Suggestions for Dorico Tips?

Dorico
1

In the coming year, I’ll be writing occasional blog posts on “Dorico Tips” for Scoring Notes. The first one should be posted this week or next; it’s showing how to use layout music frames to add prefatory material to a score.

I’d appreciate suggestions for posts you all think would be helpful to new users (or anyone for that matter). Obviously there are a growing number of excellent resources out there, but Phillip thought this format might also be helpful. The posts don’t necessarily need to give information that is obscure or extremely niche, but of course it would be best if they don’t introduce too much redundancy in to the blogosphere.

Thanks in advance!

2

We have been adding all of the weekly #TipsTuesdays short videos that Anthony produces weekly for the various Dorico social media channels to the tutorial category on the Dorico blog, so you can find them here. You may get some inspiration from those posts for things that you could write about in a bit more detail, if you like.

3

Great, thanks Daniel.

4

One thing you might want to cover is how to properly add things like Title Pages or other pages that need a different Master Page.

The intuitive thing to do is use the Insert Page function and apply the new Master Page. But, this is actually wrong as the Insert Page function always sets a page override.

The solution is to do an Insert Master Page Change. What isn’t obvious is that this also inserts a new page rather than applying to the existing page.

5

I use prefatory staves for most pieces I engrave, and have been delighted by how in Dorico 2.2 you can easily adapt adding a Coda to provide the necessary gap in simple situations. Here’s an example of the default spacing Dorico gives you:

Prefatory using Coda.PNG
Prefatory using Coda.PNG629×529 26.7 KB

This is from a piece with six flows/sections, each with its own prefatory material. It works as easily in each flow.

Much appreciate your contributions to the Dorico community, Dan! I look forward to reading your tips.

6

One of the hardest things when being new to a software is the vocabulary. i.e. I went mad when I searched for “duplicating” a passage (as it is called in Logic that way). I looked for copying, doubling, also repeating but found nothing in the help menu (I found a lot, but different things). At the end it was simply pressing “R” but it took me hours. The forum helped.

So what I miss in any tutorial is a kind of graphic icon where you can easily see what it’s about. For those repetitions maybe a bar with notes and an arrow pointing to the next bar and the word ‘repeat’ above. Or a page with a framed header and up/down arrows for size adjustments. Or a horn and crossed out accidentals for hiding the key signature. Things like that.

The existing tut-videos are extreme helpful to understand the whole program but they don’t help if you need something special right now. It’s hard to watch 12 times “Hi, I’m Anthony Huges and in this video…” just to see that it’s covering something different.

The Dorico videos explain the structure and possibilities of the program. What I miss are problem-solver tutorials. Just simple ‘do-this-do-that’ tips for single tasks.

I listed a few of my showstoppers here. Some of them are solved for me but maybe interesting for other new users too.

  • The header/title is named like the song file is saved, but underneath is written “Flow 1”. How do I get rid of it?
  • I want chord symbols for bass, guitar and keyboard… and for 16 bars solo sax. How do I do this?
  • The repetition endings need these little wings like in the real book but I don’t know what they are called.
  • The music needs too many pages (especially piano for a live gig). How do I save space without damaging the layout?
  • I want the name Trumpet and not Trumpet in Bb. And if I can change it, can I save that forever?
  • I want to copy midi file information into a band/orchestra template. How do I do this?
  • I want to use Noteperformer but would like to have my own piano VST for playing.
  • How do I save my own templates?
  • How do I change a C# note into a Db? Is there an enharmonic button (up to the sharps, down to the flats)?
  • I want to record live but listen to Noteperformers playback interpretation as if I typed the notes in.
  • Can I temporary reduce the score (i.e. full orchestra to strings and woodwinds only) when I’m working on a passage that doesn’t need the other instruments now? Like muting the tracks I don’t need and keeping only the tracks I hear on the screen?
  • The last bar doesn’t end at the right border of the page layout. How do I change that?

I think I’m not the only one with the same questions. Maybe that helps to get tutorial ideas?

