I’m enjoying using Dorico to input some quite intricately fingered classical guitar music for the first time. It’s such a delight to see the fingering markings arranging themselves (mostly) beautifully with so little input from me – this is saving me tons of time compared to other programs I’ve used.
I have one question and one small suggestion on this topic. The question: In the attached image, how can I remove the space between the ‘C’ and the roman numeral on the barré indicator? (I am using the barré playing technique, which by default creates the ‘C’ as a glyph, but switching it to text didn’t help (and made other things worse).
The suggestion: It is strange that the properties setting for ‘string’ (where I can specify a different string from ‘normal’) is in a completely different place from the setting for ‘show string indicators’. I see the underlying logic – string is semantic and can affect other things such as tab, while the string indicator is an added visual notation – but in practice, the guitarist never needs to see a string indicator unless it’s to indicate a non-default string, so I only ever need to set both settings at once and it’s weird that they are totally unrelated in the properties panels. For my money, you could probably move ‘string’ from the ‘Notes and Rests’ panel to the ‘String indicators’ panel (and rename it).
The String property has a strong usage requirement when it comes to harmonics as well, so it needs to be in the Notes and Rests group because it’s a fundamental part of the note itself. You can use the Search field to filter the properties displayed in the panel.
To remove the gap between the C and the V, you might need to create a custom playing technique that contains both glyphs, allowing you to position them to your heart’s content. There isn’t an Engraving Option that determines the gap between playing techniques and their suffixes.
This conversation is really helpful and prompts me to ask how you adjusted the size of the suffix. If I add, say, roman numeral III to the Barre glyph in Properties/Playing Techniques, the suffix characters are significantly smaller.
Thanks, Lillie! Yes, I appreciate the ‘string’ property has other meanings, so fair enough.
Creating a custom playing technique for CV is all very well, but creating separate techniques for CI, ½CI, CII, ½CII, and so on up to XII (if that’s what you’re suggesting) might be a bit much. I guess I can live with the gap!
Hi Tobywardman - I thought this must be the case but, of course, it increases the size of many other indications as well. Presumably it isn’t possible to set or scale the suffix for this technique alone? The only other solution would be to make the C glyph smaller?
