Out of range spectrum

Dorico
1

Sometimes I feel that the “show notes out of range” is a bit optimistic – when have you heard an oboe play an A below the treble staff, or a bassoon play an A below the bass staff? I know these notes are not possible, but when you’re dealing with a big orchestration, cutting-and-pasting voicings without sufficient time to proofread, these things fall through the cracks sometimes…

Conversely I’ve always found Dorico (and Sibelius) to be extremely conservative when it comes to low horn range…

is there a way to edit the out-of-range spectrum for the instruments?

cheers

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2

I would make a backup first, but open your instruments.xml file, and modify the standard and advanced range for whatever instruments you want.

ranges
ranges784×655 82.3 KB

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3

oh - fabulous, thanks! is this also a place where i could add some new instruments?

4

AFAIK unfortunately no. You can easily take an existing instrument you aren’t like to ever use and redefine it, but I haven’t had much success creating an entirely new one. Perhaps others have. A fully featured “instrument designer” has been high on my wish list ever since I started using Dorico.

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