In this example, the publisher I work for is requesting an extender line as indicated in red.
I posted this on Music Engraving Tips, and the overwhelming consensus was that such extenders were absolutely necessary. I do know several of the people who commented are choral music veterans or established composers, FWIW.
It’s extremely difficult in Dorico at present. I’ve tried changing it to two tied quarters, redoing the lyric, and fiddling with the extender, but the extender line jumps around randomly when I try to edit an extender line that Dorico knows is no longer “correct” (since the note has been returned to a half note).
I’ve also tried using the bottom staff and setting to “above,” but this is a nightmare for casting off, and forces me to change the staff spacing.
I’m requesting (pretty please) an option to select the syllable and turn on a “lyric extender” property from the bottom panel.
Faking a line with a hairpin works pretty well for this, especially if your hairpin and lyric extension line thicknesses are set to be the same:
A straight line gliss would work too. If you aren’t using it elsewhere in the piece, just set the straight line thickness to whatever your lyric extensions are set to.
Thanks Todd, I hadn’t thought about using a hairpin. As a bonus, I suppose it will attach to a set rhythmic position, so it’ll be “dynamic” in length (heheh). I’ll give it a try.
I agree this would be useful. Perhaps, if activated, (manual) lyric extender lines could attach to rhythmic positions too. That way you’d have the advantage of being able to adjust them dynamically if the score spacing shifts, in addition to finely in engrave mode; this would also allow for the usual key commands for extending/shortening based on the rhythm grid.
I think the solution is fairly easy and does not require so many workarounds.
Select the d on the top staff.
Press o.
Press 6.
Press r.
Select the first d, press t. You should have two tied quarters.
Double-click the last syllable, to show the Lyrics popover, press space to show the extender.
Select the tie chain, press 6 (to change it) and then 7 (to get the correct value).
The extender then is a little bit too long but can be changed in Engrave mode.
It is really faster to do than to describe.
Thanks Marc, I have tried this, but it’s simply not reliable. Sometimes it works as expected, sometimes it doesn’t. The extender line will randomly change length without rhyme or reason. And then when I attempt to edit the length of it in engrave mode, it sometimes jumps around unpredictably.
How about writing „shadow“ into the lower staff and then copy it to the upper staff. Have not tried it so far. Not on my computer. Maybe worth a trial.
I’m so glad I found this. In my present project I need to create manual extender lines in many places, e.g. when notes are tied between flows (itself, of course, a workaround). I’ve now successfully used the glissando line method in my vocal (custom) score, but the manual moving of the lines isn’t reflected in the full score. Is there a way to accomplish this, other than my having to redo the adjustments in the full score? I played around with propagating and with the ‘set local properties globally’, but neither had any effect.
This was what I tried and it seemed to work. In Engrave mode, click the Note Spacing tab and then select the portion of music that requires the line extension. Use shift + command + arrow to extend until you see the line. Then, switch to Graphic Editing and manually lengthen the line even further. Then go back to Note Spacing, select all the red boxes you manipulated and hit delete. The line should remain but the spacing should return.
This worked for me. The Cubase Score Editor does not compare, and I’m sure Michael Michaelis was roundly ignored when Dorico was commissioned. In Cubase Score you grab the lyric and drag to produce an extender: easy.
I’d like to say thanks to MarcLarcher for helping to solve a separate problem: MusicXML import 4/4 bar quaver quaver minim quaver quaver. The minim changed to two tied crotchets. There are posts about this. By incorporating o-6-r into a rebuild of the bar I was able to get a reproducible if long-winded fix. I’m a beginner so others more experienced would be able to do it much quicker but mine’s working so I’m staying with it.
To introduce an underline Extender to a single note:
Text updated. Thanks to Mark_Johnson (see below)
[Write] → Copy a lyric which already has a genuine** extender → Select the Note for a lyric requiring an extender → Paste → Double-click the lyric → change the text → click away from the lyric popover (or hit [Enter] or [Esc] : supplied by Mark_Johnson) → Select the lyric → [Shift]+[Alt]+[→] / [Shift]+[Alt]+[←] to adjust the extender length (again supplied by Mark_Johnson). NOTE: In [Write] mode this method can be used to push a last-note-on-the-page extender on to the next page.
However, if [Shift]+[Alt]+[→] is used on the last note of a system and the succeeding Bar starts with a rest, the Extender tends to extend too far.
In this case, extender adjustment with a drag in [Engrave] mode works best.
The pasted Extender may occasionally extend backwards under the lyric. This glitch should also be correctable in [Engrave] mode.
The general method even worked on a lyric with a grace-note.
** An extender under a melisma, which therefore has a duration, as Mark_Johnson kindly pointed out.
It works because the syllable you copy has a duration. This can be even simpler than you describe. Don’t use Engrave mode. See this post from 4 days ago.
One clarification: Once you’ve edited a syllable, Enter or Esc is fine; the extender remains as long as you don’t hit Space.
But my method at the above link doesn’t even require deleting, copying or editing.
Thank you Mark. Going into [Engrave] was indeed generally not necessary, but in one case the extender extended backwards under the lyric, and I wanted to note that such an issue was fixable. As a Dorico beginner, I was also quite pleased at having worked out a Heath Robinson fix myself. Your [Shift]+[Alt]+[→] / [Shift]+[Alt]+[←] adjustor is Most Excellent and has been added to my documentation. I have adjusted my original post, with attribution, so that someone reading it will have a suggestion in a single paragraph.
