In 4-part choral writing, I’m often copying lyrics from one part to the next. Often times there are melismas in one part, but not in another, or vice-versa. Is there a way to get lyric line extentions for a word that didn’t have one in the staff of origin?
Many thanks!
Not automatically, no.
You’ll have to double-click the lyric that needs extension (this will open the lyric popover), then press space bar as many times as needed for the extension line, and repeat for each melisma…
Great ! Thanks !!
If you select the voice that needs melisma spacebar should work then.
The forum software is warning me about reviving this 5-year-old topic, but here goes:
How, in fact, do I put lyric extensions after a syllable? I have two particular places in one hymn where there are melismas / melismata.
I tried double-clicking on the lyric, as @MarcLarcher said above, and then pressing the space bar, but it didn’t work. I immediately remembered that pressing the space bar just makes the next note’s lyric field active …
Thanks for any help you can offer!
Eric
Yes, the next notes lyric field will become active and you need to keep pressing Space until you get to a note that you want a new syllable on. The extension should keep extending each time you press Space.
Is this not the case?
Eric, if you encounter a situation in with the top voice holds a note while a voice below has a melisma, make sure that the lyric needing the extension line is assigned to the lower voice.
I think there must be some setting that is turned off, since that is not what’s happening.
I think @Derrek might be onto something.
If his advice doesn’t work, can you please attach a cut-down project with info about where it’s happening to see if we can reproduce this.
It probably is the case that your setting for “Minimum length for lyric extenders” is longer than the space desired for the extender. If it’s set to an obscenely high value, as I regularly do, extenders will never display.
If you want them, I’d set the value to something like 2 spaces.
Here is the Dorico file and a screenshot. Probably @dan_kreider is right, but I can’t find those settings.
Engraving Options—Lyrics—Lyric Extenders
I changed it to 2 spaces. The first instance got an extender line, but not the second one. What is wrong? Thanks!
Here’s the file now.
02.09a for forum.dorico (1.3 MB)
I didn’t open it, but probably because the first instance generated an extender that exceeded two spaces, and the second one wouldn’t have.
They look to be about the same length to me – very long.
Select the lyric in the popover and press the spacebar to advance it.
