Sometimes I don’t like how Dorico calculates hyphens between syllables over long melismas. I frequently make use of “Gap between hyphens,” but a setting that works for one spot might not work for another. I’d like to be able to control hyphens in each location independently. For example, here:
I would like to adjust the distance between hyphens here so there are two (or so that the hyphens are situated equidistant within the space between the two syllables).
At present, I have to move hyphens manually and drag unwanted ones off the page, which is not ideal.
Related question. I’m not very good at lyrics but according to Gould.
(see below) this is something I have to edit manually in Engrave mode, correct?
Is it important or could I just let the hyphens span the rest measures?
I’d say, yes: just carry on. I wasn’t aware of that requirement in Gould, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen it: I’ve always assumed that hyphens would just continue, as it’s a clear indication that there’s more to come.
Though one would hope that long periods of rests between syllables of a word is a rare compositional ‘effect’…
Thanks Ben, I have a few of these in a piece I’m trying to clean up. Not my own music, but trying to be as correct as possible. Maybe I just stick to Dorico’s default then. Still would be a usefull option to have in Engraving rules.
A slightly different take on the topic: I’m having a lot of trouble with a score right now where I need some syllables set without any break between them at all — the spacing is tight. Removing the hyphens seems to require switching the syllable type to “whole word.” (Is there a better solution I’m missing?) I’d love for the automatic engraving to allow for words to be set “whole,” with no hyphens or whitespace between the syllables, and for it to kick in when the spacing gets appropriately condensed.
Ha, turns out it was wrong. The ee comes from the composer’s Estonian background and should indeed be just e. And it should be emptiness so ti and not ty. Well, the piece isn’t finished to her excuse. Thanks Ben.
One option is to enter the syllables without hyphens, and then add them before and after each syllable manually using the “edit single lyric” dialogue. It makes it pretty trivial to add hyphens where you need them now.
This is also an easy way to deal with second endings in repeat structures.
I’d like to add my support to Dan Kreider’s request at the top of this thread.
Dorico’s handling of lyrics is really superb now, but I’d sorely like to have more control over hyphen spacing. In Dan’s example I’d prefer to keep the three hyphens but move the outer ones towards the centre a little. The more extreme example below happens quite often for me at least, and I see no easy way to improve it. If I alter ‘Line start/end X’ in Engrave mode both hyphens get shunted along - I can’t move both in towards the middle.
I should say that I don’t like Dorico to automatically alter note-spacing to accommodate lyrics as I prefer to have control of this, so I have ‘Make space for lyrics’ in Layout Options turned off, and I have the two ‘Minimum…’ settings in Engraving Rules set to 0 because I always want hyphens to be present, no matter how tight the spacing. I prefer to shunt lyrics around under the notes and only alter the note-spacing as a last resort - Dorico’s own noble attempt at this unfortunately doesn’t cut it for me.
The ‘Allow gap between hyphens to be compressed by’ setting in Engraving Rules is clearly an attempt to improve things, but no one setting gives me consistently good results. I wonder if a more sophisticated formula could be devised which looks at the distance between syllables and strikes the right balance between the gap from first/last syllable to first/last hyphen, and the gap between each hyphen. I’m not aware of any manual that offers a formula on what this balance should be, but my eyes tell me the first/last gap should be a little less than the inter-hyphen gap. Dorico can already do a similar thing (which I absolutely love) with dashed lines, such as octave lines, where it ensures the end vertical dash is met perfectly by the final horizontal dash, and alters the spacing of all the other dashes accordingly. Perhaps a similar principle could be applied to hyphen spacing.
As wonderful as more intelligent automatic positioning would be, inevitably there will be situations where I’d wish to override the settings. The ideal I can imagine would be a spin box in Properties where one could specify the number of hyphens, and that the sequence of hyphens would start and end at the positions defined in Line start/end X (and why not rename this to ‘Hyphens start/end X’); Dorico would then space the desired number of hyphens equally between the start and end points. As one would normally want the hyphens to start and end equidistantly between syllables, it would be even better if one could toggle on/off a ‘lock’, so that altering the Line start would automatically alter the Line end by the corresponding amount in the opposite direction.
Manual overriding of course gets more complicated should a sequence of hyphens cross two systems - there one would somehow need to have separate controls for each system. And I suppose there might be rare situations where hyphens cross three or more systems, and there I can see things getting very awkward.
What settings do you have in Engraving Options for Hyphen distances?
I have:
Minimum gap between hyphens:: 1.5 spaces.
Minimum SPACE for hyphen: 1/8 spaces (default is much too large).
Gap between hyphens: 7 spaces
Allow hyphens to compress: 3/8 spaces.
