Finale refugee here. I’m liking a lot of things I see in the tablature capabilities, but wondering if there is a way to do “plus” frets for dulcimer tab in Dorico? Both for standard 6 ½ and 1 ½ frets and using diatonic numbers on a chromatic. It was a pain in Finale. Hoping for something better in Dorico.
Are you able to upload a screenshot or otherwise of what you are referring to?
Yes. My instinct tells me there may very well be a solution for this.
It’s this, right?
I have found no way to automate TAB for Dulcimers to translate both 6 and 6+ (or 1 and 1+) frets. I did alter the fretting to default to 6 rather than 6+, but that left me to add the 6+ and 1+ alterations in PDF’s of the parts. (Considering the spacing involved, perhaps I should have left/made the plus versions standard and added the plain 6 and 1 in the PDF’s.)
IIRC I asked @dspreadbury about this at the time, but I didn’t expect much could be done–not because Daniel was uncooperative, but because Dorico’s TAB utility is not set up for a diatonic instrument with subsequent chromatic alterations.
After all, the original dulcimers were diatonic; the plus-frets were added later. So notating these is something of a kludge work-around.
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Yes, exactly that. Similar to the way it can be done in Finale, I am abusing another notation to make a “+” that stays with the note. I set the “tap” symbol to be a “+” and then put a tap on the note in question. Then in engraving mode I manually move the “+” sign to the correct position. Rather clunky but it gets the job done. I would love to see a real half fret capability built into Dorico.
So would I, but I don’t think the way that feature has been coded will support this, so I don’t hold my breath.
I may try your solution next time I arrange something for our Dulcimer group.
Thank you it looks very tidy. The Dorico team read every post so perhaps they will deem it useful to add in the option so it easily is implemented when you need it.
I was not aware of the 1/2 fret
So thinking out loud here. Is there a way to put fingering indications next to notes in tablature? If I could hijack one of those and make it a “+” and assign it to the note (fret number) in question, it would save me having to move it into position in engrave mode. Still not ideal, but it would mean one less operation for that note. I haven’t found a way to put fingerings in tab though.
Dorico can’t show fingerings on tab, I’m afraid.
I do all my final editing of Dulcimer parts in a PDF editing program.
It’s a minor pain, but its better (for me) than using TablEdit.
Thank you, everyone, for your input. I was hoping to be able to do as little “special” editing as possible. I very often start tablatures in TablEdit but resort to bringing them into Finale (now hopefully Dorico) to get things exactly how I want them. TablEdit is fine as far as it goes, but there are just some things that require the flexibility of a full-featured scoring program.
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