It’s pretty simple to just do the whole thing as a line, and then there’s no fiddling with positioning and alignment. In the Edit Lines window, pick the line style you want and click New from Selection. In your “new” line click Line Annotation Editor, then under the Category drop down select Music Symbol. Click New, then add your elements and position them however you want:
Back in the Edit Line Annotations window you’ll now probably want to add some value to “Gap on the right.” If you’re happy with how it looks in Edit Lines …
Thank you so much for this - worked a treat and introduced me to a whole bunch of customization options that I didn’t even know were available in Dorico!
I ran into the same situation, trying to change 8ba to 8vb.
8va means Ottava Alta, the 8+v is octave, hence ottava bassa should be 8vb.
If 8ba is ottava bassa then 8 is ottava and the equivalent should be 8al not 8va.
The default in Dorico is 8va and 8ba which doesn’t make sense…
Had you seen the whole thread, you would have understood that “8va” is a contraction of “ottava”, while “8ba” is “ottava bassa”. I’ve usually seen “8va bassa”, not “8ba” yet however.
There needn’t be consistence in everything anyway.
The ultimate consistency is to get rid of the "va"s, "ba"s etc. and just use 8— above the notes for octave higher and 8—. below the notes for octave lower. That is what you will see in fine editions of the last century. 8va is an earlier convention that became obsolete and then unfortunately (IMO) reentered relatively recently.
Hadn’t heard of that but it makes sense. Any examples off the top of your head? This notation convention is definitely all over the place. I work with the theory department at an American university, and we teach students 8vb = down 1 octave, 8va = up 1 octave. then just “15” means 2 octaves (depending on which side of the staff the label is on)
@emusic, any piece of piano music published by Henle, Wiener Urtext, Peters, Schirmer or other fine publishers will have the standard 8— convention (often done with dots instead of dashes.)
While I do agree with that, I wonder about that on reading a large score. At a glance it might be difficult to spot which staff it belongs to, or easy to confuse anyway. I do feel like doubling with with a text identification can help make that somewhat less ambiguous, although no one seems to agree with that text identification could be haha.
8vb is an Americanism, short for 8v[a] “basso” – it has nothing to do with the word “below,” but is a shorter way of saying “8va basso,” which doesn’t always fit beneath a note. Bela Bartok, for one – along with many, many others – gives us simply the 8, followed by the line. Above the note, it means 8va, below, 8ba. MANY publications use both the more modern system of leaving out the [unnecessary, really] “va” or “ba” [or “vb”] altogether. Does Dorico allow for this convention (just the 8, followed by a line)? I am asking because I need it in order to put that 8ba beneath a single 8th note, followed immediately by a [loco] 8th note. It would be very convenient, and logical, for Dorico to make this an option. I tried the properties panel and no options exist. This is an inconvenience for the composer, in my opinion.
Again, it’s not an error. It is simply a logical abbreviation just as w/ means “with” and many other conventions. That “b” is a quirky way of squeezing in the word “basso,” and is not any different than so many other alternate abbreviations that have worked their way into musical notation over the years. I fully agree with “Estigy.” This reminds me of the brief fad where somebody somewhere insisted everyone in the world had to spell Rachmaninov (Rachmaninoff) with a “k,” Rakhmaninov. It’s no big deal, tomato tomAHto. We can’t all write in Cyrillic just because it’s more accurate.
This probably won’t amount to anything, but I’d like to support adding 8vb as a default ottava symbol to Dorico; I’ve come across it very often, and many musicians I know understand what it means clearly.
I understand it’s not “technically” correct, but I feel like there is a consensus around 8vb, and it’s recognized in sheet music enough to the point where it’s a valid choice for transposing down an octave; why not include colloquial symbols in Dorico when they’re now commonly encountered by musicians? At this point, it’s an accepted part of sheet music canon IMO.
Thanks, Mark! I’m quite new to using Dorico, though I’ve owned it a long time. The many options are incredible – it takes a while to discover them all. This works great. I did know, with Dorico if you don’t see exactly what you want, it is very easy to create your own ANYTHING by choosing Library>Playing techniques… (or whatever) and that creating shortcuts to get anything done is remarkably easy as well. So, “8vb” as an option, for example, could easily be created by anyone really wanting to use it.
Wow… last I checked, Dorico can include Electric Guitar, Electric Bass, Chord Symbols, etc. Where does it say in the description of Dorico “Notation Software for Classical Music”?
