Impressive Dorico Engraving Example

All, I just thought I’d share one example that some of you may or may not have seen previously on Jeffrey Grossman’s website (on the “Engraving” page). I’ve repeated the example in other apps, so I thought I’d do the same with Dorico to see how it faired. Here’s the result, top to bottom: Sibelius (version unknown), SCORE, and Dorico v1.0:


Notes about this engraving:

  • 99% the default layout/positioning (one exception: the two “Ped.” markings, which are simple text objects)
  • I had to manually show/hide some accidentals to get the exact same spelling as the original.
  • Forced duration of the two dotted-quarter rests in the bottom staff, 3rd bar, to match the original.
  • A couple of forced beam-groups to match the original.

One thing I couldn’t get to work is the beamed stemlet on the first 16th rest of the triplet in the top staff, 3rd bar, so I opted to add left-side partial flags to the middle note instead.

Anyway, just thought I’d share what I found. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

Great idea, thanks for doing this in Dorico! I don’t remember what version of Sibelius that was, but it was quite a while ago — pre-Sibelius stemlet support. Dorico’s spacing is definitely very impressive right out of the box.

To create the beamed stemlet starting with the rest, you might try clicking the “Force Position and Duration” flag in the rest’s properties. (Thanks to Rob Tuley for that trick.) That seems to allow you to force a stemlet in places Dorico doesn’t want to allow.

Another couple nits we could pick with Dorico’s rendering:

  • m. 1 It looks like the RH lower voice Db collides with the ledger line above it. If it doesn’t collide, it’s very, very close.
    m. 3: The slur collides with the triplet 3 (but is obviously adjustable in Engrave mode). The ties obscure more of the ledger lines than I’d like, though my SCORE version isn’t great there either. The hairpins aren’t aligned (but I know in future updates of Dorico, we’ll have the ability to “group” dynamics together so they do automatically align.
    m. 4: The trill line is too far from the trill symbol. In my own Dorico tests, it seems like the engraving setting that controls the space between the symbol and the line does not work yet.

I completely agree with you that this is really impressive. What a bizarre engraving example this is, looking at it years later! I have no idea why I used it for this purpose. :slight_smile:


Jeff

I was hoping you’d see the post. Thanks for the tip! I’ll give it a try to see if that helps. I was pretty sure I tried something like that, but maybe I only imagined it.

It’s an image down-scaling artifact. I looked more closely and the tip of the flat doesn’t reach the next staff line (or in this case, ledger line). It is close, but not touching.

  • m. 4: The trill line is too far from the trill symbol. In my own Dorico tests, it seems like the engraving setting that controls the space between the symbol and the line does not work yet.

I agree that that the first trill wiggle should be closer to the “tr” and allow the right side of the line to vary instead of ensuring the right side ends at the precise location and letting the left side vary.

I completely agree with you that this is really impressive. What a bizarre engraving example this is, looking at it years later! I have no idea why I used it for this purpose. > :slight_smile:

Where on earth did it come from? The music itself sounds awful, but it makes for a great stress test.

Where on earth did it come from? The music itself sounds awful, but it makes for a great stress test.

It’s from the second movement cadenza of Sunken City, a concerto for piano and winds by Kyle Gann. I think a friend sent me those few measures as a low-res graphic (maybe Kyle posted it on his blog?) and I re-engraved them in Sibelius.

You know, I think calling the piece “awful” was inappropriate. I apologize. I guess I meant to say that it wasn’t my style.

In any case, I was able to add the beamed stemlet over the rest, m.3 (thanks for the tip). I also learned that you can do precisely what I described with the trill by changing the setting “Extra gap position” to “End” which allows you to make the right-side of the wiggle variable. I didn’t attempt to adjust the space between “tr” and the trill wiggle, not sure you can.

Anyways, here’s an updated image that has both these additions (again, no other adjustments to symbol/beam positions):