I’m working in Dorico on large-scale conductor scores for stage works, where the musical material must be tightly synchronized with several non-musical layers, such as:
-
spoken dialogue
-
stage action / movement
-
lighting, sound, and other technical cues
In Finale, this type of workflow could be handled using Staff Styles, which allowed the creation of non-musical rows (no staff lines, clefs, rests, or musical notation) that were still fully synchronized with the musical timeline and bar structure.
In Dorico, an equivalent solution does not currently seem to exist. While System Text combined with cutaways can help to some extent, this approach breaks down when multiple parallel non-musical layers are required at the same time, for example:
-
dialogue
-
stage action
-
technical cues
Another recurring need is the ability to create longer, time-defined “empty” sections (e.g. several bars containing only dialogue or action), conceptually somewhat similar to a coda, but much more flexible and explicitly tied to the timeline rather than to musical material.
So my questions are:
-
How are others handling this kind of workflow in Dorico for complex stage or multimedia works?
-
Are there any known plans or design considerations for supporting non-musical, time-synchronized rows/staves (or comparable functionality) in Dorico?
I’d be very interested to hear how other users approach this, and whether this is something that might fit into Dorico’s future development.