I’m working on a four-part choral score with (two-stave) organ accompaniment. The vocal parts have lyrics and dynamics in standard layout, there are rehearsal marks in the score and I’m using factory default layout settings at the moment.
Here is a snippet of one of the pages - the only one with an actual collision between two staves, but others have rehearsal marks overlapping the previous system, or systems which are clearly closer than the default limit. This is Engrave mode but the same thing happens in Print view.
Am I doing something wrong? Surely, by default, Dorico should be avoiding this kind of collision above all else? Even if it shouldn’t for some reason, I’m at a loss to work out how to fix it.
The obvious answer is “reduce the rastral size”, which I do as a matter of course, but since I often condense to SA+TB or hide empty staves, the likelihood is some page will reach the threshold to have three systems per page, and the problem will recur on those pages instead.
This is something I run into regularly. I write choral scores 90% of the time, so I don’t know whether this is a particular issue with those due (presumably) to the extra space requirement for lyrics. Would be interested to hear if you have this experience with other kinds of scores, and absolutely delighted to know how you fix it!!
Mark
PS I’m still on Dorico 5 - anyone know if 6 fixes this?
What is the Frame Fullness percentage (at the bottom of the page)?
What is the Staff Size? If that’s A4 or Letter, it looks very big.
Realistically, for two systems of SATB + keyboard on a page, you want a size of 5 or 6.
If you have locked systems to fit the frame (page), then you’ve tied Dorico’s hands.
Also note the spelling of ‘mountains’.
And if the scoring doesn’t change, I wouldn’t bother with Abbreviated labels on every system. Everyone knows their line.
For more specific guidance, we really need to see the document, or a screenshot of a whole page in Engrave mode, showing all Signposts.
What is the Staff Size? If that’s A4 or Letter, it looks very big.
Realistically, for two systems of SATB + keyboard on a page, you want a size of 5 or 6.
If you have locked systems to fit the frame (page), then you’ve tied Dorico’s hands.
It’s A4, size 3, the factory default size. I haven’t made any Engrave mode adjustments whatsoever, so no systems are locked. The frame is 109.4% full, which Dorico did all on its own. I’m loath to post the file as it’s not my piece, but here’s a full-page screenshot, with all signposts visible (if there were any);
Now, I totally agree size 3 is too big (no idea why that’s the default, to be honest) and I have every intention of changing it. But here’s what happens to another flow in the same file if I change to size 5;
Not quite as calamitous but still unusable. Sure, I can keep going smaller until hopefully I hit a sweet spot where (say) pages with three systems don’t collide, but it’s not quite small enough to produce four-system pages. That doesn’t seem to me like the intended usage here. I’d expect it to (by default) put as many systems on a page as will genuinely fit, and no more, then leave me to reduce the size to what I need.
EDIT: you can see in the first screenshot that, two pages back, it made the decision to put just one system on the page. This is why I think this may be a bug - my somewhat wild guess is that the algorithm doesn’t take fully into account the extra space used by lyrics.
I’d strongly recommend watching the Discover Dorico video tutorials about Page Layout.
The first thing I’d suggest is reducing the top page margin a bit, to give you a bit more space on the page. (Possibly the bottom, too, though I can’t see the edge.)
Also, find a piece of similar music that’s been published, and take a ruler to it. Measure the margins, the staff size, and the distances between things.
You can fix the number of systems per frame (page) in Layout Options, so you could fix it to either 2 or 3 systems, and then work out what staff size best fits that.
FWIW, I generally use a staff size of about 5.3mm (15 point), which is slightly smaller than size 6. I can usually knock choral scores without any manual vertical adjustments.
Thanks Ben. All useful suggestions - most I’m somewhat familiar with, but there are undoubtedly things I’ve missed over the years. These are still ways to fix the problem once the issue has occurred, not to stop it happening in the first place.
