User manual

Rhythmic position
In Dorico, notes and items exist at rhythmic positions, which are calculated using their place in
musical time in the
ow rather than their position in a specic bar that has a particular time
signature.
In Dorico, musical time is the number of beats starting from the beginning of each ow. For
example, instead of a note existing on beat 3 in bar 4 in a 4/4 time signature,
Dorico considers
that note to exist at beat 15, regardless of the time signature and its position in a bar.
This approach allows for a lot of exibility. For example, because notes and items exist
independently of bars and time signatures in Dorico, you can change the time signature without
changing when notes happen in relation to each other or adding rests at the end of each bar.
Instead, the barlines simply move to different positions and note grouping is updated as
required, such as notating a quarter note as two tied eighth notes if it now straddles a barline or
crosses the half-bar. You can even start writing notes without inputting a time signature at all.
Similarly, you can easily push notes to later rhythmic positions or pull them in to earlier ones
using Insert mode, without the risk of them being incorrectly notated. It also means you can
think of items existing in the music independently of notes, because items exist at a particular
rhythmic position, rather than being attached to notes.
In Dorico, the rhythmic position of notes and items is separate from their graphical position on
the page. The benet of this is that you can input items at the position in the music where they
must apply and then move them graphically without causing them to apply to different notes or
inadvertently split multi-bar rests. For example, if you want strings to play
pizzicato from the start
of a bar, but because of tight vertical spacing you want to move the pizz. indication slightly to the
side. Attachment lines link items to the rhythmic positions to which they apply, so it is always
clear where they belong.
RELATED LINKS
Note and rest grouping on page 525
Beam groups on page 511
Time signatures on page 841
Inputting notes in Insert mode on page 175
Notes on page 632
Caret on page 159
Rhythmic grid on page 158
Layouts in Dorico
Layouts combine musical content, as represented by ows and players, with rules for page
formatting and music engraving, and allow you to produce paginated music notation that can be
printed or exported in various formats. For example, part layouts only include the music for that
player whereas full score layouts contain all staves in the project.
A typical project for an ensemble contains several layouts. For example, a work for string quartet
in three movements contains four solo players – two violins, one viola, and one cello – and three
ows, one for each movement. Such a project might require ve layouts:
●
Four layouts each containing the music from all three ows for one of the solo players, that
is, the individual instrumental parts
●
One layout containing the music from all three ows and all four players, that is, the full
score
Each layout provides independent control over practically every aspect of the visual appearance
of the music, including independent staff size, note spacing, and system formatting. Each layout
can also have independent page formatting settings, such as page size, margins, running
headers, and footers.
Dorico concepts
Design philosophy and higher-level concepts
36
Dorico SE 3.1.10