Staff spacing in voice-piano layout

Dorico
1

Dear all,

a question for those who work extensively with voice-piano layouts (e.g., lieder, vocal reductions, etc.).

With my usual Vertical Spacing settings (50%/100% justifications), I’m getting too much space between the vocal stave and the piano grand stave. I’ve tried to fiddle a bit with those value (from the defaults which should be 60-80, or 50-80) to many other values and the results were still disappointing.

I’ve also tried to reduce the minimum amount between single staff and staff group but since the spacing is quite wide (3 systems because 4 would be overcrowded, 9x12 page, 6mm stave) that setting has no effect (or almost none).

My guess is that I should try to get more ‘system-justification’ and less ‘staff justification’ but the spacing between the two piano staves is quite narrow (perhaps I should increase that?).

I could go on with endless experimentations but perhaps someone here who works a lot in this setting can share their experience?

Thanks a million!

2

Without a visual, if not a Dorico excerpt, it is difficult to give specific advice.

3

I suspect you want to set the first justification threshold to 100, so that Dorico never adds space between the voice and piano staves.

The space between voice and piano is “Staff to staff group”, and the space between piano staves is “Braced staff to braced staff”. BTW, when vertical justification adds space between staves, it will never add space between the staves of a 2-staff instrument. It might be better described as adding space between instruments, unless there’s a use case I’m not thinking of.

4

I see. In that case I would then have to manually space everything which is worse than correcting what Dorico does. I was thinking/hoping there was a better solution but it is not that bad in the end.

Yes, sorry, I was going by heart and performing poorly at that!

This is very interesting and helpful to know.