Symbol or text in the middle of staff?

Hi all,

I’d like to put a big parentheses in the middle of staff to show that the notes in between are optional. I’ve been searching help about symbols and texts, but it seems all the symbols and texts are placed either above or below the staff. I couldn’t find any way to place it on top of the staff-lines. Did I miss something? Is there anyway I can work around it? Thanks very much!

Charlton

Parenthesis

You can shift them all in engrave mode.
Or you could create a new line with 0 width and () end-caps and allow that to be within the staff…?

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Probably the easiest way is to use square brackets with the Line tool. Arguably that’s more of a standard convention.

(You have to put the line on the first real note, and there’s a property switch to put the line before grace notes. The right-hand bracket has to be set to the right-hand side of the note, again in Properties. Then it’s just a question of positioning the lines to a decent size.)

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Thanks a lot! I guess I’ll use square brackets for now.
I wish Dorico would allow symbols and texts within the staff in the future.

You can move items graphically in Engrave mode to wherever you like, although you have to have Pro, Elements, or be subscribed on the iPad to access graphic editing in Engrave mode.

When moving text some way from their default position, I would recommend disabling collision avoidance first (so Dorico doesn’t continue to allocate space for where they “should” be.)

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