Music Frames in Dorico (Steinberg)

Music frames show the music from a selected layout and allow you to change the
position and order of music on a page. Dorico features master page music frames
and layout music frames.

Master Page Music Frames

All notes and notation items that you input are automatically placed within master
page music frames. They are available by default on the master pages in the
master page sets that Dorico provides. You can create and edit master page music
frames only in the master page editor. They are configured as such that they are
automatically repeated on all pages in your layout.

You can use different master page music frames for different players. To do this,
you must create separate identical master page music frames on the First and the
Default master pages for left and right pages. The following example shows two
master page music frames on the left and right pages of the First master page pair:
Layout Music Frames
You can create and edit layout music frames only on individual pages in your
layout. You can insert layout music frames anywhere on a page in any kind of size
and connect them with other layout music frames by assigning them to the same
layout frame chain.

Layout music frames allow you to insert small musical excerpts from a different
flow within footnotes, for example.

Important:
Layout music frames are considered overrides to master pages. If you remove all
overrides on layout pages, all your layout music frames are also removed.

Identifying Master Page Music Frames and Layout

Music Frames
To differentiate between master page music frames and layout music frames, you
can check the following:

On the pages in your layout, the master page music frames never allow you to
change the assignment to individual flows or players. Those music frame
selectors are grayed out and can only be edited in the master page editor.

If you insert a layout music frame on a page, its Frame Chain selector by default
shows a frame chain that starts with an L. Master page music frames by
default show a frame chain that starts with an M.