Method Book Project Layout Suggestions

Dorico
1

Hello all!

I am just starting with Dorico. I have been a Finale power user since 1991, (you know, when it came on three floppy disks ~1.44MB X 3~), and a Sibelius power user since 2012, due it its popularity among the percussion writers that I work with. As an arranger, I have been waiting for software that bridges the miles-wide gap between notation and DAW and have hoped that Dorico will meet that need. (So much time to create the perfect score and individual parts and not being happy with demo recordings without taking as long to sequence as it did to engrave.) I recently decided that it was time to explore Dorico and was immediately impressed with this new paradigm. I’ve decided to transition to the new software with my next project…which is a method book for school band. The frame approach of Dorico seems to be a brilliant way to integrate music, text copy, images, and web links into a publisher friendly format, and hopefully it will translate well to an electronic version as well as feed into an app format. This brings me to my topic…

How should I lay out my project to have the most efficient workflow for the creation and publishing of a method book?

There will be a teacher’s manual as well as an individual volume for each wind instrument. My initial thought is to add all players to make a full score, obviously, but from here I was thinking that I’d make each PAGE of the book an additional FLOW. Then I was thinking that i would use a CUSTOM SCORE LAYOUT to be each specific instrument BOOK. If my logic is correct, I can then select a different player for each custom score/book, add all of the layouts to it and have a complete book. My only wonder is how I can have the same instructive copy/text and images on each flow/page without having to realign every page in every custom score/book. Is this making any sense?

Each page will contain a short exercise, ranging anywhere from 2 - 8 measures along with instructive copy, illustrations, video links, tips, and other info. I foresee it being a rare instance where there will be more than one exercise on a page, and there may be occasion to have one exercise take up two pages.

This is just my first pass at how to make the most efficient workflow, and I’m eager to hear any other ideas based on anyone’s experience.

Thank you so much for your consideration!
Ed

2

Welcome to the forum, Ed, and sorry to take a day or so to chime in here. This is quite a big topic and it’s one that a number of fellow Dorico users have grappled with.

If your ambition is to prepare the method books entirely within Dorico, then I think my recommendation would be to put each book in its own project, rather than trying to handle multiple books within the same project by way of multiple layouts. The Dorico paradigm fits pretty well with the idea of “one project = one book”, but I think you might find the larger-scale organisation tools that would ideally be needed to manage “one project = many books” are not really present yet.

If you have an example of the kind of page layout you’re aiming at and can attach a picture, it’s possible that I or other members of the community might be able to suggest some specific approaches. Good luck!

3

If everything is the same except the instrument-specific music notation, it should be pretty quick to copy the project for one book, and change the music content of the flows. With luck they will automatically “flow” into the same music frames as before.

The problem with trying to make several books in one project would be that Dorico doesn’t have any tools (yet) for making different pages from one copy of the text frames. It doesn’t have the concept of a “text flow” analogous to a “music flow”.

4

Thank you for the responses!

As I get further into the learning process here, I’ll have a better grasp on everything.

Daniel, I will upload a sketch of a typically laid out page tomorrow.

Cheers!
Ed