Hello all, Finale refugee still trying to learn Dorico . . .
Can somebody give me a real world example of how and what a flow is actually used for? Please refer to things like, the title of a flow, the purpose of a flow, common usage for a flow, etc.
Thank you,
JFA
Songs in a songbook – each song would be a flow within one document, ensuring consistent page formatting and numbering. This would also allow automatic titling of each song.
Movements in a Symphony – each movement would be a separate flow.
Arias and recitatives in an opera. Scenes in a Musical. Each can be a separate flow.
The beauty of flows is that each “chunk” of music can be swapped around, (or imported from other projects), and Dorico just does all the layout work. Every flow has its own title, and other metadata like Composer (like Finale’s Score Manager > File Info and “Inserts”).
If you read Dorico’s Help pages, the “Dorico Concepts” section has a chapter about Flows.
If you don’t think you will ever use more than one Flow in a document (there must always be one), then just turn off Flow Headings in Layout Options, save those Layout Options as your defaults, and you’ll never have to worry about them again.
A flow is any segment of music you create inside your Dorico project file. You can create a songbook, a selection of songs for a project, a symphony, an opera… anything that has multiple pieces of music and they are all contained in your file.
(Ninja’d by @benwiggy =)
Thank you to benwiggy and hannuala . . . perfect!
Concrete examples are worth more than a thousand lines of instruction in a manual.
JFA
Hi @NoteBeam, also look at this Short Video:
I never thought of #10 in that video (using a flow as a snippet of music to be shared in footnotes or frontmatter) - that’s clever!
Similar to #9 in the video (duplicate and experiment), I also frequently use separate flows to do a complex modification to the timing or pitch of music (whether a single staff or an entire section) – and then copy that back into my primary score. Basically a staging area for ideas that I want to either A/B against the original or simply I need to fix complex rhythms and for some complicated tasks I find it easier/faster/safer than dealing with insert/stop bar, so I can just go crazy in an empty staging flow and then safely paste it back into my primary flow.
Also, when I want to try out a big change to a piece, I’ll duplicate the flow and make the changes in the copy. Then if I like the changes, I’ll delete the original.
**Leigh
In fairness to the manual, it does give similar examples, in only a couple of paragraphs.
The problem for me was really very simple. Same type of problem I have had with Finale. “Flow” is a word that refers to a procedure within the Dorico paradigm. As such, it has no meaning in musical terms. Words like “movements”, “song book”, “suite”, and “opera”, are all part of the musician’s world and carry with them all related concepts.
When searching the manual, one is treated to “how to” instructions about “flows”. How to start a new flow, how to hide a flow, how to change the flow title, and so on. Yes, I would figure it out eventually, but only after wasting tons of time without a single concrete idea of what it is taking me to.
And just for the record, I want to say that in the end, flows are a much better way to create musical suites, song books, etc., than how we would have done it in Finale.
Thanks again for the replies.
JFA
They deliberately used a non-musical term, because Flows can be many things, whereas if they had called it “Movement”, that would have been confusing for the other types of uses.
I’d strongly recommend reading the “Dorico Concepts” section, which follows the Introduction in the Help pages. It succinctly describes everything you need to know, using concrete examples.
Also, if you can find Daniel’s blog posts from the early days of Dorico’s development, those explain a lot about language, syntax, and design choices. I followed and read most of it all the way up to the release of version 1, and if I’d kept up, my switch would have been even easier than it was.
Okay, fair enough . . . and I am glad to know that. And I do appreciate your advice.
Thank you. I will do that . . .