More basic Dorico questions

  1. Is there a mouse based way to get a piece to have 4 bars per line? In Logic, one can grab, say, bar #5 on the first line and drag downwards (with the Layout Tool), and then that bar (and the following, of course) will be moved downwards. It’s also possible to define that a piece shall have 4 bars/line (which is useful in some cases).

  2. I imported an XML file from Logic, and all the notes were displayed with ‘naturals’ in front of them. But since there were no sharps and flats there, there was of course no need to display that all the notes were not sharp/flat. Is there a way to avoid this in the future?

  3. Based on the same XML file, the distance between each system was too high that the piece ended up on two pages. This was a piano piece, and I tried to find a simple, mouse based way to reduce the distance between bass/treble i_n one of the systems_ which would automatically reduce the distance between the bass/treble staffs for the whole piece. In Logic I can grab the actual clefs, eg the bass clef, and drag it upwards, and this way the distance will be reduced between bass/treble staffs throughout the piece - which automatically ensures that all the bars are displayed (in this example) on page 1. How is this done in Dorico?

  4. At the moment, I have created a few system breaks, and manually edited the distance between each of them. Is there a good way to force every system on that page to have the same staff spacing?

  5. And finally - how do I heal my current situation, where everything is on page 1 except the last four bars, which still are on page two?

  6. Is there a way to simply grab and move a few notes in order to transpose them up or down?

  7. Some rests can be removed simply by selecting them and press Backspace on my Mac, but not all. Why is that - and how do I remove the rests I don’t want to be displayed?

  1. not as far as I know. System breaks is your friend here…
  2. MusicXML is a rather floating “standard” so most programs handle a lot of things differently. You can try to select-all and do Edit/Reset Appearance. This will reset many parameters to Dorico’s own default (which are very good)
  3. You can specify a lower distance for braced staff to braced staff in Layout Options/Vertical spacing
  4. If there is reasonable room on page 1 you can select the first item on page 1 and the last item on page 2 and do Make into Frame (Engrave mode “format music frames” on the left)
  5. Select the note(s) and use alt(+shift) up/down arrow (I always forget what alt is on Mac, sorry :slight_smile:)

At the moment you cannot specify how many bars per system or systems per frame you will get by default, though we plan to add this in future. In the meantime, adding system breaks as needed is the approach you’ll have to take.

It should be sufficient to do Ctrl+A to select the whole flow, then do Edit > Reset Appearance, which will remove any redundant accidentals.

This is done in Dorico by switching to Engrave mode and switching on the Staff Spacing switch in the left-hand panel, which will then show various handles that will allow you to adjust spacing. See this YouTube video.

Not really, at the moment. You could type the same numeric value into the edit control that shows the current distance between systems at the left-hand margin, but this will require a bit of experimentation because you might find that the current value from, say, the first system doesn’t give the expected result when applied to every other system.

First, I’d suggest adjusting the staff size slightly on the Page Setup page of Layout Options to see if that naturally allows the music to fit on one page; secondly, depending on the note values in use in the music, I would try slightly reducing the default space for a quarter note on the Note Spacing page of Layout Options.

If this doesn’t help, then you can select the first note or rest at the start of the first system and select the last note or rest at the end of the final system and choose Lock Frame, which should bring all of the bars into the same frame.

Not at the moment, but in future we expect you to be able to move notes up and down with the mouse – probably only with a modifier held down, though, as it would often be problematic to allow you to change notes unexpectedly simply by dragging them.

  1. Some rests can be removed simply by selecting them and press Backspace on my Mac, but not all. Why is that - and how do I remove the rests I don’t want to be displayed?

Rests cannot generally be removed simply by hitting Delete or Backspace: what this will do is take an explicit rest (i.e. one that you have created yourself or, more likely in this case, one that has been created because Dorico is trying to preserve the exact appearance of the MusicXML file you have imported) and remove it, but this will normally leave an implicit rest behind. The only time this should really result in the rest disappearing is if it ends up consolidated into another, earlier or later, rest.

To actually remove a rest, select the rest in question (or indeed the passage of music containing the rests you want to remove) and choose Edit > Remove Rests.

Hi FlowerPower

If you think some of these items would be useful things for other people to know when they are in a similar situation I would be great if you could email me (j.barron@steinberg.de) the file so I include the examples in tomorrow’s Discover Dorico on youtube (4pm UK time).

Thank you

Thanks for the reply! Yes, that’s what I ended up doing, but it was an easy case - what if I had a piece with hundreds of notes - some with flats/sharps, some without? Maybe this is a Logic bug, but one never needs to be told that every natural note in a piece is natural, right?

“This is done in Dorico by switching to Engrave mode and switching on the Staff Spacing switch in the left-hand panel, which will then show various handles that will allow you to adjust spacing.”

I actually tried that, but while I could Command click to select multiple system handles,but once I started to drag one of them, all of them but one was deselected , so I couldn’t move all of them. I’ll experiment some more.

