Hi All!
Long time Finale user here making the ever-painful switch to Dorico. Overall I feel like I’ve got a handle on the program now and am excited to start my Dorico journey.
I’ve been working to set up a proper score template and have been able to solve “most” of my issues, but this one continues to elude me.
I would like to group my percussion staves under one percussion label as seen below:
(Numbered parts grouped under one centered label.)
I’ve tried using both group players and single players while messing with the engraving options for identical instruments held by section players, but that doesn’t seem to apply to percussion staves.
Once I got over the weeping in the corner about my 18+ years of developing an ecosystem around Finale, the transition hasn’t been so bad. There’s certainly some quarks, and my OCD is freaking out about losing some of the fine tune control over unimportant things like staff names, but as time goes by I’m finding there is usually a Dorico way to do what I want. I hope this is one of them. Any help is much appreciated!
You can get close to this if you make a group called “Percussion” - the only difference is that the word Percussion ends up being vertical instead of horizontal. The bracket can be deactivated if you don’t want it.
I experimented with that a bit. I didn’t love that option, but if that’s the only solution at the moment I can probably work with it. I’ve also toyed with just forgoing playback and then changing the percussion instruments to violin and changing the name to percussion.
I know it’s a relatively minor gripe, but it throws off the flow of the instrument list on the score for me.
Dorico can only group names like in your first picture when the names are truly identical: if you’ve written “Percussion 1”, “Percussion 2” etc (with the number explicitly included) then the names aren’t identical any more, unfortunately.
Dorico automatically numbers instruments when they belong to the same player type, have the same name, and are in the same player group (or both in no player group).
I can’t remember off the top of my head whether Dorico will number them in this instance, but you could try naming all the players simply “Percussion”.
In this instance Dorico named the percussion staves for me. All are named simply Percussion and then were auto numbered.
It’s worth mentioning that I can achieve the desired effect using a violin instrument and then editing the name and details to reflect a percussion staff. The downside is I lose the ability to use percussion maps.
I was hoping to get the best of both worlds.
I had a quick look at the code that creates the grouped labels for adjacent players, and percussion kits are explicitly excluded from contention for this. I’ll need to spend a bit more time to investigate why, but in principle I think we should be able to add an option to handle this automatically in future.
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So this is probably as good a place as any to ask for advice when setting up a default doc.
it seems dorico works at the opposite end of the set-up spectrum than finale. in finale, i always went from a condensed to a full score, whereas the functionality is from full to condensed in dorico. would the recommendation be to create all the individual staves and doublings first and then create all the perimeters of condensing after? In the above examples, could you create percussion staves and create then create the doublings for the perc instrumwents you want to assign to the specific staff? same as with pitched instruments?
I think a useful way to think about it is to consider what performance materials you will need in the end. Think about what instrumental parts you need. One part generally equals one player, though in the case of percussion scores you might choose to assign several players to a single percussion part. You should definitely let Dorico handle the heavy lifting of condensing for you.
Since 95% of everything I do is orchestra or orchestra with chorus (lots of Christmas stuff with that setup), I have set up a template file in finale that consists of: the top 10-12 staves as a sketch area with the entire orchestra score plus chorus spread out underneath in a standard format. So when i’m done with the sketch i can copy and paste into the full orchestra score, do editing and make scores/parts. any other ensembles i just use the same template and edit from there. is there any work flows in dorico that prevents or enhances this setup?
Certainly nothing to prevent it. I would consider making multiple score layouts so that you have layouts that both include and exclude your sketch staves. You should also explore instrument filters in galley view, which are like Staff Sets in Finale.
is there any problems copy/pasting from one dorico file another? i guess why i have (had) a large template is so if i had to add anything or discovered something i didn’t have in a template but was made in a different project, i could add it to the template for further use. from what i can see, you don’t have to do that in dorico as things are save in the app, not the template. is that correct(ish)?
I had a feeling that Percussion staves were excluded. Hopefully this is something that we can add in the near future. Until then I suppose I will go with my workaround. It might be worth adding both (on for playback, one for print) and then hiding the playback staves.
As long as we’re talking about future features, it would be nice to be able to attach names to groups and brackets like you can in Finale. Then if you have custom or non-standard ensembles there is a quick and easy way to name a group while maintaining a standard score layout. (As opposed to the current group function in Dorico.)
Anyhow, I appreciate the replies. If it’s not too much trouble I would like to hear what you find when you dig further into this.
