When I’m writing through-composed lead sheets, I usually write all lyrics using “line 1,” since I don’t want to run the risk of some of them being vertically displaced if the end of one verse and the beginning of the next are on the same system.
In the past, to display the verse number at the start of each verse, I’ve simply added “1.” or “2.” etc, using a non-breaking space. But of course this messes up the alignment of the first syllable.
I really love the ability to display the verse number to the left of the first lyric. In the example below, I had to change the lyrics to line 3, and carefully keep track of casting off. Would it be possible to include an override toggle for the verse number display, so I could show whatever verse number I wish in front of the first lyric?
To flip the idea on its head, in that case, could there be user control (in Engraving Options?) over how lyric lines displace each other?
At the moment, achieving this is laborious:
I strongly agree with Dan and Leo, because there are many situations, when one does need control over the verse numbering. An easy one is when there are repeated verses and an other verse is following later on (as seen above). So let us please have the control over the numbering! And, yes I know there are workarounds, but they will always be workarounds for really common situations. Thanks to both of you Leo and Dan, because this little issue is really needed, while writing more modern “non-hymnal” scores with lyrics.
Oh man. Psalm settings. I deal with this all the time and have to fake it and it’s a pain. Thank God for non-breaking spaces, but I’m with Dan: it messes alignment up.
Frequently we use short psalm tones where one verse requires singing the psalm tone twice. As a result, the first half of verse 1 takes up line 1, and the second half takes up line 2. Now when I start to set verse 2, I’m actually using lyric line 3 and there is simply no way around it. Now I have to fake it. An override would be soooooo appreciated.
Also, the option to use custom text in place of (or in addition to) a verse number. I had a case where we had gospel acclamations for advent and I had “adv. 1, adv. 2,” etc. to indicate which liturgical week each verse corresponded to. This would also help with things like “1 & 4”.
I also sense a cognitive dissonance in allowing us to override rehearsal marker indexes but not verse numbers.
And here’s an example when custom text for verse numbers is useful. In this case each gospel acclamation verse is a different liturgical week during lent, so it makes more sense to label the week, rather than assign verse numbers.
I know the conversation has come up before, though I can’t find it at the moment. Just another use case that would benefit from the ability to assign any custom number to a particular lyric line:
Only the Developers can answer that. They are obviously aware of the desire/need for it. I’m sure it’s one of the hundreds of other things they are weighing.
I’ve done this many times since this thread was originally active.
The one fly in the ointment is what happens when you then need the bottom line to flow into the bottom line of the ensuing lyric, with no lyric above it. Dorico doesn’t (yet) remember carriage returns. Whenever you need more than two lines of text (and aren’t using a translation layer) you can run into Dorico weirdness.
For instance, this is a use case which I HAVE run into:
The carriage returns are discarded (and the lyric alignment, evidently). I learned the hard way on one project, so I have found this method very unreliable for anything other than putting an annotation before a single line of text, which works very well:
My preferred method these days is just to add an extra, dummy beat before the actual place where I want lyrics to occur. I then use “lyrics” to put in
Ash Wed.
Lent I
(etc.)
And either use the edit single lyric or apply a paragraph style to that column, and then just hide the notes and stems.
