I’d like to stretch the use of cues a little by adding them to an extra staff created above a Basso Continuo staff. See the attached screenshot. In this example, violin and voice alternate, and the basso continuo players can see their part while following the leads. I can see similar uses in oratorio and opera, particularly in recitative.
Here’s how I’ve set it up:
The staff size of the extra staff is set at 75%.
In Engraving Options > Cues > Design the “Cue note scale factor” is set to 1 since within the reduced staff the notes need to be full size.
I’ve set “Instrument name in label” to “Use full name”.
In Layout Options > Players > Cues I’ve selected “Show cues”.
In Notation Options > Rests > Rests in additional voices > “Bar rests in cues” I’ve used “Omit bar rests”.
This works beautifully in so many ways!
However…
As you can see the instrument name is too small to be useful.
It would be great if the size of the name could be varied in a future version of Dorico. Or if as a temporary measure, though not so good obviously, the instrument name could be omitted so that it can be added with Shift+X.
So near, yet so far! Have I missed a setting? Or maybe there’s a work around?
Btw if you’re wondering about the sharp on the last note of the second bar in the snip, the music is by a Renaissance composer who wrote accidentals on every altered note outside the key sig unless the previous note has the same accidental. I’ve seen this way of writing accidentals many times in music of the period, and I look forward to the day when (hopefully) this is implemented in Dorico as an option when the development team work on early music. At the moment I use hide/show accidentals in the properties panel. Also it’ll be great to have ficta available as standard, and not have to add them with Shift+X. It was tricky to find the right characters, font and size (though once created they can be copied).
I’m loving Dorico 1.2!
