Engrave mode, although this isn’t always trustworthy (see other recent thread). Thanks to a tip from pianoleo, I also have macros for centering, left-aligning and right-aligning syllables in either Write or Engrave mode. #4 is one of the things that still require a lot of work. This often seems to take extra time because trying to select the end of a slur usually selects the barline instead, and I have to zoom way in to avoid this. As pianoleo mentioned, this is fortunately something which is on the team’s todo list.