I engraved ~100 pages of non-trivial choral music and here are the different issues I brushed against. Rather than making a single post for each of them, I decided it’s probably easier to report all of them together with examples. I also added workarounds where I found one, in case someone needs them.
The examples aren’t realistic, but should be good enought to demonstrate the issue.
Dorico Choral issues.dorico (1.5 MB)
Also, don’t get me wrong, the overall experience was very nice after learning how different things work. Feel free to ask clarifying questions or examples. Most of them are minor annoyances.
Hide automatic player labels for vocal staves.
This is the main issue. Choral music rarely uses player labels, because it’s usually obvious what everyone needs to sing. And hiding 100ds of different player labels manually becomes very annoying. This is the main reason I decided to not use condensing.
Ideally it would be possible to disable player labels per stave (or condensing group).
Workaround: Select player label and hide, but can become very annoying if you have hundreds of them.
Workaround: Use section players and divisi; or separate staves.
Custom stave labels for condensing (e.g. T, Bar, B)
When condensing together Tenor, Baritone and Bass, it would be nice if you could override the staff label being used. In many cases just having “T/B” as the staff label would be sufficient.
Order of manual condensing staves.
When using manual condensing the output staves do not respect the order specified.
For example in a piece there were Tenor, Baritone, Bass. In a specific section, the Baritone took the lead role and T/B a similar repeating pattern. In that case it would’ve made sense to have staves [Baritone] and [Tenor, Bass]. It was possible to specify that manual condensing, however the order on the page ended up being [Tenor, Bass] [Baritone]. It seems it takes the order from the player setup, not what was specified in manual condensing.
Workaround: Create a separate T/B stave below Bar.
BUG: A lot of lyrics completely collapse rests.
When entering a lot of lyrics and notes on a single stave, it seems at some point the note spacing calculation breaks and the rests don’t get zero space. Fixing this manually becomes problematic, because any tiny adjustment can result in everything move around a lot.
Example: 1. Rest Collapse
Workarounds: Try adjusting hyphen spacing and using custom paragraph style for lyrics (with stretch 90% and negative letter spacing).
Preserve lyrics paragraph style when continuing.
When you have non-default paragraph style for lyrics and continue writing from that point, the new lyrics end up using the default lyrics paragrah style. It should be automatically using the same lyrics style as before.
Workaround: After adding the new lyrics adjust the paragraph style.
Lyric hyphens when voices join.
When divisi or multiple voices join in the middle of a word, then there’s a need to add hyphens without having them attach somewhere. This is not a big problem, because in most cases, because you can just write out the word in full. However, when there is a long continuation of a textural pattern such as “dmm-dmm-dmm-dmm-…” then there is no place to “complete” the word.
Example: 2. Hyphen continuation.
Workaround: Use option-dash instead, which unfortunately looks different. If possible avoid joining in the middle of the word.
Galley view lyrics overlapping alto voices.
With very low alto parts the lyrics overlap the notes. It would be nice either to automatically place the lyrics lower based on the measure or have it configurable per staff.
Example: 3. Galley view lyrics overlap
When correcting rhythms, e.g. dotted-vs-straight the lyrics should move as well
When you have written out 4 eighth notes with lyrics. Select them all and press “.” to make them dotted rhythms the lyrics don’t move with the notes.
Example: 4. Dotted rhythms don’t move lyrics
Workaround: Reenter the lyrics or drag and move the lyrics.
Option for breaking lyrics line with an option.
With high and low notes on a single for a voice the lyrics can be pushed down on the stave, such that there is a significant gap between lyrics with the high notes. It would be nice to be able to have an option “split this lyrics line” so it’s not aligned with previous lyrics on the same staff… and then be able to move it separately on engraving page. Luckily ut’s possible to have a similar effect by changing “lyrics line” to a different number.
Example: 5. Low voice lyrics placement
Workaround: Use separate “line number” for the lyrics.
Allow dragging and adding lyrics extender.
When there are multiple voices and some of them are holding a single note, sometimes it’s clearer to add an extender line where one is not strictly necessary.
It was difficult to find the way to first add such an extender (option-shift arrow right), it would be nicer if it were just a drag handle near the end of the lyrics.
Similarly, once it is there, it’s not possible to move it in fractional steps, it always tries to snap to the note itself or the next bar. It would be nice if you could hold some button to make it move based on your current grid.
It would be even nice if this can be automated, e.g. any note longer than a half note always add extenders.
Example: 6. Lyrics extender
Workaround: Use option-shift arrow right to elongate the extender line.
Enter lyrics for multiple voices at the same time.
It would be nice to be able to enter lyrics to multiple voices at the same time.
Workaround: Enter lyrics on one voice. Select voice. Filter lyrics. Copy and paste to the other voice.
Allow more easily to add different lyrics for a tied note.
In some cases there are different lyrics on a tied note and it’s annoying to add them, because it requires using scissors.
Example: 7. Tied note lyrics
Workaround: Break ties using scissors, add lyrics, add ties back.
Different articulations in a tied note.
In some cases there are different articulations placed on tied notes. It’s understandable that it’s not possible to make ties work that way, however it would be nice if you could specify a property on slurs to “make them look like ties”.
Example: 8. Articulated tied note.
Workaround: Use slurs and try to make them look like ties. Alternatively use a long slur across all notes.
Add a property to collapse hyphens
With dense text sometimes it’s necessary to avoid hyphenatic a word, because it can save significant amount of space. This is of course possible by entering the text manually. However, when trying to find the minimal amount of words to collapse it’s quite annoying to keep reentering the lyrics. It would be nice to have a property “collapse hyphen”, which would write the syllables from multiple notes as a single word.
