I sometimes transcribe Renaissance choral music from white note notation into modern notation. Dorico is very good for this in many ways, and the scores look really good. However, some standard editorial markings rely on workarounds (incipits/prefatorory staves are easy enough, following the same ideas as in Daniel’s excellent tutorial of 19 June 2017 on Transcribing choral preces and responses; ficta are OK using Shift+X text but don’t play back).
My real problem is with ligature brackets. This is the sort of thing I want to be able to do:
I have tried exporting the ligature from Sibelius as a PNG, turning it into an SVG in Inkscape and putting it into a graphics frame in Dorico, but in Dorico I can’t change its length without scaling the whole thing, which clearly is not what I need. Am I doing something wrong (highly probable)?
Is there some trick with Shift+X text using square coloration brackets (SMuFL U+EA0C and EA0D) and horizontal lines/dashes? I would be intereested to learn if anyone has found a way of inserting ligatures. The lack of this is about the last thing that tempts me to continue with Sibelius for work of this sort.
You have to use inverted hooks through the properties panel (for both start and end) and then they have to be moved in engrave mode, as far as I know.
Fortunately, the hook orientation is transferred to parts, but not the position, of course.
The world needs this Schmidt cantata/motet, good for you to be doing this …
k_b, Claude
Thank you for this - clever! Claude, you’re right about inverting the hooks and moving the line in Engrave; it’s a bit of a fiddle for the first one, but it works, and the lines keep their properties when copied and pasted.
There’s another way, which positions perfectly and automatically. You can just enter the notes of the ligature as a tuplet with a ratio of 1:1, for example, 4:4 or 6:6, then hide the tuplet number in the properties panel.
That is bloody brilliant! And the best is that if there is ever a dedicated tool, all of those triplets can be deleted in a completely non-destructive way!
And of course the tuplet number can be omitted globally in engraving options. I have experimented briefly with Julian’s idea, and from my quick play with it I think it can be used easily in combination with coloration brackets using (Shift+X text).
I’m impressed with the speed at which these two solutions to my problem came, and their inventiveness; thanks again. It’a also a tribute to the flexibility of Dorico that these things are possible.
Michael
