Spoken 'Narrator' part

Dorico
1

I am typesetting a piece for orchestra with narrator.

The Narrator part is spoken, mostly not in rhythm, but sometimes in rhythm.

I would like to have the non-rhythmic (ie most of the) narration in boxed text at the top of the page, and as system text so it extracts to all the instrumental parts. But where it is not rhythmical I don’t want to have a Narrator stave.

For the bits where the narration is in rhythm, I’d like to have a single-line stave with the words as lyrics below the staff. I also need this to extract to all the instrumental parts.

I managed to achieve these effects in the original Sibelius typesetting, but not sure the best way to manage all these things in Dorico. Any suggestions very welcome.

Thanks in advance. Bernard

2
  1. In Setup mode, add Player holding a one-line instrument (anything you like from the unpitched percussion section). Then right-click on the instrument and change its name to Narrator. Use that for rhythmic narration.
  2. Go into Layout Options, and then to the Vertical Spacing category. At the very bottom of that dialog (scroll down) use the Hide Empty Staves section to ensure that the Narrator “instrument” doesn’t appear unless needed [having set this, if you need to get that stave back just go into Galley view and enter the notes there]
  3. Use Shift+Alt+X text for system text that appears in all the parts.
  4. In Setup mode, Shift-click all of the parts in the right panel, then tick the Narrator in the left panel. That will add the Narrator stave to all of the parts. You’ll need to rename the part layouts in the right panel so that they say “Violin” rather than “Violin + Narrator”.
1 Like
3

Perfect thanks @pianoleo

4

I have used this method for adding a narrator line in the score, and the work-around is working, but some of the narrator parts are full paragraphs. I am having to use the horizontal spacing in Engrave mode to make fermata measures where the narrator speaks extremely wide. Is there a better way to do it? I use option/arrow and click on the square, holding it down for a while, the hourglass flashes for a while, eventually it moves over, but not usually enough, so I do it again…This is time-consuming and feels sketchy at best. Massive overrides, which I know you don’t recommend!

5

Have you considered using SHIFT+X Text for those passages and setting system breaks to help you with spacing?

6

I did! That’s how I entered the text onto a random player staff…

7

I’m manually using system breaks, but sometimes the measures with text fall in the middle of a system. It’s an orchestral score, so there’s room for that…

8

Don’t forget the approach musical theater (and some chamber opera) scores take, which is to just have spoken text printed, like a snippet of a play script, between systems of music. This is a good way to lay out long narrative passages, and easy to do in Dorico with text frames.