You can edit which flows and which players are included in any layout, of course, if you need to.
In a typical project, you will have a full score layout, which by default contains the music for all players from all flows, and you will also have a number of part layouts, which by default contain the music for a single player from all flows. To actually bring your music into concrete, notated form that can be printed out onto paper or displayed on a device for a live performer to read, you bring together some combination of flows and players into layouts. We’re taking a new approach that has more in common with desktop publishing applications than it does with the existing mainstream scorewriters.Īs I wrote in part 12 of this diary, Dorico projects can contain multiple independent pieces of music, known as flows, which can even be for completely different combinations of instruments, assigned to players, which represent the human beings who will ultimately perform your music in the real world. For example, page furniture (such as page numbers, headers consisting of movement titles or instrument names, plate numbers, and so on) must not interfere with the music, and the music must start and end in defined places on the page, whilst still allowing the flexibility that’s needed to handle exceptional circumstances (such as footnotes or critical commentary). Being able to quickly produce a stable and consistent page layout can be a challenge that tests the skills of even the most experienced users of scoring software. One of the areas in which we are trying to make Dorico offer unique and powerful functionality not found in other scoring programs is in page layout. In this instalment, then, I’m going to tell you about Dorico’s page layout features, and also talk a little bit about lyrics. Our team in London and our colleagues in Hamburg continue to work very hard on the integration of Cubase’s audio engine with Dorico, but there is still much to be done. I know that many of you are waiting for details about playback, and I will share some in (I hope) the next instalment of this diary. In the meantime, it’s time for another development update. Knowing that there are so many musicians out there waiting for Dorico and looking forward to adding it to their toolboxes is great motivation for us as we work hard to ready the application for release. When we finally announced Dorico’s name last month, and let you know when you will finally be able to use it for yourself, we were inundated with responses on Facebook, Twitter, on the new dedicated Dorico forum on our web site, and by email.