On page two, I don’t know why the first system starts so high and blocks the title and why all of the systems on page two are spaced so far apart.
Walzer tutorial.dorico (1.1 MB)
The first system starts high because you have a very small value in Layout Options > Page Setup > Music Frame Margins. This controls how much space Dorico provides at the top and bottom of music frames. Your values are:
If you change these to the Dorico default 40pt and 30pt, you’ll see that your music no longer crowds the material at the top, because now there’s a bigger margin inside the music frame.
(Of course, now your music flows onto a third page, which may not be desirable.)
As for the second page in your original file, this is because of the setting in Layout Options > Vertical Spacing > Vertical Justification.
Because the page was more than 60% full with the default gap settings, Dorico respaced the systems so that they took up the whole frame. If you don’t like this behavior, you can change this setting to 100%.
1 Like
Thanks, that solved it (altho on my screen it was in inches (") rather than pts. Is there a chart somewhere that shows the equivalents?
Also.is there a way to get everything on two pages and have it still be readable?
You can select a preferred measurement unit in Preferences > General. There are 72 points to an inch; many people like to use points in Dorico because it’s the most granular option. (Moving something by a few points can be easier to wrap your head around than moving it by a very small fraction of an inch.)
So 40pt is 0.556 inches, and 30pt is 0.417.
Edit: The preferred measurement unit is what Dorico will use to show you measurements (except for things that are measured in spaces), but you can always enter things using whatever unit you want. So if you were to type “40pt” in that first box and then tab out of it, you’ll see that Dorico will handle the conversion to inches for you.
When you’re trying to massage spacing, it’s all about compromises – something is going to have to be a little bigger or smaller than your default settings.
In your case, if you change the music frame margins as indicated above, you’ll have one system that spills over onto page 3. One way to get rid of this is to go into Layout Options > Note Spacing and make the “Default space for crotchet/quarter note” a little smaller. You’ve got it set to 3 spaces; if I change this to 2.75 spaces, the music fits on two pages because all the notes are a little closer together.
You could accomplish the same thing by leaving the note spacing alone and changing the size of your staves, in Layout Options > Page Setup > Space Size. You’ve chosen Rastral size 4, which has a space size of 4.61 points (or whatever the inch equivalent is). If you change this to a custom space size of 4.5 points, the music fits on two pages, but all of it is just slightly (2.5%) smaller.
Thanks! You’re amazing and speedy!