The use case is for theatrical works, when you have dialogues that is underscored, and you want it to be in flow with the music, because the same performers need to read both the dialogue and the music. Here’s a quick example:
This is the most common at the beginning of the flow, but could also be mid-flow.
Another similar use case is writing dialogue “cues” for the musicians, so they know when to start. This is not possible without overrides either. Here’s an example:
Currently, the only way to do it as to do a page-template override for every page that you need it. However - overrides have their own disadvantages:
If you want to make changes to the original template (for example, change the header font size), it won’t apply to pages with overrides.
If pages changes (because some flow becomes bigger / smaller, the position of these overrides are completely broken.
It’s not shared between layouts (and rightfully so, because the pages will be completely different!) so you have to copy it for every layout that you want it.
I think the ideal solution from a UX perspective will be adding a new feature that allows you to add free formattable text blocks in between bars (or before the flow).
Dorico will use the the existing music frames to decide where to put the text, and where it should flow to the next page. It should also verify that the text should be in between bars, the previous bar should be last of the previous system.
If that is difficult to do, a slightly less ideal solution, but still an improvement on today’s functionality, would be to allow page overrides to be locked relative to flow start, instead of the entire document. This way, these overrides will not move around unexpectedly.
Thank you for sharing this @ShacharHarshuv – we’re aware that there are some musical/theatrical music needs that are not yet as smooth to achieve in Dorico as would be ideal. Having concrete examples is always useful, so thanks again for putting this together.
ShacharHarshuv ,
regarding your 2nd example (text cues for instrumentalists): you don’t need a page override, you can use a specially tailored Flow Heading instead.
End your Flow Heading with a text frame containing a token for your text cue.
I thought I’d submit a page from a classical score with more or less the same requirements.
Text has to appear at the same places, in both score and parts, it would be best if the text blocks also stretched the measures (this is needed later in this particular work.) SCORE_Edward_cl_quintet_Fr_narration_page_1.pdf (103.1 KB)
@ShacharHarshuv
As an optional workflow (with the hope that Dorico will implement a more smooth musical/theatrical music/narrator texting capability natively in the future), and knowing that my example below is a little different from your desired results, in a project for Narrator and Orchestra I implemented the Narrator as a new player/instrument.
Considering that the other instruments have a rest when the Narrator is speaking alone, and that can be moments when the Narrator speaks above the music, and to be able to relative precisely notate where the text and the music should start and end, the Narrator in my example is treated as an instrument, with the meter, and the rests and so on.
This is also very handy to let the other musicians know where to rest, and to be able to put text cues for the parts (where needed).
(Maybe it can be of some help for someone trying to find a solution meanwhile.)
I actually ended up not using flow headers at all, and putting the flow title in the main page template. I had a few problems when trying to achieve the results with flow headings, one of which was that flow headings are used in addition to the regular template. So I make a “first page of flow” have a different header (see my example).
I did have the same thought as you did though - using flow headers will ensure it’s tied to the flow beginning. But I think it will require compromising on the specific design (Which I copied from many examples of big musical theater scores).
Beware, this can cause a problem when you transition from flow to flow. IIRC it will not pickup the new flow title until that flow has actually started…
(I may be mis-remembering, but I urge you to check)
It’s actually a someone related but a bit different feature - sometimes there are short dialogue lines that should be in sync with the music, but are not long enough to justify creating a dedicated text frame. In that case I usually try to add new lines manually to fit the text, sometimes it works better than others.
Here is another example, here WILLIE is responding to the singer with spoken words:
Interesting! Did you have to manually position the text blocks and the system breaks? Is that a regular text element? I’m curious what was the process here.
I created a new 1-line instrument called Narrator with percussion clef.
I created a Paragraph style with white background for the Narrator texts.
The narrator text all have the Border property activated. (you can also set this in the Paragraph style, but this has some disadvantages…)
Added the texts as Staff attached text to the Narrator staff, with the created Paragraph Style.
For large amount of text, there are some manual vertical offset adjustments to be done to the bordered text, but they are more easy with strategic positioned Frame Breaks, that leave the vertical space needed to centre the text on the Narrator staff . (It would be very nice if the Staff attached text could have a property to be centred on the staff, as I requested some time ago )
Also some manual Staff spacing is necessary.
I made also extensive use of Note spacing changes to be able to stretch some bar widths to accommodate the text when needed.
Yes this jet requires some manual work, but is very consistent and the result is very clear for the conductor and the Players.