7

Saxer, thanks for your input. Some of these I do plan to answer in blog posts, but it’s quite a large assortment of questions!


I know it’s not the point of why you’re writing, but here are the answers. Hopefully they’re helpful to you and others.

— The header/title is named like the song file it is saved, but underneath is written “Flow 1”. How do I get rid of it?

Layout Options–Page Setup–Flows. Don’t show flow headers.

— I want chord symbols for bass, guitar and keyboard… and for 16 bars solo sax. How do I do this?

Setup–Right click on Sax–Chord Symbols–Show for all instruments. Then you’ll need to select and batch-hide the chord symbols you don’t want shown on the sax part.

— The repetition endings need these little wings like in the real book but I don’t know what they are called.

Engraving Options–Barlines–Repeats

— The music needs too many pages (especially piano for a live gig). How do I save space without damaging the layout?

This is a more complex answer. Here are a couple: Layout Options–Note Spacing, reduce from 4 to 3.5. You can also reduce vertical spacing. Lots of options.

— I want the name Trumpet and not Trumpet in Bb. And if I can change it, can I save that forever?

Setup–Edit Name–don’t show transposition

— I want to use Noteperformer but would like to have my own piano VST for playing.

You can do this in Play mode, manually.

— How do I save my own templates?

You can’t exactly. Save a file and make it read-only. You can also import a flow into a file that is set up as you want it.

— How do I change a C# note into a Db? Is there an enharmonic button (up to the sharps, down to the flats)?

Alt-minus and Alt-equals

— I want to record live but listen to Noteperformers playback interpretation as if I typed the notes in.

Quantize.

— Can I temporary reduce the score (i.e. full orchestra to strings and woodwinds only) when I’m working on a passage that doesn’t need the other instruments now? Like muting the tracks I don’t need and keeping only the tracks I hear on the screen?

Select some bars of the instruments you wish to hear, and press P. You can also create a custom layout that includes only the parts you want to see, like “Strings layout” for example.

— The last bar doesn’t end at the right border of the page layout. How do I change that?

Layout Options–Note Spacing–Justify final system

8

Wow! That’s a fat answer list! I didn’t expect this. Thanks a lot! I will print that out and pin it on my studio wall :slight_smile:

Have a nice 2019!

9

Craig, I’m afraid I don’t follow.

It’s true that inserting a page always creates a page override (no way to avoid that). But inserting a master page change does not insert a new page. Unless I’m misunderstanding you. Can you clarify?

10

It does if you have a standard music page selected. Try this…
Create a Title Page Master Page.
Select the first page of music in Engrave mode.
Do an Insert Master Page Change.
Select your new Master Page and set Current Page Only.
A new page should be inserted with the new Master Page as page 1.

11

Ahh… because it doesn’t contain a music frame, and the music flow needs to finish. Ok, I understand you now.

12

Yeah that’s it. It’s tripped up a few people. That’s why I mentioned it.
Happy New Year!!

13

Perhaps you could recommend some useful keybinds. I have ` bound to toggle signposts (though I might switch this to an F-key), Alt-1/2/3/4 for selecting top/second/third/bottom notes (really useful for orchestral writing), K to remove rests (was Ctrl-R until it was replaced by Record). I could probably use some more to speed up my workflow!

EDIT: Oh! Also forgot \ for Change Voice to Next Voice on Staff. Very useful when arranging!

14

I definitely could. It quickly devolves into preference; everyone has a different workflow. I suppose a list of common bindings submitted by multiple users, to give suggestions to the reader.

15

While this is an ingenious work-around, it does make nonsense of the word Coda (the concept of the tail wagging the dog comes to mind!) and I hope the developers will provide a decent solution for such Incipits. The only difference between Codas and what is needed is that Incipits inherently come at the beginning, whereas Codas come at the end!

David

16

Daniel, I can’t find a “tutorial category” on the Dorico blog. Am I missing a hidden button?

17

There’s no button for it at present, but the category exists, as you can see from the link I have provided above.