Hello, and happy Monday/Tuesday! I’ve been wrapping my mind around this issue for the past hour, and I can’t figure it out! I like the vertical distance between the clarinet and alto sax (the green arrows in the screenshot). However, I don’t like the vertical distance between the flute/picc. and the clarinet (the red arrows in the screenshot). How can I keep the distance between the clarinet and the alto sax, but move the distance between the flute and clarinet closer? I’ve tried a lot of different values in the vertical spacing section for layout options, but I cannot for the life of me figure this out. I hope to hear from somebody please and thanks! I’m also sorry if this doesn’t make any sense. I did include the current version of my project as well. Thanks again for the help!
Hi @35TCB77, first of all, consider that deciding the staves distance before you have nothing in your music is not the normal/best way to use Dorico layout capabilities: the spacings will be adjusted depending on the material that the staves contain.
That said, to give you a possible advice on your abstract example (=without music), one possibility is:
Adjust the Vertical Justification, setting the first threshold to 40% (to accommodate the less fullness you obtain with the next setting which I suggest in the next step):
Then you could change (invert) this two values, in the Minimum Gaps (you had 3 and 2, and I set 2 and 3: you can of course use other intermediate values to obtain what you need) [By the way: those that you are using are really small values in a normal scenario. They look ok because of the automatic Vertical Adjustment that is happening: in this case those values works more as “relative” spacings values, according to your Minimum gaps settings]:
As I said spacings will change depending on the music and other items you will input, so don’t be aware too much of this result; you can optimise the values in the global options when all is written down: Dorico works not linearly and the layout Options can be adjusted at any time, depending on context.
I know I should have music on the staff, but I’m adding the final touches to my updated marching band template that I’ll be sharing with the forum here very shortly (hopefully by the end of the week, or even possibly today!). I do have a version of my template with music, but it doesn’t have all of the instruments that the “full” version of my template has. Long story short; the sample piece I included with my template doesn’t have the aux. percussion like the “full” version of my template will have. That’s why I uploaded the “full” version without any music. I’m sorry about that!
Here’s an example, sorry about the screenshot being blurry, of what I would like to accomplish (I should’ve added the screenshot in my original post. Sorry about that as well!). The staff to staff spacing is a little tighter and the group to group spacing is also a little tighter as well.
Play around with the suggestions that I wrote in my previous post, and possibly you need also to adjust slightly the Space Size (in Layout options>Page Setup), so that all values work together to obtain what you want.
I’ll be back in a while with the updated version of my project. Be back in about 10-15 minutes. I was in the middle of updating the position of the staff labels when I noticed the staff spacing. Let me finish the staff labels please, and I’ll be right back.
@35TCB77.
Just setting 3 and 3 (or any reasonable value: they just need to be identical values, to mirror what you show in your screenshot), for the mentioned two Minimum gaps gives you exactly what you seem to need: equidistant staves (weather they are staff to staff or staff group to staff group):
(But as said those are not fixed values. They will change depending on the music. The only way to have fixed spacings no matter what the material is, is to deactivate Collision Avoidance, but it is only recommended for parts layouts, sometimes.)
I just went to Hal Leonard’s site and their marching band arrangements in this style obviously were done using Finale. At random, here’s one of the first ones that came up that was engraved in 2022.
Finale of course does no automatic vertical adjustment at all, so if that’s really the look you want, you can set all the minimum gaps to be the same and turn off Collision Avoidance as @Christian_R said. You can then make all vertical adjustments manually as you would in Finale. I would question whether that’s a desirable feature or a limitation of Finale though. You can change the percussion clefs in your template to be the Finale Legacy percussion clefs that HL uses too if you want, but why?
You’re obviously spending a lot of time trying to recreate the HL Finale template, but I would seriously consider whether some of their template issues are actually desirable features to be emulated or instead limitations of the program they used to create their template. I used Finale for 25 years and am certainly glad to be free of some of those limitations. Music publishing technology has advanced quite a bit since the 90’s era specs I see in their Finale template. If you’ve previously done work for HL and need to match their Finale specs exactly in Dorico for continuity or something, then I guess you’re on the right track, but there are quite a few font differences between your template and HL’s though, as obviously Bravura did not exist back then. Their slur and tie settings are quite different too.
(Full disclosure: I did quite a bit of work for some of HL’s big band publications using HL’s Finale big band template back from 2000-2012 or so, and their big band template was pretty crummy. I certainly would have never used their settings for my non-HL clients.)
@35TCB77, If I may offer my opinion, setting the minimum gaps – as @Christian_R suggested – will probably be your best option. You won’t be able to create a “foolproof” template (as someone always creates a “better fool”)! Let Dorico do its magic with collision avoidance. Those who use it will (should) know how to adjust things to their liking — and they would do so to a perfect template anyway!
I appreciate and applaud the efforts you are making; don’t get too hung up on fine tuning for every instance. Templates are a framework and a starting point and users will adapt them. (And someone will always suggest – demand? – that you should have done it some other way!)
— Jim
