I’m trying to make my score more readable by joining barlines between certain staves, but I’ve noticed that Dorico never joins the barlines between staves where condensing is applied:
I have created a custom condensing group for Trumpet and Alto Sax, and the Tenor Saxes form a group as well. So when they are both condensed I have two staves for these four instruments. I’d like to connect the barlines between these two staves.
I’ve tried:
- Creating a single group for these four players in Setup mode:
- Enabling the “Allow barlines to join staves” option in Engraving options:
- Adding a custom “Bracket and Barline Change” in Engrave mode
None of these have any effect.
If I turn off condensing, then by default the three Sax staves have joined barlines and using a custom “Bracket and Barline Change” in Engrave mode I can join those with of Trumpet stave as well:
Is there any way to make this work for condensed staves?
What settings do you have on the Brackets and Braces page of Layout Options? Perhaps you can use the Small ensemble bracketing style, which will join all of the staves with a single bracket and thus a single barline, and then edit the bracket in Engrave mode so that it only encloses the staves that you want to be joined with a single barline.
It was set to Orchestral. Small ensemble is indeed more appropriate and it does cause the condensed staves to be connected. However, it does not join all staves with a single bracket, instead it creates a separate bracket for double bass and drums, and thus a separate joined barline:
This is probably because I still had the four wind players in one group in Setup mode, so they got their own bracket.
Then I found that in Engrave mode I could simply select and delete this bracket to have the desired effect:
It wasn’t very intuitive for me at first, but I think I understand it better now. Am I correct if I say that the correct order to set up bracketing / barline joining is the following?
- Select the correct bracketing style in the Brackets and Braces page of Layout options.
- Group players that should have their own separate bracket.
- Edit/delete brackets in Engrave mode.
It’s still a bit of a mistery as to why sometimes trying to change the barline joining doesn’t work in Engrave mode though. Maybe it would be better to provide a dialog for Bracket and Barline Change where one can see and change how it is set up, similar to the one for Manual Staff Visibility where you can select which is visible and which is not.
Your understanding is correct.
Great, thanks for the help!