“First, I’d suggest adjusting the staff size slightly on the Page Setup page of Layout Options to see if that naturally allows the music to fit on one page”
There was already a lot more space on that first page than needed to display the last few bars, there was probably enough room to display 8 bars even, 4 on each line. But maybe this trick still would help?


Maybe joining the frames is the best solution, but ideally - since I created a lot of empty space at the bottom f page one in Engrave mode manually, I wish that the last few bars automatically would have been displayed on the empty space on page 1.

“in future we expect you to be able to move notes up and down with the mouse – probably only with a modifier held down, though, as it would often be problematic to allow you to change notes unexpectedly simply by dragging them.”
Have never had a problem with doing that without a modifier in Logic, so I really hope there will be a preference setting allowing us to do that without a modifier. And when this is implemented, it would be really great if one , eg with a modifier, could decide if the dragging/transposing should happen the “normal” way (chromatically) or diatonically.



"Rests cannot generally be removed simply by hitting Delete or Backspace: what this will do is take an explicit rest […] and remove it, but this will normally leave an implicit rest behind. The only time this should really result in the rest disappearing is if it ends up consolidated into another, earlier or later, rest.

To actually remove a rest, select the rest in question (or indeed the passage of music containing the rests you want to remove) and choose Edit > Remove Rests"

I actually managed to make some rests that were not selectable into selectable rests by selecting a rest before these rests and delete it (I think), and then I could delete all the rests. But these were probably there as a result of trying to copy what was imported from XML. I suddenly even managed to make the four bars on page two to jump back to page 1 when I tried to delete something (maybe I by accident deleted the frame on page 2?), but the result didn’t look good - things were on top of each other etc. I’ll experiment more.

In general, I hope as many functions as possible will be accessible through contextual menus (including removing rests), because I still often find myself wondering how things are done on Dorico, and contextual menus could take care of a lot of that.

Re. transpose: it seems that the default key for octave transposing collides with the default key commands for is the same as those used by Mission Control in OS X (El Capitan), but I’l sort that out.

Thanks to both of you!

It would still be fine. Notes that still need an accidental would still display one.

I actually tried that, but while I could Command click to select multiple system handles,but once I started to drag one of them, all of them but one was deselected , so I couldn’t move all of them. I’ll experiment some more.

Keep Ctrl held down when you start to drag the selected handles, otherwise you will start a new selection.

“adjusting the staff size slightly on the Page Setup page of Layout Options”
I have searched for Layout Options in the help menu, and Page Setup as well, but can’t find any of these.
And: adding system breaks doesn’t seem to work in a situation where I eg want an extra bar in the upper before the first system break in a piano piece?
I’m in a similar situation now, where I have a piano piece which I’ll try to fit into one page only. IMO there should be a way to globally change the distance between each of the systems - and: pardon my English, but I’m not sure if systems is the right word; I mean between the first four bars on line 1, and the second section of four bars on line 2. I don’t need all the empty space between them, and I want the same, lower distance between all the ‘lines’ (systems) across the whole piece. IN the DAW I use, I can do this with one click - but I still can’t find a simple way to do this in Dorico. The negative side effect of that DAW is that it’s of course not as flexible as Dorico, so if I want a different distance between the third row (line? system?) and the fourth, I’m in trouble. But it would be brilliant if I could do the same thing in Dorico: simply grab an element (eg the treble clef) in the first bar after the first system break, and drag up or down to reduce the distance I’m talking about - globally.

Btw, I’m able to move several systems (?) up or down, but that’s not what I need. I need to change the distance between the systems for the whole piece, or at least the whole page.

They are in Setup Mode, in the Setup menu. The staff size is “Space size” in the Page Setup panel. The vertical spacing between staves and systems is in the Vertical Spacing panel - see attachment.

If you want to adjust the vertical spacing for just one page, go to Engrave Mode and click the Staff Spacing button in the left hand panel. You then get handles to drag the staves. Or, select the whole score and use “Make into Frame” in Format Music Frames in the left panel.

Note, if the staff spacing looks “too big” and you have one system on page 2, most likely the reason is that there isn’t enough space to fit another system on page 1, so Dorico has justified the space between the systems by spreading them further apart.

Of course if you insist on 4 bars per system, that fixes the total number of systems in the score, even if Dorico could fit the music on one page better with fewer systems and more bars per system.


Thanks!

Vertical spacing is probably what I look for. But - is it a trial and error process? I go to this area, change the value - but have to go back to Engraving mode, repeatedly, to see which numbers that will give the best results until it potentially looks OK?


“If you want to adjust the vertical spacing for just one page, go to Engrave Mode and click the Staff Spacing button in the left hand panel.”

Thanks again, but i still haven’t found a way to adjust the distance between all the staves in one one page in one operation? I can of course experiment there as well, but it seems to be a tedious process if I need to enter some more or less random numbers for all the staves until I’m able to get the result I want.

You can leave the Layout Options dialog open while you make changes: make a change to one or more of the values in the Vertical Spacing page of the dialog, and click Apply at the bottom right-hand corner. You should see the score update immediately. This is, admittedly, more useful if you have a larger display or multiple monitors, but it can also be done on a laptop.

