I don’t see Grand Pause or G.P. in the Holds/Fermata section in the right panel. I take it that if I want to input that, I will need to enter it as text. Is that correct?
There are a few different ways of inputting a G.P. You can use text, but then you have to worry about centering it yourself.
I went to Library > Music Symbols, picked a type of fermata I have no plans to use, and replaced that glyph with G.P. Then I can input that fermata in my score, and Dorico places a G.P. and centers it in the bar.
You can also input it as a line with text, which will also center itself.
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Thank you. I will look into that to see what the process is to do that.
This is working well, but the one exception I am now discovering is that the G.P does not replace the fermata glyph I selected to work with. What am I missing?
In the music symbol editor, did you select the original fermata glyph and then click the trash can to delete it? You should see just the G.P. text there.
Yes. I did that, too.
Can you share your project file here? You can delete all the music except for a couple of bars that show what’s not working.
I will, thank you, but I will have to wait a bit to get to it. I need to step out for awhile.
So here is the spot (the fermata) I would like to place the G.P. Meanwhile, I will see if I can get it to work.
Land of the Rising Sun Suite 2025-10-30a - Full score-Samurai Mvmnt 4 - Excerpt.dorico (603.2 KB)
It looks like you haven’t altered any of the fermatas in Music Symbols to be a G.P. But this also doesn’t look like music that needs a G.P. – G.P. usually indicates a measure in which no one plays, but this looks to me just like a fermata over a rest at the end of the bar.
For the instruments that don’t play at all in that bar, you might consider adding explicit rests to make it clear where the fermata falls. Or you could position the fermata over the barline (there’s a property in the lower Properties panel for that) or replace it with a caesura – both of those would make it clear that there’s a pause between the two measures.
Good recommendation. I went back and forth with that whether to place a fermata or G.P., which, as you state, properly notated over an empty bar is the way to go. At least I have options. After opening the library and going to music symbols (holds and pauses), I chose a very short fermata to alter. I deleted the chosen glyph, then added G.P. in the text box to show on the graph. Finally, I selected the star to make it default. It didn’t show in the right panel when I opened it, although when I selected the altered fermata it produced the G.P. I really appreciate your time spent on this!