General placement conventions for slurs

The placement of slurs relative to the staff, and therefore their curvature direction, depends on the stem direction of the notes within the slur. Depending on whether slurs are placed on the notehead or stem side of notes, their endpoint positions are different.

Slur direction

A slur on a single staff always curves upwards and is placed above the notes, unless all of the notes under the slur are up-stem, in which case it curves downwards and is placed below the notes. If a slur applies to a mixture of up-stem and down-stem notes, it is placed above the staff and curves upwards.

Figure: Examples of the slur direction changing according to the stem direction

You can set your preference for whether slurs follow the stem direction, or always appear above notes, on the Slurs page in Engrave > Engraving Options.

Note

In jazz scores, slurs are sometimes treated as an articulation and so positioning all slurs above the staff is preferred.

Stem-side slurs between unbeamed notes

In Dorico, slurs appear between the stems of unbeamed notes when placed on their stem side, and the default setting is for them to attach a short distance from the end of the stem.

You can change where slurs attach to stems by adjusting Vertical offset from end of stem in the Endpoint Positioning section of the Slurs page in Engrave > Engraving Options.