Problems with numbering the player, not the instrument/transposition

[Serioso]

The standard practice in classic scores is to keep the player numbers for each instrument constant, regardless of the transposition used. Unfortunately, there appears to be no way to do this systematically in Dorico, not even with the newer options.

I’m working on an orchestral score. It has four horns, with different transpositions for each pair. So, in Engraving Options, I have “Number together” for numbering similar instruments with different transpositions; I want the horns numbered I-IV, regardless of their transpositions.

But I also have two clarinets (in B-flat), and if I add a Clarinet in A to each player, I now get Clarinet I in B-flat, II in A, III in B-flat, and IV in A! (My Dorico project is attached.) Now, if I “Number separately” in Engraving Options, that problem goes away. But then my horn numbers I and II get repeated, which I also don’t want.

Transposition Test.dorico (2.1 MB)

There’s an obvious qualitative difference between the two instruments in that I have two clarinet players but four horn players. The “third” and “fourth” clarinets (numbered II and IV in the project) arise as a result of instrument changes, whereas the third and fourth horns are held by separate players. (I suppose that if I had transposition changes for the horns, I might end up with V and VI there, or even VII and VIII.)

So, I want Clarinets I and II regardless of transposition, but also Horns I-IV. If the numberings were assigned on a per-player basis, I would have precisely that. I consider this a pretty major fix to address in the next version of Dorico. Right now, I’m forced to keep my Clarinets in A as a separate group to get the desired numbering, which in turn forces me to adjust other aspects of the layout and engraving. One possible way to improve this is to simply expand the possibility for custom labels or label overrides, which would hopefully extend to condensed labels or to groups.

As a side note, I recently upgraded to version 6.2 from 6.1. I am working on a wish list for the next version of Dorico, but this is a pretty major and long-standing issue that I felt needed its own thread. I have other comments regarding staff labels, but this is the one biggest problem I’m seeing so far.

[Derrek]

You could use Player names on the Clarinets and leave the Horns as is, if that would help.

[Serioso]

I’m not sure how I would use that together with an instrument change. If I do that on the same setup I shared previously, I get this…

…which not only doesn’t fix anything, but actually makes matters worse and introduces other changes that I’m not intending.

[mducharme]

Have you tried adding a blank space before or after the name of the instrument title “Clarinet” just for the Clarinets in A? I have another project open at the moment so I can’t test, but usually adding a blank space is enough for Dorico to think it is a different instrument and number it separately.

[Serioso]

I’ve seen that solution in the past. Unfortunately, it introduces awkward spacing (double space) and/or alignment (no longer perfectly centered), both of which stick out like a sore thumb.

However, for past versions of Dorico which forced numbering after transposition, a variation on this solution would have worked: rename the clarinets in A to “Clarinet in A” and “hide” the transposition. Since the transposition was going to appear before the number anyway, there would be no apparent difference. (Side note: this also allows us to customize the appearance of the transposition itself, such as combining Italian instrument names with English note names, in a way that Dorico does not officially support.)

Unfortunately, doing that now would conflict with my preferred style of numbering before transposition. A separate player group for the clarinets in A remains my preferred workaround for now, despite the pain involved in setting it up. My point, though, is to ask for an approach such that we wouldn’t need to work around it.

[LAE]

I would actually do this the other way around; use player labels for the horns, and reset the numbering in Engraving options:

Maybe you already know, but you also have different settings for showing transposition in the staff label – follow layout options for cl in b and always show for cl in a.

Regarding the problem of showing the staff labels as preferred by you, there are other workarounds to that that I use all the time for a certain house style I work with. Most of it is nowadays covered by using the player name instead (change to Corno I in Fa for instance), but not all. If you are interested, I can dig out the thread where this was discussed.

[Serioso]

Yes, I would appreciate that very much. I tried using player labels for the horns and did end up with an image like yours. Unfortunately, that’s part of the problem; I want the (condensed) staff labels for the horns to read “Corno I, II in Fa” and “Corno III, IV in Si-b” by analogy with the other transposing instruments (ideally “…in F” and “…in B-b basso”, but that’s a discussion for another day).

What’s frustrating is the apparent inability to get a proper condensed label when using player labels; I just get the individual labels separated by a line break, as in the image. If it weren’t for my use of condensing, this could be a perfect solution.

Regarding the clarinets, I experimented with the transposition settings for the A clarinets, as described above, but I didn’t get a satisfactory result. Apparently, I switched from “Never” to “Always” instead of “Follow layout options”; thank you for pointing that out.

[LAE]

Well, I probably do not have an ideal solution for you. But maybe you could adapt the workaround I have been using.

My labeling is for instance “2 Corni in F”, and for the abbreviated label “Cor. [linebreak] (F)”
To achieve this, I follow the tips in this thread Condensed staff label name - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

The players look like this in setup mode:

So the numbering is done manually – In your case you would simply name your players “Corno I, II in Fa”.

This of course has some disadvantages so it all comes down to what you need of the automatical numbering.

[Serioso]

I really like this direction for an alternative solution. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that it will be less painful than my first workaround once I’ve made all the necessary adjustments.

I did try to adapt your workaround, and here’s where I’ve gotten with it so far:

1. Revert to numbering transpositions separately, thereby getting rid of the “additional” clarinets resulting from their instrument change.
2. Change all player names (“Rename Player…”) and instrument names (“Edit Names…”) for the horns to “Corno/Cor. I, II/III, IV in Fa/Si-b” as needed. Getting the flat symbol in the instrument names was very difficult; I had to copy U+ED60 from the official SMFL documentation and paste it as Music Text. The usual {@flat@} escape sequence does work with the player names, though. Note: I actually only needed to change the player names, as I later found out. Also, I can even get “F” and “B-b basso” this way. If the label gets too long, I can add a line break, but only if I paste it from elsewhere.
3. Show player names for all four horns in Layout Options. My greatest fear at this point was that the extra “I, II” would be stuck at the end (as it indeed was up to here), but it was exactly at this point that your earlier suggestion did the trick! Better yet, there was no need to adjust paragraph settings.

What I have now is almost perfect…

Transposition Test.dorico (2.3 MB)

…but I’ve discovered other behavior that might be considered buggy. One of my short player labels gets a period at the end: “Cor. I, II in Fa.” I assume that the flat symbol somehow averts this for the other label. Obviously, I don’t want the last period since I already have the first. So, I try switching my settings for periods in Engraving Options from “Always add period” to “Add period if abbreviation does not end with final letter.” However, this causes all of my other periods to disappear, even for “Fl”, “Ob”, and so on. If I stayed with this course of action, I’d have to manually reinstate the periods in Instrument Names—not Player Names, since those are for the horns only.

And, obviously, if I have split and mixed transpositions for the same instrument—e.g., Horns I and II in F and also III and IV alternating between F and B-flat basso—player labels probably won’t do the trick on their own. I’d have to use a mix of approaches for this one. But then, that situation was going to be the hardest, anyway.