Barlines across staff groups

In order to make it easier to find a particular instrument within a score, barlines can extend across instrumental and staff groups.

Barlines across default staff groups

When a barline only appears on individual staves, it is much harder to locate individual lines at a glance. However, when barlines continue across instrumental groups in the score, instrument families are shown as blocks, which makes finding an instrument much easier.

Figure 1. Barlines on individual staves
Figure 2. Barlines across instrumental groups

By default, barlines automatically extend across staff groups that are joined by a bracket or brace, except for vocal staves, across which barlines never automatically extend. Which staves are included in a bracket depends on the instrumentation and context, but usually staves for instruments from the same family, such as woodwind or strings, are bracketed together.

Dorico Pro automatically brackets staves according to the ensemble type set for each layout.

Barlines across grand staff instruments

Dorico Pro automatically joins barlines across grand staff instrument staves as they are braced. Because staves cannot be bracketed and braced simultaneously, grand staff instruments are excluded from brackets and therefore are not joined with barlines to any other staves.

Barline joins between staves

You can change whether single barlines only appear between staves or extend across the staves as well in each flow independently on the Barlines page in Notation Options. Barline joins only between staves are known as “Mensurstriche”. They are commonly used when typesetting early music to aid readability for modern performers while minimizing the visual impact on the originally unmetered notation.

Figure 3. Barlines drawn between staves

Custom barline groups

You can create custom barline joins and bracket groups by manually arranging your players into groups. Player groups are bracketed together according to the ensemble type set for each layout.

You can also input custom barline joins to determine the staves across which individual barlines extend.