I’m using the Lyrics tool to enter sticking for percussion parts, but they are causing the layout to look like this:
When I remove the lyrics, it looks fine. Any ideas on how this could be fixed on my end?
File:
tenor part weird.dorico (3.3 MB)
That’s not a lyric issue specifically, rather an issue that there’s simply too much music forced onto that page.
If you’ve locked the page using frame breaks, consider deleting them, and/or reducing the ideal inter-system gap in Layout Options.
I guess I assumed Dorico would, as it usually does, intelligently increase the space between staves where necessary, and push lower staves on the page over to the next page if necessary. There are no Frame Breaks anywhere, at least none I can see via the flag that usually shows up when one is present. I increased the inter-system gap, but then other pages all have huge gaps:
Before it casts off the music, Dorico has to estimate how much music it thinks it will be able to fit on the page given the presence of particular kinds of notations, and the combination of lyrics both above and below the staff and dynamics, plus rehearsal marks, is causing there to be sufficient discrepancy between the pre-spacing estimate and the post-spacing reality that you end up with a crowded page.
What I would probably do is reset the inter-system gap to something smaller, perhaps 4 or 6 spaces, then use the fixed casting off options to set a fixed number of systems per frame, perhaps 9 or 10.
Here’s one option of handling it, although a lot of this is subjective of course:
- Ideal inter-system gap increased a bit
- Minimum gap between systems with inter-system content increased a bit
- Thresholds for vertical justification increased (so the 2nd page doesn’t justify vertically, instead uses the minimum/ideal gaps)
- Casting off adjusted, mostly following phrasing
- Some Engraving Options adjusted, to allow lyrics to sit closer to the staff but a fraction further from other items; likewise for text items and rehearsal marks
I notice you seem to have employed two different approaches to controlling the gap between the bottom of the page and the bottom of the music: one is raising the bottom edge of the music frame on the First page template for parts, the other is massively decreasing the music frame bottom margin. The only thing about mixing these two together is the music frame bottom margin you can change per-layout, but the size/shape of frames on page templates affects all layouts that use the same page template set. So for parts that require 2 pages, their bottom system gets really close to the edge of the page because there’s only a small music frame bottom margin, and the bottom of the music frame on your Default page template is still right near the bottom of the page.
tenor part weird_LH.dorico (3.0 MB)
Thanks to both of you for the suggestions. I have fiddled with the inter-system gap enough to get a readable part now. Increasing it by just 1 or 2 spaces helped quite a bit.