Hi Forum,
I’ve just moved from Finale to Dorico and want to use some small choir pieces SATB, made in finale as test.
I’ve done the following
I’ve imported the xml- file into Dorico and changed the margins to 20pt top/bottom, 45pt width,
I’ve forced the measures (move to Previus System) thus the score has the same layout/numbers of bars in systems as the original.
But now my Dorico file is clutterred /how to correct-move on?
De dybeste lag(SATB) - Score - Score.pdf (213.4 KB)
DORICO - Full score - De dybeste lag(SATB).pdf (77.3 KB)
That’s very weird. Can you upload the actual dorico file? (You can PM me if you don’t want to put it publicly.)
Hi benwiggly,
Thanks for your time
No prob - here it comes
De dybeste lag(SATB).dorico (1.2 MB)
For starters, open Layout Options and click on Reset to Factory.
Done. but
Then I have to start all over.
Thats not the idea when migrating from Finale to Dorico
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I have noticed that this makes a differenece (maybe not a complete solution, though).
Layout Option > Note Spacing > Advanced Options > Use ideal widths only.
If you go to Engrave mode, it will show you that your measures are far too full.
It’s 129%, when the maximum is 100%. The staff below is much less full – you should move a measure down at least.
I’d reduce the Staff Size, which is still quite large for choral scores. To be honest, I’d let Dorico space it out, rather than locking every system.
I’ve made a few changes in the Layout Options, and removed the Breaks. (Note Spacing reduced to 3.25; Flow Headers off. Staff Size down to 6.)
De dybeste lag(SATB) rev.dorico (1.1 MB)
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Thanks for you reply - Ben
I’m on a steep learning curve
having worked with Finale since 1994
The logic is different in Dorico, difficult to unlearn old tricks
i’m still puzzled why it;s poosible in the original finale file and not in dorico
I’d tjekked if I had upsized any thing (notes,measures,systems) but it’s all 100 % in finale
yours
B
Thanks jesele
Interesting that between a few of us we’ve come up with quite different suggestions!
I think the main difference is that the font for lyrics in Dorico is both bigger (a larger point size) and wider (a different font or font variant) than in your Finale file.
At Library > Layout Options > Note Spacing you’ll find an option to Make space for lyrics that’s turned on by default. If you turn it off, you’ll likely find that the notes are spaced correctly, but the lyrics collide. So probably best to keep it turned on!
Maybe head to Library > Paragraph Styles > Lyrics and set the font to something narrower; you could even use the Finale Lyrics font that you were using in Finale. Having experimented here a little, I see that actually in your Finale version you were also using a smaller font size for lyrics. You could reduce the font size here, which would fix the problem further, but you might decide that actually the original lyrics were a bit on the small side.
One other thing that would help is to reduce the minimum gaps between lyrics and hyphens. If you head into Library > Engraving Options > Lyrics and reduce these options, you’ll likely get better results.
Having applied them, you could also use the Save As Default button in the bottom left corner so that these settings will be rolled into new projects. (Same with the Lyrics font).
Oh, and one more thing: in your original Finale PDF, I see that from the second system onwards the left staff label is abbreviated to “S” for the sopranos and actually nothing at all for the others. In Dorico, for whatever reason, you’ve kept full staff labels throughout, for everyone apart from the sopranos (this is likely a result of the MusicXML transfer rather than anything you did yourself). The fact that the left edge of each system has the rather wide “Piano” label means that Dorico has less horizontal space to use for music than Finale did.
From Setup mode, if you go Setup > Reset Instrument Names you’ll see that the abbreviations switch to S, A, T, B and Pno, which gives Dorico a little more room. If you go to Library > Layout Options and tell Dorico not to show anything after the first system, here:
you’ll find that things space very nicely.
Again, worth bearing in mind that after applying, most of these dialogs can be saved as default, for future projects (and imports).
My resulting PDF and Dorico project are attached.
01 - Full score - De dybeste lag(SATB) pianoleo.pdf (80.6 KB)
De dybeste lag(SATB) pianoleo.dorico (1.3 MB)
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I’m a former Finale user who has been migrating vocal music scores to Dorico for some time. FWIW, I’d suggest not getting hung up on making your score lay out exactly the way it did in Finale. Use Font snd Paragraph Styles to set your default music and text fonts, and let Dorico handle the spacing.
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Thanks a lot
Very usefull answer
I’ll do a walkthrough of your work
Yours
B
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Thanks Carole,
Yes you’ve a point
I’m doing this to speed up my learning curve
Yours
B
Dear Pianoleo,
I must thank you for the answer!
Though it’s a point in letting Dorico’s algoritme do the job for me when makiong new scores it’s immensely usefull to understand the transition from Finale to Dorico.
especially the font differences made a huge difference whne applying
Again thanks for making an so easy to folllow answer
yours
Bo
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