For a large orchestra work, I often have several pages before the first page of music. Title page, a blank page so things appear where they should, instrumentation, program note, dedication, and so on.
Do people generally do all this work in dorico, or in a word processor or other program and then combine into the PDF later?
Being new to Dorico I find the page templates and page layout a bit cumbersome. Just wondering if this is part of the learning curve or me using the wrong tool.
From my experience it’s certainly part of the learning curve if you come from a non-desktop-publishing-like-notation program.
Please watch John Barron’s
video, it’s very comprehensive. Maybe you have to watch it twice – as I did – to understand the context, but it’s worth it.
Dorico 6.1 is still not up to the demands I place on front matter, and likely won’t be for a while, as it is likely not high on their list of improvements at this time. I use InDesign or even Word to make these pages and insert them into the final PDF.
I’m curious where you feel it falls short? For front matter, it’s great. For longer, text-intensive documents, not so much.
I’d like some word-wrap options and columns. Also, it doesn’t really do kerning, hyphenation, and widow/orphan control. Even on front matter of two or three pages, I need all this. Like I said, I don’t expect them to add these, so I use the right tool for the job.
Oh, as a heavy InDesign user, I say Amen to all that.
My biggest trouble with front matter is that if you prepend pages with other template styles for flows after the first flow, the tokens don’t correspond to the correct flow, without requiring additional workarounds. It only switches flows once the first bar is displayed.
Perhaps there’s a way around this that doesn’t feel like a hack, but it discourages me from using one file with many flows for work that requires this (i.e. musicals where you want a blank page between numbers to show the next cue’s title material.)
What’s the best workflow for pulling in symbols, lines, and arrows used in my score so I can create a legend in my front matter? for example this kind of thing (symbols and lines specifically):
I’m happy to do the front matter page within Dorico, but I also use InDesign - either method works for me, though inside Dorico would be a bit simpler. I just can’t really figure out a way to add lines and symbols on their own without needing to be connected to a musical staff in a separate flow… my only guess is I’d have to export an empty staff with lines added as a PDF or SVG, remove the staff etc using Illustrator, and then re-import that back into Dorico as an svg graphic slice. But that seems a bit wonky so I’m hoping there’s a more straightforward solution? Thanks!
For something like this, I’d definitely stick with InDesign. And there are so many ways to automate what you need in that program, it could end up saving you time over the long haul.
Of course for simple arrows I can create that within InDesign, but for the more musical styled symbols (take for example wavy trill markings, or percussion glyphs), it would be great to able to bring those into InDesign rather than attempting to re-create manually (plus so it looks exactly the same as Dorico renders it in the score).
My guess is: create an empty flow, add all the symbols I need, export as a PDF or SVG, and prep each element separately as an .AI/EPS file that I could then bring into InDesign?
I usually create graphic slices from the score as SVGs, then add them to graphic frames in my Title Page template. Maybe not for the examples you showed, though.
Jesper
Have you checked out MusGlyphs? It would shine for this purpose, I think. Maybe not for some lines, but definitely for almost everything else. If I needed precision and repeatable objects, I’d probably create those in Illustrator to use in InDesign.
I would definitely export as PDF in this case. InDesign handles those quite well, and I’ve found SVG finicky on occasion. If you’ve exported from Dorico as a PDF, it’s vector based, with no need to convert to .AI or EPS.
Thank you! Yes I actively use MusGlyphs for some educational materials among other things. What I have in mind for my front matter however are more specific glyphs and custom lines which aren’t covered by it. (Although a lot of my percussion glyphs I might be able to pull from Bravura/SMUFL Unicode?)
The reason I referred to .ai/eps was simply that it would make sense to me to file prep in Illustrator (which I’m comfortable with) - so that I could separate and isolate the elements I need from what I don’t. For example when it comes to adding a custom line, it seems the only way is to attach it first to an empty staff, i.e.:
Ofc I could bring this into InDesign and isolate the lines using a bounding box (basically removing everything outside of the line), but I always find it cleaner to have the original embedded files only containing what they need. So that’s why I was thinking I would prep the individual elements in Illustrator by deleting what I don’t need - and from there I’m used to working with AI/EPS as a native Adobe cross-exchange filetype. But filetype makes no big difference to me, it’s really just about being to isolate lines or symbols without staves!
In my opinion, it’s a lot easier to do front matter in another program. It is certainly possible in Dorico, as others have shown, but it is a bit fiddly to try and manipulate all the text. I personally find it a lot easier to do this in affinity publisher, and to simply bring in music graphics as needed (exported as slices).
Hi Jesper - I wasn’t terribly familiar with the graphic slice tool, but I just tested this workflow and that works great for me. I might just grab a bunch of elements this way and create an asset library of symbols/lines I commonly use, making it easier to pull into InDesign in the future for any project. Thanks for the suggestion!
Great to hear @wing
Jesper
If you’re not made of solid gold, for “InDesign”, read “a DTP program”, such as Affinity, Scribus, VivaDesigner, or various others.
