I’m trying to typeset a song. The first verse, for example, sings a note as an eighth note with one word, and the second verse sings it as two words, as two sixteenths. OK, so I use the Force Duration tool to tell Dorico to tie the two sixteenth notes together without combining them, and then I select the tie and make it dashed.
But then I try to put the lyrics on. For the verse that sings it as an eight, no problem. For the verse that sings it as two sixteenths, I have a problem, as the tied sixteenths are treated as visual only and the lyrics only attach to the real note.
I use non-breaking spaces to get around this. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it’s terrible visually.
You need to add the alternate rhythm in downstem voice 2, then add the lyrics to THAT voice. You can then delete the notes, and the lyrics will remain.
Hi Dan. Well, I thought this was a solution but I have four verses with a few differing lyric rhythms. Your suggestion for voice 2 worked great but I can’t seem to figure out how to add lyrics for verses three and four. All help appreciated.
When you have the lyrics popover open, press the down arrow key: you’ll see that the number to the left of the popover increases. Once it says 3, you’re entering lyrics into the third line.
Thanks, dspreadbury. What I’m trying to do is enter those lyrics on the third line with slightly different rhythms. dankreider’s suggestion works for line two but I can’t seem to enter differing rhythms for lines three and four.
Do you also want to show the differing rhythms in the music? If you need a third set of rhythms, you might find that it’s clearer to have e.g. two verses written one, one for (say) verses 1 and 3, and one for verses 2 and 4, if that’s how the different rhythms happen to shake out.
The other option is simply to show the lyrics as if the notes were there but not show the rhythm in the music itself: if the meter is very regular and you’re in (say) the third verse, then the singers will probably be comfortable with interpreting the rhythm without seeing it. To get the lyrics into the right place, temporarily amend the rhythm so that there are notes at the right rhythmic positions for the new lyrics, and input the lyrics, then return the rhythm of those notes back to their state for the first verse.
If you really find yourself with a lot of rhythmic variance between verses, and you can afford the space required to write the music out again, that’s what I’d recommend: your singers will thank you for making their lives easier!
Thanks, dbspreadbury! Those have all been considerations. I will endeavor to make it as clear as possible for the singer. Your input and advice are greatly appreciated.
I’m facing a similar task at the moment and I tried creating a dummy rhythm to align the second verse with and then deleting the notes. While this does keep the lyrics in place, it also readjusts all spacing which makes some of the now orphaned syllables collide into each other, as pictured in the second image below. Plus, adding differing rythms in a second voice makes the whole workflow a bit messy, as seen in the first picture below with the dummy rhythm still present. As the last post in this thread is over three years old, has there some more elegant way to achieve this been implemented in the meantime?
As for the rhythm of the song, this is a rather jazzy piece, so the rhythms and even pitches do not need to be accurate in every verse, approximations are perfectly fine, however, as in the example pictured below, upbeats do make quite a difference.
If the rhythm (and the pitches) are sufficiently different, then you ought to write it out separately. I really don’t understand – “Ver-nei-” is sung to notes in a “Dummy rhythm”, which are then deleted…?
I want to sing this song in an exam and will not need any sheet music for it, however, we are to submit lead sheets for the pianist, who will not need to know the exact singing rhythm either.
Yes, this is the case. Looking at it, the collision of syllables could probably be avoided if the upbeat notes are written into the first voice and are just omitted in the first verse (and maybe set to cue size later), but generally, this is a notational task that I will certainly face quite a number of times in the rest of my professional life, so knowing about more elegant solutions within Dorico (if there are any yet) would be very welcome.
EDIT: For the current lead sheet, the main requirement is to keep it rather short and simple, so utilizing repetitions with multiple lyrics below would help with this particular task.
They are sung to the notes seen in the upper screenshot.
Now that you mention it, I completely forgot that hiding notes has been made possible at some point, this could be a viable approach.
(But looking at Dorico’s deeper concept, I wonder if an optional alignment of the lyrics with the rhythmic grid (inducing collision prevention mechanisms at positions at which syllables are present) could be a useful addition to the software in a future version…)