You don’t need to go to Engrave mode to see the effect of the changes, either: provided you are in page view in Setup or Write modes, you can see the changes there. And you don’t have to go to Setup mode to open the Layout Options dialog, either: use the key command Ctrl+Shift+L (Windows) or Shift-Command-L (Mac) to open the dialog from any mode.

In Rob Tuley’s staff handles png I see a switch for note spacing. I don’t have that in my Engrave mode. Am I missing a setting?
Or, is this a beta version of 1.1 or something?

Thanks.

You’re not missing a setting. Rob is indeed running a beta version.

Even if I still wish there were simpler ways to do things, I’m getting closer. Today’s surprise was that my circa 24 bars now show up twice; both on page 1 and a page 2 which I don’t need. I hope there’s an ease way to sort that out, so I’ll have a look. But here’s another thing I haven’t figured out yet: Inserting system breaks is an OK way to control the score if I have too many bars on a stave and want a… system break. But what if I have only three bars in a stave and want 4? Is there a mouse based or key command based way to do this? In other words, I want to have the first bar in the next stave n a piano piece to move upwards, along with the three bars I’m currently talking about. Anyone? Thanks in advance.

Here’s another question. I removed some text frames at the top of the page as part of a way to find room for more bars on the page. Now I have solved this (mainly by reducing the width of the left/right margins), and want to insert text frames a gain, so I enable the Frames button and click on the Insert Text Frame icon, but nothing happens?

You’ll be seeing the music on both pages because you’ve mucked about with the music frames on the first page. If you have changed which chain the first music frame is in to a custom one, then Dorico will start showing the music in a new frame chain on the second page. I can’t tell you exactly how to fix this without seeing your project, so you should zip it up and attach it here so I can take a look at it.

To force more bars onto the system than Dorico wants to put there, select the note or rest at the start of the bar you want to come at the start of the system, then hold Ctrl and click the note or rest at the end of the bar you want to come at the end of the system, then click the Lock System button, which is the right-hand button in the top row of the Format Systems section of the left-hand panel in Engrave mode. You can also find this in the Engrave > Format Systems submenu. If you want to assign a keyboard shortcut to this feature, you can do so on the Key Commands page of Preferences.

To insert a text frame, you have to first click on the text frame button in the Frames section, as you have done, and then click and drag onto the page to add the text frame you need. But in fact I would suggest that you instead remove the page overrides you have made on the first page by selecting the first page in the Pages panel on the right-hand side, and then right-click and choose Remove Page Overrides.

Remove Page Overrides will probably fix the “two copies of the music on pages 1 and 2” problem as well - unless you also edited the music frames on page 2.

This might help to understand flows and page layout:

Thanks! Any plans to make this doable by simply dragging the relevant bar line and drag it to where you want it? Or, alternatively, grab the five note lines inside the relevant bar and move it to the desired location?

“To insert a text frame, you have to first click on the text frame button in the Frames section, as you have done, and then click and drag onto the page to add the text frame you need.”

I actually tried that after having checked the manual, but it simply didn’t work. But I found out right now that one isn’t supposed to drag the “abc” icon to where you want a frame, but enable it and draw a frame where you want it.

But in fact I would suggest that you instead remove the page overrides you have made on the first page by selecting the first page in the Pages panel on the right-hand side, and then right-click and choose Remove Page Overrides.

Thanks, I found another workaround as well… (I think I copied everything at the first page into a new, blank project.) But since there are no reasons (that I can think of) to have page shown twice (unless it’s empty/contain no notes etc), it would be great if this simply didn’t happen.

Any plans to make this doable by simply dragging the relevant bar line and drag it to where you want it? Or, alternatively, grab the five note lines inside the relevant bar and move it to the desired location?

No, we don’t have any plans for this. One thing I would like to do is introduce a simple means of moving a bar from one system to the next by way of a key command, which is a handy feature that Finale has, but I can’t say when that might happen.

I actually tried that after having checked the manual, but it simply didn’t work. But I found out right now that one isn’t supposed to drag the “abc” icon to where you want a frame, but enable it and draw a frame where you want it.

That’s right. None of the buttons in any of Dorico’s panels work by dragging them into the score: all of them work like tools in software like e.g. Photoshop, where you click the tool to “load” the mouse pointer, then click and drag in the document to use the tool.

But since there are no reasons (that I can think of) to have page shown twice (unless it’s empty/contain no notes etc), it would be great if this simply didn’t happen.

I’m sorry to say that this occurred in your score because you told the program to do it, even if you told the program to do it unintentionally. We can’t program the software not to do something you told it to do – in general, that would be a very bad idea.

I can certainly think of reasons for having the same flow displayed in several music frames (note, there can be more than one music frame on a page!)

One example would be an educational edition with snippets of music (e.g. just rhythms, without staff lines) explaining how to play ornaments, etc. The same explanation might occur on several different pages - or even several times on the same page.

If I want the same snippet of music printed 10 times, I don’t want to make 10 copies of it!

Another use case is the piano duet, where you have the same flow on the left and right pages, but the player filters show only one player on each.