Hi there,
I would like to record in Dorico 4.1 a song with 4 verses. There is no time signatures because the verses do not have the same number of syllables. The note that carry the text of variable length is a whole note framed by small vertical bars. This type of partition is often found in religious psalms. How to enter this song in Dorico 4.1:
- How to enter a whole note with 2 vertical bars?
- How do I make sure there is enough space for the lyrics below this note?
See example below.
I use Dorico Elements 4.1 with W10.
Thanks for your help.
A ‘whole note with vertical bars’ is a breve or ‘double whole note’. It is selected with the number 9, or next to the whole note in the left-hand panel in Write mode.
There is an option in Engraving Options > Notes for whether the breve is shaped as a ‘rectangle’ or a whole note with wings.
Dorico should lay out the lyrics fine: you will need to adjust the alignment to Left instead of Centre in the Properties panel.
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To add that you need to use a different key command to show the spaces within the sentence under the breve, so that the lyrics popover doesn’t ‘move along’ to the next note when you press space (as you’d usually desire). On my Mac, the key command for this is Option+Shift+Space.
Dorico handles this kind of notation really well, in my experience, spacing everything perfectly (once the alignment is set to Left, as Ben says above) - you can now even do the underlined letters in the ‘Edit Single Lyric’ dialogue in Dorico 4.1.
As everyone else says, this is quite easily achieved in Dorico:
There is also a way to show single wings, rather than the default double. To do this, you need to edit the notehead set.
Change the engraving option to round, then go in and edit the round notehead to use the alternate glyph. It’s possible you can’t do this in Elements, so if you’d like to PM me your project, I’d be happy to change it for you and send it back.
As an aside, I personally despise the look of notes with double wings and I wish that the option to choose the single-winged version (pictured above) was a third option in engraving options rather than requiring editing the default notehead set.
Also, the only way to get the tick barline at the end of each system to be spaced in a bit is to add an extra quarter beat (shift+b, +1q), put the tick barline before the added beat, then change the barline at the end of the system to dashed and set the dash length to ‘0’ and then click on the added beat and ‘remove rests’.
