Portable Left/Right score when large number of players - and a sub-bracket disappearing problem

Dorico
1

I keep an eye on the Dorico forum and I’ve not seen this Left/Right score idea talked about before - please say if it’s been covered. Sub-brackets come up in the forum as occasionally problematic, and I’m looking for a trick or workaround for a problem with a custom L/R layout.

I’m engraving a substantial multi-player multi-choir piece where the full score needs to be A3 page size in order to be readable. I’ve created a layout similar to a piano duet secondo/primo score with half the singers on the left page and the other half on the right page so that I can print a score on A4 paper and get readable notes. It makes a full score that’s portable for the conductor, and it works as a study score. There may be other uses, for example for singers who like to sing from tablets who can click/swipe twice to the right to follow their part while seeing adjacent instruments in their choir - and all instruments are available in a single PDF. Lots more I could say.

I’ve made a minimal Dorico score that exhibits the sub-bracket problem I’m having. I’ve added sub-brackets to left hand page in Engrave Mode, and they appear on all left hand pages. However when I add sub-brackets on to the first right hand page then the left page sub-brackets disappear. And vice versa. Grouping players in Setup mode doesn’t help, and I can’t think of much else to try. It may simply not be possible at the moment. Score below:

Thanks for any thoughts on the layout idea, or on the bracket problem.

Best to all, Chris
Sub-brackets problem.dorico (465.3 KB)

2

One thing to try is change the Alto to Soprano then rename it. Then Dorico’s natural bracketing will kick in and give you the desired sub-brackets.

For the Tenor/Bass you will have to use Clef and Transposition overrides to get the different Clefs/Transpositions.

3

Thanks, Craig. I’ll explore natural bracketing.

I should be more explicit about my players. It may quite a fiddle to change instruments on this scale, and there may be side-effects with making SATB all the same instrument. Here’s my setup (I’ve used generic names):

CHOIR 1 (main bracket for 8 players) made up of
Choirs 1A SATB (sub-bracket for these 4) + Choir 1B SATB (sub-bracket for these 4)
CHOIR 2 similarly
CHOIR 3 similarly
and so on.

Chris

4

Unfortunately, Chris, I don’t think you can approach this in exactly the same way you would approach a piano duet. You can only have a single Bracket and Barline Change at the same rhythmic position, so you can only define one for the LH page or the RH page, but each will overwrite the other.

I think your only option would be to use two flows, which may be impractical for other reasons.

So definitely worth looking into whether you can get an acceptable bracketing result without using explicit bracketing changes. If you can’t, let me know what convention you’re missing, and perhaps we could look into adding it.