Hello,
I am engraving parts of the 1948 piece “North Country” by Canadian composer Harry Somers for a doctoral comprehensive exam.
He uses a sffzp regularly in the first movement. See attached picture.
When I type shift-D and then sffzp , I get nothing. And there seems to be no way to create it in the combined dynamics sections. Yes, I can fake it by putting two dynamics together, but this is not very stable as any movement because of note entry or staff sizing un-aligns the two dynamics.
Any chance that this is a bug and will be fixed soon? I believe that composers should be able to enter any dynamic they want and not be ignored by the software?
thanks
Have you tried entering the dynamic as System Text? I agree with you 110% that sffzp should be added to the dynamics library. I’m sure the developers have been made aware of others, too.
I must thank you for posting the picture of the Somers score. Very elegant hand copying with a style all its own, from “back in the day”. It matters not to me that the ties and articulations have been positioned to account for the narrow stave spacing - very intelligently thought out. As long as the parts show proper placement!
All the stuff from Somers that was done at CMC is hand copied but very beautifully done. Some of his old Ricordi stuff was also hand-done with top-notch quality. I’ve conducted that piece a couple of times - always found it perfectly legible and musicians have never complained about the fact that it was written by hand. I don’t know how it’s done - I do not have that skill at all!
Somers score looks to me like it’s sffz p. I.e. with a space.
@notesetter: Yes, I agree that it is very elegant handwriting. And you are welcome! 
I tried system text but it’s hard to match the sizing, and system text moves unpredictably after it’s been moved around in engrave mode, and also Dorico cuts off the bottom of the ff (see attached screenshot).
@RobertEnns: yes, I agree there is a space. But that doesn’t resolved the issue either since if two dynamics are added to a note, they are layered vertically and not aligned horizontally.
I think what Robert meant is that perhaps you should nudge the piano to the next rhythmic position — say, a sixteenth ahead, and have the p as a separate dynamic marking.
Also: what font is that in the Dynamics text?
Ah, yes @LSalgueiro, that worked! Much more elegant of a fix for now. Thanks to you and @RobertEnns.
Hopefully a future update will allow us to double-click dynamics (or tempo text) and edit the text right there; so I could type sffz -space- p, and then also be able to double click and edit that dynamic without re-inputting it. Or at least full editing capabilities in the Properties bar.
The fault for the Shift-X dynamics text in the screenshot was the default Academico. See attached screenshot.
cheers!
Oh wow, never tried that. Academico doesn’t look too shabby, though I shouldn’t be surprised: Daniel probably thought about that.
