How to design clusters with round cluster noteheads

[AndreLorenzatti]

Hi everyone,
this thread comes from this post, where a user was trying to design some cluster noteheads. Yesterday I tried to propose a solution, but it had some issues.
So this is my improved solution, it’s way longer than the first, so that’s why I decided to open a new whole thread. I’m not completely satisfied with this, there are still some minor collisions with whole and double whole noteheads . But I’m sure someone more proficient than me will be able to improve my design. I will use @dspreadbury’s instructions. I’m adding now some screenshots of the procedure for the “top” part of the cluster. It will be the same for the “bottom part”.

@dspreadbury

1. Choose Engrave > Edit Noteheads.
2. In the category list on the left, click the + to create a new notehead set.
3. On the right, in the ‘Name’ field, call it e.g. ‘Cluster top’.
4. Click the + button at the very bottom of the dialog on the right-hand side in the action bar at the bottom of the ‘Notehead’ section to add a new default notehead to the notehead set. A new black notehead is added to the set.
5. Make sure the first notehead is selected in the grid, and click the button that has the arrow pointing out of the container, the button on the right, whose tooltip is ‘Remove Notehead From Set’, to remove the default notehead from the set, leaving only your new notehead.
6. Now click the pencil icon in the action bar in the ‘Notehead’ section at the bottom of the dialog to edit the notehead.
7. From the ‘Note Clusters’ category, add the cluster top notehead.
8. Select the existing notehead that was already there, and click the trash can icon to remove it.

@dspreadbury

Now finally repeat steps 1-5 once more to create the ‘Cluster bottom’ notehead set. When you come to steps 6-8, choose the cluster bottom notehead.

You may also want to add the white/open notehead versions for half notes and whole notes to all three of your notehead sets. In each case, start by clicking the + button at the bottom of the dialog in the ‘Notehead’ section, rather than editing an existing notehead that is added to the notehead set by default.

Now, we are going to prevent an issue: when it comes to clusters with an even interval ambitus (like 4ths), the empty noteheads are going to give us problems. In fact, if we were to construct the central part of a cluster by simply adding stacked glyphs, we could end up with very annoying collisions. Also, the noteheads are going to take the usual grid position and we want to avoid that. This solution is not optimal as I said, but it can be a good starting point for future developments. The starting point follows:

We are goint to create a “Cluster Top Extended” notehead set. It will include half, whole and double whole note heads.

Extended note heads

1. In the Editing dialog, add a middle cluster note head glyph and attach it from Bottom Center to Top Center.
   

   

2. Adjust the Y offset
   

   

3. Repeat for the whole and the double whole noteheads, adjusting the offsets properly.
   

   
   
   
   

Now, we are ready to create the middle cluster note heads.

Black note head middle cluster

1. After you added the first glyph. Set -0.20 y offset.
2. Add a second glyph. Set -0.97 y offset.
3. In the stem dialog, delete all the stem’s attachments.
4. Add a text component. It will be a space. Set 1.42 x offset

Half note head middle cluster

1. After you added the first glyph. Set -0.20 y offset.
2. Add a second glyph. Set -0.97 y offset.
3. In the stem dialog, delete all the stem’s attachments.
4. Add a text component. It will be a space. Set 1.32 x offset

Steps 3 and 4 prevent the middle cluster to be attached to the stem.

Here the screenshots.

Whole Note Middle Cluster

1. Add the first glyph.
2. Add a second glyph. Set -3.00 y offset.
3. Do not delete the stem attachments
   
   

Double whole note head middle cluster

1. Add the first glyph.
2. Add a second glyph. Set -2.30 y offset.
3. Do not delete the stem attachments

Here the final result:

Hope this can help someone!

[Aasmund]

This is very good, but I would really like Dorico to get a better solution for notating clusters than through the nothead sets.

It would be really nice to have it in the propertiers panel kind of like the harmonics option. Like: input a note, check “cluster” in the properties panel, decide range and whether it’s diatonic, chromatic or microtonal.

@dspreadbury can we expect something like this in the future?

[dspreadbury]

Yes, one day, but I can’t say when.