In the final system of the attached document, I am trying to reposition some of the tab notes to create less crowding. I have gone to Engrave > Note Spacing and have successfully repositioned some of the notes on the music stave which were rather crowded. However, I seem unable to be to move any of the tablature notes. There is nothing in the Properties Panel which allows me to do this either. Any ideas? Thanks.
Riffs.dorico (586.6 KB)
At the moment, there’s no way to use the circular handles to adjust the position of numbers in tablature independently of the notes on the notation staff – because they are “the same” notes, there’s a single property value that applies only to the notation at present. This is a bit of an oversight and something we need to address in future.
You’re perhaps forcing a bit too much music onto one system at the moment with your fixed casting off settings. If you’re dead set on forcing four bars per system, you may need to consider a slight reduction of the staff size on the Page Setup page of Layout Options.
Hi Daniel,
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
I realise that I have been rather ambitious in trying to squeeze an almost unreasonable amount of notes onto this stave. However, I was certain that in an earlier version of Dorico it was indeed possible to independently move the notes on the tablature stave, albeit by a rather circuitous route. Maybe I was mistaken. But to my mind it is a major omission. However, I am slightly confused by your statement above - “because they are “the same” notes, there’s a single property value that applies only to the notation at present”. If this is the case, when I move the notes on the music stave, why don’t the notes on the tablature stave move as well? Having independent (or some independent) control of the tablature stave is very, very desirable when it comes to final page tweaks. Finale, for all it’s faults, did allow for extensive control of the tablature stave and I miss having that - it’s about the only thing that I miss though! It would be great if this could be implemented at some point though. Thanks again.
You can do this with Voice column X offset property in Engrave mode.
That is a great help - thank you for the tip. Although I probably have too many notes on this stave I can at least make it more understandable now!
As you said, it seems unnatural that we can’t move the tab number at all in Note-Spacing mode. I hope this will be possible in the future.
Now I’m looking for a way to move numbers in the tablature in Dorico Pro 6.0.10.6032 and found this thread. Just to confirm, this function is still not available, correct?
In Finale, you were able to do it with the Note Position Tool easily, so it was possible to write this sort of music.
In Dorico, if you use circles on the half or whole note numbers, the circles may overlapped sometimes and there is no way to avoid it if you cannot move the numbers’ positions.
This is a common way of writing tablature at least in the Japanese music publishing industry. If it’s not available at this point, I hope it will be sometime soon. I appreciate your consideration, thank you.
Try selecting one of them in Engrave mode and then in Properties, change the Voice column index.
Arrgh! I just tried that to see if it worked, but it moved the note as well as the fingering circle.
My apologies.
What does appear to work is if you Cut the two upper notes, then go into Engrave mode and use Note Spacing to move the remaining fingering (use the round edit handle, not the square one). Then go back into Write mode and paste the 2 notes which were cut.
It is misaligned, though.
To fix that, select the round edit handle again and move things back to where they were.
It’s solved, thank you very much Steven! To me it really sounds like a trick, I need to learn about Dorico more deeply.
@dspreadbury Could you advice us if Steven’s solution can be used for the professional engraving purpose?
It seems to be a good way at this point but only thing I’m worrying about is a case where the spacing might be broken on the project where this solution was applied, when the “way to use the circular handles to adjust the position of numbers in tablature independently of the notes on the notation staff” function is officially installed in the future.
If there could be such a case, I will be careful for using it. Sorry for taking time while you are busy but please let us know when you have time, thank you.
I can’t promise with absolute certainty that we will never change the way note spacing works in such a way that these edits might be lost. Obviously what is really needed is a proper way to offset tablature numbers, which we don’t currently have, but which we can add in future.
Understood, thank you very much for your hard work!
For reference, this is a typical tablature used in Japan. The numbers are staggered (and articulations are also shown in the tablature).
Thanks for the addition. Yes this is pretty common, I believe many Japanese guitar engravers are waiting for this function.
Hi Steven, I just found what you tried to suggest at first works for my particular case, if I readjust the note position afterward. Thank you very much!
This one works for tablature numbers as well.
I’m still trying to figure out how to fix the stem connection position when it’s dislocated, but maybe this is an another story.
Hi Taro.
Rather than changing the Voice column X offset, maybe try using the Note Spacing tool in Engrave mode.
After clicking on the square edit handle, select both of the round edit handles (click one and then cmd-click the other) and move them using alt/opt + right arrow. The two fingering enclosures and the two stems should all move together. If there is only one round edit handle, use that.
@StevenJones01 Got it, thanks for your kind support!
@dspreadbury @Richard_Lanyon Sorry if it has been discussed in another thread already, but I’d like to know if this is an expected behavior or some kind of defect. When you try to move tablature number’s horizontal location independently, the location relationship between the tablature number and stem changes as you press option + left/right arrow key. Please check it out when you have time, thank you.
250825_Note_Spacing_Test.dorico (1.4 MB)
BTW the Voice column indexes are set like this.
