When I write for big band, I set Layout Options > Bracketing > Ensemble Type to Big Band, and it’s almost perfect. For me, I’d like the drums and bass to not be bracketed together. However, as far as I know there’s no way to edit what the preset chooses to bracket together, and manual bracketing is a nightmare.
I feel like being able to edit the brackets in the library or in the settings would allow people to get a preset that’s just right for them, having no customizability for this is frustrating.
Edit: I’ve managed to manually fix it for now, but the only way I got it to work was to:
Click “change barline joins” in the engrave tab while selecting the drum staff
Insert a bracket (where there already was one) between the drums and bass
Click delete on the bracket I just made
Do the same on page 2 (because until I did this it only applied to the first page)
Then even if I deleted the signpost on page 2 that said “Bracket and Barline change” the bracketing was still fixed. None of this makes sense and seems very random/buggy.
Brody,
Are you sure you are talking about pages or rather flows?
You can change the bracketing manually in Engrave Mode (as you have noticed) - and it will last until the end of that flow, or until you make the next bracketing change. This works 100% reliable.
I am certain I am only talking about 1 flow because the piece I’m working on only has 1 flow. (I almost never use more than 1 flow anyways.)
Upon trying to recreate the situation it now works by just editing the first one. I swear I had to do it twice the first time and I’ve even had times where changing the bracket on the second page resets the bracket fix on the first page, but it works fine currently.
I always wondered if it was related to the page templates in engraving mode, and frame chains not agreeing or something.
I weirdly can’t find the score backups in my backups folder, but that’s okay because now on every score I’ve tried it, manually fixing it in the first measure fixes it for the whole flow.
Also, even though it seemed strange at first that I needed to create my own bracket before I could delete it, it makes sense since you’re basically telling Dorico “hey I’m gonna use manual bracketing” and then you’re allowed to delete it.
It’s unintuitive but it makes sense.
It is not a fix, it is an option that Dorico gives you.
The option to override global bracketing settings.
You define your global bracketing in the Layout Options. If you prefer an individual bracketing, you can override this per each flow. That’s when you go to Engrave Mode and do a manual bracketing - for any point in your score until the end of that flow, or until you change it manually yourself at a later place.
As you can see, Dorico offers you global and very individual options to set the bracketing to your very special needs.
Having all these options might be overwhelming at first, but they can cover the individual needs of all the individuals who are using this software.