Layouts in Dorico

Layouts combine musical content, as represented by flows 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 flows, one for each movement. Such a project might require five layouts:

• Four layouts each containing the music from all three flows for one of the solo players, that is, the individual instrumental parts

• One layout containing the music from all three flows 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.

The default formatting of pages in layouts is determined by master pages.