Example: 9. Dense text
Workaround: Enter the word manually and extend over multiple notes. Use compact/denser paragraph style.
Erasing lyrics background
Sometimes it would be nice to specify “Erase background” for lyrics, e.g. when it ends up overlapping with a slur.
Example: 10. Erase lyrics background
Workaround: Use a custom paragraph style with “Background color: white”. Unfortunately this approach does not let
Erasing glissando background
Sometimes a glissando happens to go through a key signature change and it would be nice to erase it for that part.
Example: 11. Erase glissando background
Workaround: Edit PDF manually later.
System alignment on the left side when a name is a bit longer.
When there is a small change in the visible players it causes the system start position to be misaligned by a tiny amount. It would be nice if there was an easy way to realign them. Or better yet some automatic system to auto-align consecutive systems horizontally where they differ less than 2sp.
Example: 12. System alignment
Workraound: use note spacing in engraving window to manually move the systems.
Make tie endpoint positioning an option
For dense music it’s nice to be able to use different endpoint positioning depending on the situation. In most cases the “between noteheads” works better, because it takes up less vertical space and doesn’t push the lyrics as far as “above/below noteheads”. However, in tight situations “above/below noteheads” works better, because there’s no room for between noteheads and it conserves horizontal space.
Accel. continuation across many pages
When an “accel” crosses multiple pages it’s sometimes useful to have “(accel)” continuation on the new staves. A “continuation text” would be nice.
Example: 13. Accel across staves.
Workaround: Use custom lines to create an accel line with different continuation.
Arrows between two staves.
Sometimes it’s necessary to draw arrows between two staves to show some relation. Lines can be used for this, however when anything on the page moves then they often need to be readjusted, because the end does not stick to a note on another stave.
Workaround: Add a line and move manually in engraving.
Divisi + empty stave loses the arrows
When you change divisi and on the next system also hide one of the divisi staffs then the divisi arrows at the ond of the system are note being drawn. This might be intended, but I’m not quite sure.
Example: 14. Divisi arrows missing
Allow “Add staff” for section player + divisi.
Sometimes there is a need to add an extra staff for one or two bars for some “ad lib.” notes. However for a section player these are not allowed. It’s possible to use “ossia staff”, but that’s not shown in conductor scores by default and configuring things could end up conflicting in scores that actually need ossias. It’s possible to use a separate player or use divisi altogether, but neither of them capture the intent.
Example: 15. Add staff for section.
Workaround: Use ossia staff with scale factor 1. Alternatively use separate player or divsi with cutaways.
Line end symbols for splitting/collapsing.
Sometimes it’s easier to manage separate players for divisi, however that loses the ability to use the automatic divisi arrows. It’s possible to add them with custom text, but that is quite fragile and cumbersome. It would be nice to be able to add divisi arrows manually to end of staves.
Workaround: Use custom text, add divisi arrow symbol, adjust text size, use engraving page to move them into place.
Library Manager template
Remember the compare to target in Library Manager.
When using a template score as the source of truth for the settings across multiple scores, then it’s somewhat annoying to keep reselecting it from the Library Manager when opening the score.
Allow unlink/ungrouping dynamics on engraving page
With choir music especially it’s possible that the dynamic placement end up needing manual adjustment. It’s possible to unlink them from the writing page, but it’s quite cumbersome to keep switching between writing and engraving mode.
The same goes for moving linked dynamics and flipping linked dynamics.
Explode does not handle multiple voices nicely
It’s quite common to have mixed separate voices and a single voice divisi for choir. Explode does not handle that and instead splits based on voices. Sibelius handles exploding such music in a nicer way.
Workaround: Explode “multivoice” and “single voice” things separately.
Show note duration when sidepanel is collapsed
When writing and you collapse all the panels for space, it would be nice to see currently selected note duration. For example the currently selected voice could show the note duration as well (doesn’t work that well for whole notes though).
Adding comma for breath is added to the wrong location
When selecting multiple voices to add a breath, it will add the breath after the first note in the selection rather than the last.
Reverse dotted notes
When notating syncopated rhythms the current “.” shortcut to convert straight notes is quite nice. However, it would be great to have the reverse of that as well. I.e. turn [8th 8th] to a “16th 8th dotted”.
Make select lyric voice always visible on status bar
When you select a single lyric it does not show the voice it belongs to on the status bar. Similarly, the current long text “Up-stem voice 1” takes significant room, it could use a similar symbol to when using note input (just a note with up/down stem and a number).
Easier moving of hairpins on a long note.
When there’s an hairpin on a long note and the hairpin should not start from the beggining, it’s quite difficult to move it into place. One option is to use the option/shift etc. shortcuts. A more comfortable approach would be to allow pressing “shift” (or some other modifier) to allow moving the dynamics based on the current grid, rather than snapping to the notes.
Show hidden rests in a bar
When exploding music from MusicXML with multiple voices it sometimes adds a “ends voice” for the down stem voice. These can be sometimes easy to overlook and miss that some rest is missing. It would be nice to have a “show missing rests”, that shows when a voice only has partial content in a bar and rest is hidden.
Some shortcuts don’t work when switching keyboard languages.
Sometimes when switching languages (e.g. from EN → EE) some keyboard combinations stop working. For example I have setup “cmd+opt+shift+P” as a quick export PDF. After switching the language sometimes that shortcut does not work; when I switch back, it starts working again. I’m not quite sure how to reproduce this issue.
Search in VST instruments selection.
Add search feature for VST selection combo box. It’s more convenient to type rather than to find things from the drop down menus.
