How do I keep this clashing from happening? The centered lyric alignment is what I want, but I do need for them to be free of the barlines!
That is one approach, but I would rather have the line through the staff, and Dorico adjust the spacing properly.
@RLSimenson @sfiskum @dspreadbury Do you guys have a solution for this, by chance?
I donāt believe thereās an automatic setting to avoid the barlines at this time, but as a time-saving option, in Engrave Mode you can shift-select all the collision syllables that occur to the right of a barline, and in the Properties Panel select LEFT for the Lyric text alignment, and also select an Offset value of about X = -1 (or try another negative number depending on your fontās width), and this should move the left-most part of the selected syllables pretty close to the barline while still avoiding a collision. Itās not a perfect fix, but at least it will allow you to tweak the placement of several problem syllables all at once. (I havenāt looked at whether a script might be used to automate the process)
Unfortunately, the other optionā to keep the syllable perfectly centered, would involve moving the first note of the measure and each instance would be different, depending on the syllable length.
Daniel, you might give the approach with the Choir (reduction) a second thought. In my opinion, even if syllables donāt collide with barlines, the lyrics still feel squashed into bar boxes. It somehow hinders to see the lyric text as an independent flow of words. Out of interest: Why do you prefer the barlines? Have you just got used to that look or does it meet a special demand?
Vocal lyrics should not use staves with connected bar lines, so there should be no collision between a lyric syllable and a bar line. Elaine Gould (āBehind barsā), page 439, says āIf necessary the text may precede the barlineā: so, stylistically, thereās no reason to prevent lyrics passing under barlines.
Yes, there is a particular reason Iām preferring barlines. It is meant to be an āeasy pianoā piece first (a la Hal Leonard), with lyrics being the less important factorā¦
I donāt mean to pile in on your decisions, but ā¦ the size of that font isnāt helping either. A serif typeface would be just as legible at a smaller size, leading to fewer crashes against the barlines.
Or you could set the Lyrics Paragraph Style to have a White background colour, which would āeraseā the barline.
Otherwise, your only option is to manually add extra space before the first note for bars where this happens, in Engrave mode > Note Spacing.
Then it makes sense. In a way a layout that does not look right to a professional engraver might appear as easy approachable for the āeasy pianistsā. It does make sense.
Beautiful solution, Ric. Perfect, and not time consuming at all! Iām writing that into our workflow