Piano duet - actually getting the lower part on the left page

Dorico
1

The handbell guy stepping out into piano duets with another question. I got the title page I need. Now on to placing the lower part of a duet on the left page and the upper part on the right page. I’m using Dorico 5 and in reading that manual I haven’t seen a page that says do this, then that. I think all the various pieces are in the manual but I haven’t seen a page that strings them all together.

I tried:

I assume the full score with the two parts, one above the other, is to be left alone.

So I went into Engrave for Piano 1. At the top of the default page template is the music frame with the “MA 1 Flows:All Players:All”. For the left page template I switched “Players:All” to “Players:Piano2” Once out of the template the Piano 1 part said only “Tacet” and back in the template editor the right page template also said “Players:Piano2” though I did not copy left to right.

So what steps should I take?

2

You need to unlink the frame of the right page, both in the First and in the Default template., and to assign the Piano 1 to it (and for this kind of template: never click the L>R R>L buttons!)

Here is a short demo (I assume you have a Title Page, since a 4 hands layout must start on page 2)

Note that you’ll have to create frame breaks for the 1st bars of each page to match, it’s not automatic.

3

At the moment the first page template isn’t used. Page 1 now uses the Title page. How should I have done that? What pages go with what templates?

Thanks for the video, which I haven’t watched yet. I’m one of the older computer users who would prefer to read rather than watch because I can read at my own speed, which is pretty fast, and still listen to my radio. So having the manual spell this out would be nice.

4

The manual doesn’t spell out this specific task, but you can read on the basics of underlying techniques here

You define that.

5

There’s an old tutorial on setting up a piano duet layout, which may help you…

6

And here is a template from some nice person on this forum, which you can use as a starting point:
Template - piano duet.dorico (328.4 KB)

7

Nice! There is just a page number change to remove on page 4.

8

For a 4-hands piano duet, consider giving the pages landscape orientation, rather than portrait orientation.

With the pages in landscape orientation the two pianists will sit more comfortably when reading the music.

9

Thanks for the video. I was able to replicate the changes in my score.

Now I have the reverse problem. I made the layout changes to the Full Score as the video implied I should. But if I need to go back to Write for a correction what had been vertically aligned is now on two separate pages. Is there a way for the full score keep that composing ease while keeping the two-page layout for Print? I also see the playback cursor appears only in the second part.

While I learned a lot from the video I’m still surprised something like this isn’t in the manual. I can read much faster than I can watch. While watching I frequently stopped the video to take notes. I’m aware that putting procedures like this, and many other things I’ve puzzled over, could double the size of the manual, and the Dorico 5 manual is already pushing 2000 pages.

10

I’m not sure what problem you have, but in Write mode there are two “views”. Page View shows what a layout will look like when it is printed. Whereas Galley (or Fill) view will always just show you the notes along the musical time line. Perhaps you should make corrections in the latter?

11

Yes, galley view will work if I have to go back to Write. Thanks.

12

I think it’s also possible to create a duplicate Full score layout, using standard Page Templates too. Might be easier for proof-reading too.