For what it’s worth, I’ve played around with other kinds of score and it’s not an issue with lyrics alone. Anything that extends the space required for a staff will eventually contribute to a collision. Interestingly there seems to be a cut-over depending on the frame fullness (is that really what it’s called??). In the score I’m messing around with, if this is under 120% the systems will collide, but as soon as it goes above 120%, individual staffs (or at least their dynamics, playing styles and so on) will collide and the systems will be nicely separated. Personally, I don’t think this is the behaviour that should be expected under any reasonable use case.
While Dorico might slightly overfill a frame by a few percent; I would be very surprised if Dorico is automatically filling a frame over 120%, unless you’ve constrained it with Casting Off options or Frame Breaks.
If you want to send me the score privately, I’ll happily critique it discreetly. It’s the kind of thing that probably needs only few adjustments – but knowing which ones is difficult in the abstract.
That’s very kind, Ben - thing is, I have another 6 movements to add, several of which have different part layouts (solos, duets, a cappella SATB) so I don’t think there’s any point tweaking it now, as chances are it will only break again when the other layouts are added. I will push on with the inputting and see where I am when it’s all there, then if I get stuck I may take up your kind offer.
However, it wasn’t difficult to work up a silly example where Dorico squeezes at least 120% into a frame. Yes, this is extremely contrived by adding out-of-range notes - it’s just to show that under certain conditions Dorico certainly doesn’t spread things out nicely. This is a brand new project with no layout or engraving changes of any kind, except setting the Rastral size to 5.
Those percentages are 123.4%, 106.2% and 114.1% respectively. Note that the first page the systems don’t overlap, it’s the staves that collide. If I bump some of those low notes up a couple of octaves one by one - eventually it will flip so that the systems overlap - this is when it gets below 120%.
I assumed from previous comments I could attach files here, but I can’t see how… I’ll find out and add it later if possible.
OK, that makes a little more sense - apologies I didn’t spot this in my previous search, though I probably wouldn’t have looked that far back.
At least I know it’s a recognised problem! I surprised there isn’t some reasonably straightforward back-tracking algorithm, as surely a casting-off decision should be checkable to see whether it results in a collision or not. But what do I know, huh…
Most of the time one has to zoom in on decent rastral size and vertical spacing settings, before Dorico can solve the layout properly. In your example (except for adjusting the low test notes) I changed to rastral to 5.5mm, intersystem gap to 12, and vertical justification to this:
I think I read the fairly stark warning against using custom space sizes in online help, and took it too much to heart… It seems the best way to reach a satisfactory solution is to set this to a carefully chosen custom value. The score I originally posted has quite a wide variation in system heights, and the default options are just too course-grained to get the balance between avoiding all collisions and leaving unnecessary gaps - added to which I’m under a three-line whip to ensure that the text is “still legible”, so every millimetre feels like a big step!
Underneath that original post you can click through to all the other threads where it gets quoted, with some other attempts at explaining why it happens.
My own attempt (with the disclaimer that I'm not a software developer)
As I understand it, the ‘naive’ solution of if vertical fullness % > 100, bump system to next page would only work on the assumption that all subsequent music frames are the same size. Fundamentally, Dorico can’t assume that to be true, so it needs to recalculate every time. But because the content of any specific frame depends on (the size of) all the frames around it, it could turn into a recursive computational nightmare. To avoid that, step 1 in the algorithm is a quick estimate of the system height, but this can be thrown off if something pushes the staves further apart than expected.
This is what the manual has to say about rastral sizes:
The term comes from the rastra engravers historically used to draw five-line staves on blank paper. Because the rastrum is a fixed object, people became used to their set sizes and Dorico Pro continues this tradition by offering users a selection of rastral staff sizes.
If you have to follow a publisher’s house style, you should probably indeed stick to the fixed staff sizes as specified. Possibly you read some advice in that vein from another source. But with digital engraving, everything’s arbitrarily scaleable so there’s no technical reason to avoid custom staff sizes.
