Playing Techniques Text Won't Keep Still

Dorico
1

I’m finalizing my first score in Dorico and one thing I’m noticing is that some of the playing techniques text won’t keep still. There are a number of instructions which I have repositioned in engrave mode which, after making other changes to the score, seem to be repositioning themselves on their own (and creating collisions). Could someone more experienced tell me why this might be happening and how to prevent it? Thanks

2

Do you have multiple playing techniques attached to the same rhythmic position? If so, you’ll need to use the Tucking Index property: give a 0 Tucking Index value to the object you want closest to the stave, 1 to the next one, 2 to the next etc.

3

Ahh thank you. This is certainly the case in most instances. I just tested it and that will solve the majority of the issues. Is there anything else that could be going on? It’s definitely also happening in places where there is only one technique .

It’s also happening with staff-attached text, occasionally.

4

Dorico’s automatic positioning has some collision avoidance built in (though you can turn it off for staff text, either as an individual property or on a global basis). For instance, if you have a text item positioned at the same point as a very high note (say three ledger lines), then if you delete the note (or lower it by an octave) Dorico will automatically shunt the text item down.

When you drag something in Engrave mode, you’re not offsetting it from a fixed position; you’re offsetting it from whatever the current default position is. If you delete the aforementioned high note, or change the Engraving Options for that type of object, or change the casting off, or any number of other things, Dorico will update the underlying default position and retain your manual offset relative to the new default position.

For this reason, it’s really important to get into the habit of digging in and setting the Engraving Options the way you want them, and only manually dragging stuff once the compositional side of things is basically complete. For instance, most of my files have dynamics a bit closer to the stave than Dorico’s factory settings. Same goes for text and lyrics. I like Fermati a little further away…

If you get in a pickle, it’s often quickest to go Edit > Reset Position (or turn off the offsets in the properties panel) before redragging an object.

5

OK, I"ll keep this in mind. Thanks

6

There have certainly been some subtle bugs whereby the positioning of some items is not completely stable. Normally this would manifest in items moving further away from the staf unexpectedly when a nearby item is edited. If you have encountered anything like that, please try to construct a minimal case by removing as much of the music in your project as possible while still reproducing the problem, then apply the ‘Silence’ playback template via Play > Playback Template to reduce the file size, and finally zip up and attach the minimal project here with steps to reproduce the problem.

7

Not OP, but I was creating a guitar example for someone and I managed to create a project with unstable vertical positions and beaming.

  1. In Guitar 2, re-enter the music so that it has the default 4+4 beaming. (Copy Guitar 1 and turn on Laisser vibrer tie for each note.) Move the last note right and then undo. The beaming changes and does not reset.
  2. Move any text item right and then undo. The text items in Guitar 5 and 6 move up.

Hope this helps!
unstable_layout_beams.zip (580 KB)

8

Thanks, JesterMusician. The problem you’ve discovered appears to be specific to right-aligned text that happens to cross the previous barline. We’ll look into this.