Pickup Bar on First Line

Dorico
1

Hi,

Getting started with Dorico 3.1.10, I’m trying to format a solo transcription that has 16 bar sections and a 2 beat pickup at the start of the solo.

I want the whole solo to display with 4-bar systems, but have the first system only to include the 2 beat pickup without perturbing the rest of the flow.

IOW, I want 4 and 1/2 bars on the first line, and then 4 bars every line thereafter.

So bar,I have not been able to figure out or find how to do this.

Could somebody kindly guide me here? Thanks!

2

Dorico’s fixed casting off (which you can set on the Staves and Systems page of Layout Options) doesn’t currently handle pick-up bars, so you’ll need to manually set up the breaks for the first system, but once you’ve done that you should be fine. You’ll find that Dorico will cast off the music with only three and a half bars on the first system, so go to Engrave mode, then select the note at the start of the pick-up, and the final note of the fourth full bar, which will be the first bar on the second system, and choose Make Into System. Thereafter each successive system should automatically have four bars (provided you’ve set fixed casting off in Layout Options to four bars per system).

3

Perfect! Thanks very much.

4

Actually, the above worked fine in the Write and Engrave views, however the Print view is showing 5 measure systems throughout.

Is there something for me to do to fix this?

(Zipped project file attached.)
So What (trumpet solo) 04b.zip (945 KB)

5

I’ve not downloaded your file but the likelihood is that you’re viewing a different layout in Print mode. Ensure that the selected layout in the left panel of Print mode matches the selected layout in the top dropdown in Engrave/Write modes.

6

OK, I think that’s it. Thanks!

The difference is between ‘Full Score’ and ‘Trumpet’, where I had edited ‘Trumpet’ to look as desired.

So, would I now go to ‘Full Score’ and edit that in the same way?

If I had edited ‘Full Score’ in the first place, would ‘Trumpet’ have automatically followed?

7

No, the two layouts are separate. Having two layouts in a solo piece doesn’t really make much sense; the expectation is that most music will be for more than one player, and thus you’d want a score layout and various separate part layouts.

When working on a solo piece, it really doesn’t matter which layout you work with as long as you make sure to always work with the same layout. You can delete the extra one from the right panel of Setup mode, if that makes life easier.

8

OK, thanks much for the info and advice!

FWIW, this project began as a MusicXML import (from Guitar Pro, where I did my initial note entry), so as it happened, the Import created the 2nd layout in addition to ‘Full Score’ which was there in the New document originally.

Where both are present, are a Full Score and a Part layout separate as to both format and note content? or only as to format?

I observe that both layouts initially contained the imported notes, but if I edited the notes in either layout, would they stay in sync?

9

The note content is shared, but the format is completely separate. Also, you can override Properties from the global settings (using the bottom panel) and they will stay within the particular layout unless you explicitly propagate them. These are things like if a crescendo is shown as “cresc.” or as a hairpin. Enharmonic (re-)spellings are a special case: when you change them in a Score layout they auto-propagate to all the parts, but never the other way around.

10

Thanks!