Hello all
I’m working on a suite of tunes with 11 different flows. I’m wondering if there is a way to view and edit one flow at a time. I’m currently editing Flow 2 and am constantly being pushed back to the start of Flow 1 every time I switch between Write and Engrave, or whenever I change anything. Is there a way to restrict the current window to just the one flow I’m working on?
Thanks as always for your wisdom.
While it would be nice if Dorico stayed on the same page automatically, it starts jumping around after a certain amount of time a specific document has been open.
Short of closing the project and reopening it or quitting Dorico and relaunching it, you could try to be sure that a big enough portion of what you want to stay in focus is actually selected before you switch mode.
In Write mode, select a couple of adjacent bars.
In Engrave mode, drag a rectangle selection around a couple of bars as well.
It should help, though I have seen this fail in spectacular ways as well.
In previous versions I was using the shortcut to Center Selection to be brought back I don’t remember the last time it actually worked.
The status bar still shows something as being selected but it doesn’t mention the page nor the flow so it is very difficult to find one’s way back.
You could also create sketch layouts (if the work you’re doing isn’t layout-based) that only contain one flow each, and switch between those layouts as needed?
Or, there are go to bar/flow/rehearsal mark etc commands for navigation.
As Michele says though, keeping an item selected when switching modes generally gives Dorico a better anchor.
Thanks all. I’m afraid I’m not yet knowledgable enough about Dorico to understand this suggestions. Or even if I put the question out there correctly.
I’m not sure what a sketch layout is, nor how or why something would be layout-based or not. I’m sure these are good solution though - I’m just still trying to tear my mind out of the 25 year deep Finale canyon, and the the layout and flows language is still a challenge for me. Is “Layout” roughly equivalent to a part?
So maybe if I put it another way: basically what I would like is to be able to work on each flow as if it were an independent piece as I do the basic copy-editing work of moving bars, notes, and text around so that it looks good on each part. So I’m not editing a selected section or notes, just tidying up each instrumental part in each flow.
Maybe that’s the same way of putting it. If so, please excuse my ignorance.
Thanks for trying, all.
I guess it depends on what you ultimately want to end up with, that will determine the best way to work in Dorico.
Do you at any point in the future want to produce printed parts that contain multiple flows, like a book of songs? If so, it’s probably best to stick to a single layout per instrumental part, because not all graphical adjustments necessarily carry through to multiple layouts, and you could end up needing to eg move a particular bit of text around twice.
A Layout is basically a score or part: it’s a view of music that can show one or more players at the same time. Eg a violin part layout will just show the violinist’s music, but a percussion part layout might show the music of all the percussion players you’ve got in the project. A score layout typically shows everyone all at once. A vocal score layout might include a rehearsal piano player, but that rehearsal piano doesn’t have to appear in the full score (where it’s redundant).
If you want each flow to start a new page, there’s an option for that:
On the other hand, if you don’t want to produce parts that contain multiple flows – and you’ll only ever print eg Violin 1: Flow 1 at a time – then you don’t have to have a multi-flow project at all, they could be separate projects. Or, you could have a separate layout for each player and each flow, but that could quickly multiply to an unworkably complicated degree if you have say 10 players and 20 flows!
Thank you, that’s all very helpful. Much appreciated. I do think of this project as 11 discreet songs within the one project, so I’ll be printing individual parts. It may have been a mistake to make this all one project as opposed to Finale-style individual files. But this is all useful stuff to learn. Thanks for taking the time to teach me.
Parts are a kind of Layout; as are Scores. You can have any number of Layouts, as different “views” of the same music, with different combinations of Players and Flows.
In fact, you can even have no layouts. There will be nothing to see, but the music but will be in the document, waiting for you to create a Layout.
Hi Pete,
Go to Setup Mode.
Create 11 new Score Layouts.
Name them 1…11 if you wish.
Select each new layout (in the right panel) and deselect all flows except one (in the bottom panel).
You get the idea. Layout 1 = Flow 1, Layout 2 = Flow 2, etc.
Now to work on one flow only (your initial question), select its Layout from the Dropdown Menu (at the top).
Right on, thanks. That’s great - does the trick!
Thanks so much all for these great tips as I slowly reformat my Finale-addled brain.
This strikes me as unusual. I find that Dorico centres whatever is selected when I switch modes.
If nothing is selected, then the view stays exactly where it is.
You can also quickly jump where you where using the goto short cut. So type J and make sure Go To is highlighted and tab something like f2,b30 and you will jump to flow 2 bar 30.
My daily template is a orchestral score with an embedded sketch score. The Sketch score has its own “Sketch” section with sketch players, and has a dedicated “Ideas” flow. The full orchestra only belongs to the Full score and any other scores I might have, and the rest of the flows other than Ideas.
So I start by putting all my ideas for a piece into that Ideas flow, rearrange and block them out, put in lots of markings and text etc. Then when I’m ready for composing out I copy and paste bits over to the full score and finish by orchestrating. Last step is to polish the CC as having finished stems is required.
Works quite well, its a good creative process and minimizes effort. The Flow system is flexible and works great for this. Otherwise it works great for the creative part all the way through to the final MIDI CC finishing.
This sounds really interesting, and similar to what I used to do in Finale. I’d love to work this way, but am still not literate enough in Dorico to be able to envision what this would like in Dorico. Any chance of sharing some screenshots?
Its not hard actually, here are the key parts …
The rest of the list above is just the normal orchestra. BBCSO has the solo leaders, I haven’t found a better way of using them. I’d like to assign them as a voice, but its a solo with a section player, and I’m not sure you can have an individual part. Anyhow that’s WIP, if anybody has good ideas … otherwise the sketch are just there on the bottom
Here’s the sketch score, you can see only the Sketch insts belong to it, but they are ‘hidden’ members of the flows
Here’s an orchestral instrument, keep them out of the Ideas flow
Playback template, pretty simple
NP Sketch is just this
The VST setup under Play is pretty big and what you’d expect. Given the way NP works, I probably just originally assigned NP to everything, and then manually set the orchestral instruments to the VST setup.
Save that as a template then done. I’ve been continually tweaking it, occasionally I’ll update it with the latest Dorico settings, like the humanization defaults, and other Library settings. Just make a new file, make the changes, delete the old template from the hub and save the new one.
Great, thanks. This helps. I’m looking forward to plugging back into my Dorico learning post-holidays.
