Finale Refugee here again, struggling with the absolute basics of Dorico. Today I’m trying to build a template for a simple folk ensemble. The issue I’m having is trying to set up the First Page for my score, and then the Default. Tough to explain the problem in writing, but here goes: I’ve got all the info I want on the First Page, but then when I click “apply” and then close, all I can see is the Default page, which does not show the First Page info I plugged in. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to view the First Page of my score. I’ve attached screenshots below of the edit window for the First page, and then what I see when I hit “close”.
FYI, the Project is called “Stranger Still Book III”, and the Flow is called “Warren Pryor”.
Wow, thanks Tom. That did it - I removed the page override, and it worked. Curious what the function of “page override” might be, and why that is a default. There’s no way I could have figured that out on my own, as it seems a strange default. Anyway, thanks so much, I’ll know to be mindful of that going forward.
If you make any changes in Engrave mode to the items on a particular page that came from a template (for example, moving a text frame, not something like respacing staves), then that page is marked as having overrides from the template. At that point, changes to the template will not affect that page.
An override is not a default – it’s something you have changed. If you altered the position of the text and music frames on page 1 itself, for instance; instead of editing the First template, then you’d get an override on the page.
Thanks friends, duly noted. I have no idea what I’m doing out here, bungling my way out of Finale and into Dorico with the handicap of working with a much older and feebler brain than when I learned Finale. As always, I’m grateful for the support from this community.
Still struggling mightily to understand the basics of how Dorico works, and the words that it uses to describe things, as I keep not being able to find the answers to basic questions in the manual or on YouTube. Clearly, I don’t yet have a grasp on the key words. So, apologies in advance for some more dumb questions.
First, I can’t figure out how to set the distance between staves and parts. I can see in Engrave view how to move individual staves, but surely these is a global setting to get a consistent spacing between each part and each system. I’ve attached a two-part lead sheet I’m working on - all I need is for the melody and bass parts to be evenly spaced, and then for each system (the two parts) to be evenly space. Finale had a “Space systems evenly” setting, and I’m sure it’s in Dorico somewhere, but I can’t find it.
It’s sort of correct, but there seems to be extra spacing, extra text blocks, and the like.
I’m really missing something fundamental about how this program works, despite the many tutorials and pages I’ve read. I feel like there’s a key out there somewhere that I need to find to understand the way this thing works, and I’ve yet to find it.
Thanks for the help. Some day I’ll get there, maybe.
You can’t change page templates if the pages have overrides (that little red triangle showing top right in the pages panel) - right click it and remove all page overrides.
The basic rule is: Sort out your templates before fretting over any layout matters. (It’s another example of the Dorico principle: Work from global to local).
pjohnst2: please know that there are other “much older and feebler brain” people out here trying to move from 30 years of Finale to Dorico. Keep it up.
Thanks all. I’ve got 25 years into Finale, so my hat goes off to all of you out there with more time in than that trying to make this shift. I feel like I need a support group down at my local pub to get through this.
I appreciated that key bit of wisdom about going Global to Local. Sadly, I remain perplexed. I imported this file as MusicXML, and it did all of this. I can’t parse the distinction between “templates” and “layouts” in Dorico logic, nor how you do the Global then Local thinking on an imported file, which will have stuff already laid out. Like all you other Finale Lifers out there, the majority of my initial battles with Dorico will be around importing existing music, rather than starting from scratch. So I appreciate that advice for when I’m finally able to start working on new music (at the rate I’m learning, my best estimate for when I’ll get to that stage is around 31 Feb 2112), but I’m really dealing with trying to clean up imports here for currently active projects.
Is it as simple as setting up the templates (or layouts?), then importing the MusicXML, as opposed to just the ol’ “Open with” command on the MusicXMLs?
I really would experiment by ignoring any legacy layout. Switch off all the MusicXML import options (especially the new one for system breaks and frame breaks) and see how quick it is to get a decent layout in Dorico using just a very few tools (layout options: note spacing and vertical spacing being the two to focus on)
