Tip: Notation tips for creating worksheets
- There is no requirement to use time signatures or meter, simply input your music without worrying about bars or barlines.
- Force accidentals to be shown or hidden.
- Hide stems to show only noteheads.
- Make music items larger, by any percentage.
- Use noteheads that display the pitch of the note.
- Remove Rests so they simply do not appear in your music.
- Hide Time Signatures – you may need to adjust note spacing (see below) in order to retain a space to write one in by hand.
- Delete barlines wherever necessary, without the need to rewrite lots of music.
- Use hidden Coda sections to create gaps between questions.
- Adjust Note Spacing to position music items exactly where you need them.
- Set the barline used at end of flow. Choose from single or double barlines, or even no barline at all.
Tip: Make a music worksheet
- Add a new flow of music for every question in your worksheet. Input the music you will use in your worksheet, however you can always add further questions later on if required.
- Use Project Info (found in the File menu) to give your worksheet a title (use the Title field in the Project tab) and to populate each Flow Headings with the text that will be comprise the questions.
- In Engrave mode, disclose the Flow Headings section and double-click the Flow Heading to edit it. Double-click the text to edit it and apply the required formatting. In this example I reduce the size of the text and align it to the left to look more like questions.
- Use Layout Options (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+L) to allow multiple flows on the same page. In this example I have also reduced the Flow heading bottom margin to position it closer to the music.
Tip: Force the duration of notes
- Dorico uses musical rules to determine how durations are notated.
- These depend on things like meter and context, and can be set in Notation Options.
- You can override these settings for specific notes using Force Duration.
- Uncheck Force Duration to revert to Dorico’s default.
Tip: Create a vocal score layout with piano reduction
- Sometimes you may have a project for choir and orchestra, and need to produce a vocal score that contains a piano reduction. The piano reduction should not appear in the Full score.
- Add a new player and assign a piano to it. Create your piano reduction, perhaps using some of Dorico’s powerful editing features.
- In Setup mode, select the Full score from the Layouts panel, and in the Players panel uncheck the Piano player. This will mean the piano reduction is not shown in the Full score layout.
- Create a new Custom Score layout, give it a name, and check any player you want to appear. In this case, that would be all of the vocal players and the piano reduction. Remember also to check all flows you want to appear in the layout.
- Choose the Vocal score from the layout selector in the toolbar. You may need to make some changes to layout options in order to get the layout looking exactly how you want.
Marching percussion template for Tapspace Virtual Drumline
The current default marching instruments in Dorico for e.g. marching tenor drums or bass drums are not automatically mapped for use with Tapspace’s Virtual Drumline (VDL) and also do not contain as many notehead types (percussion techniques) as you might need. I’ve therefore created a Dorico template file (link below) with the noteheads created and mapped for playback using VDL 2.5.5.
You may have used a template for other software before and will hopefully find this one uses a similar mapping of noteheads to percussion techniques. To make writing for drumline as quick as possible in Dorico I’ve also mapped the noteheads/techniques across two octaves of your MIDI keyboard. By setting the Dorico preference for note input to ‘use staff position’ and with a minimum four-octave keyboard you can both switch notehead types and enter notes for any drum. For ease, the notehead mapping is the same across snare drums, tenor drums and bass drums, with only a few minor tweaks for cymbals.
Standardised notehead mapping for snare, tenor and bass drums in Dorico
For full details, please also see the included Drumline documentation PDF as it explains the note input preferences you need to set in Dorico to use the template as well as the mapping across the keyboard and a full list of the available noteheads for snareline, tenorline, bassline and cymballine.
You will also need Dorico 3.1 or later, and if playback is important to you, please make sure you have VDL 2.5.5 installed and working before using this template.
- Download Dorico VDL Template (zip, 2.6MB, updated 20th October 2020)
You can also watch the Discover Dorico session where we discuss and show the template in detail here: Discover Dorico Hangout on YouTube.
FAQs
The included Drumline documentation PDF also has a common questions section as the noteheads will not audition correctly as you enter the notes (but will on playback) and there are also some tweaks you can make in Play mode for some of the extra techniques that require MIDI CC messages.
I do not suggest making your own changes to this template at the moment, but if there changes and suggestions that you have to improve the template please get in touch with John via our forum or community Facebook group.