Make tenuto thicker

[Andro]

How does one make a tenuto thicker, but not longer? In the Music Symbol editor dialog, if I grab any handle the whole line scales. Likewise, if I change only the Y scale value, the whole glyph scales up, not just the Y direction.

I just now see this is the same issue:

Music symbols editor scaling issue

Apologies if this has come up before, though I wasn’t able to find it if it has. In the music symbols editor (and the playing techniques editor, perhaps in other similar editors as well), I seem to be having an issue where changing the value of X scaling doesn’t have any effect (I tried on several different object types and glyph categories, all to the same result). Additionally, Y scaling does scale the object, but it does so proportionally for both X and Y (just like clicking and dragging), e…

But why cant you scale text or glyphs? And, what am I to do anyway?

[benwiggy]

I believe you can only scale a glyph uniformly in both axes.

You’ll have to find a font with a tenuto mark that you like, and use the Music Symbols editor to swap that font’s character in.

[dan_kreider]

Or edit the glyph in a program like Illustrator and export it as an SVG.

[snakeeyes021]

I’m not at my computer to check, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this can be done in Adobe Acrobat also, which would make things nice and easy.

[benwiggy]

@snakeeyes021

I have a sneaking suspicion that this can be done in Adobe Acrobat

Really? You can globally swap in one glyph for another? Because doing it manually for each one would be ‘not easy’.

[FredGUnn]

@Andro

And, what am I to do anyway?

You can effectively thicken it by stacking another on top of it. Go to Engrave/Music Symbols then Category: Articulations. Select the tenuto (above or below, you’ll have to do both), then add another tenuto. A major problem encountered here is that Dorico’s editing window in this instance (and in chord symbols) is very buggy and is not WYSIWYG, so you have pay very close attention to the Attachments tab. If you just position it visually without changing the Attachment setting, it will look correct in the window, but not in the score. Select your new additional tenuto, make sure the attachment is set to “from: Top Left” and “to: Baseline Left.” In the Component tab, the X offset should be 0 and the Y to however much you want to thicken it. Here I used 0.5 and it is quite thick, but obviously a smaller value would thicken it more subtly:

[notesetter]

For my money, swapping the symbol with another font having a more appropriate shape is the way to go. That functionality is built into the Symbol Editor. I’d be concerned that with the passage of time and different Dorico versions the stacking of symbols might render slightly differently, which would be noticeable.

[snakeeyes021]

@benwiggy

Really? You can globally swap in one glyph for another? Because doing it manually for each one would be ‘not easy’.

Apparently not, lol. Not only did I not even consider potentially needing to do it globally, but it also seems I was quite mistaken about changing glyph size axes independently. Womp.