8va

After interring notes then adding 8va, the notes drop an octave and I have to shift them an octave up again. Shouldn’t they stay where entered?

No, as I know MIDI editor reflects the real effect of your notation.

Yes, I understand that, but when I enter notes, then create and 8va, the notes should stay were they are and sound an octave above what is written, but they shift down an octave. When I shift the notes up an octave, and click the note, it does sound an octave nighter…which is correct. Having to shift the notes after the fact makes no sense.

«Lets Dorico thinking and do his work !»

Remove the 8va,

Select your passage,
Make it at the real height press
(command + Alt + arrow up)

And put the 8va again…

This is the real way that our mind figure that situation when we hand written music !

I disagree. I’ve been doing this for a very very long time. When I used to write music by hand, I enter the notes where I want them to be in the music, then I enter the 8va. Why would I write the notes so high up to begin with, then write 8va and erase and re-input the notes?

I am sorry to contradict you, Nicholas, but I think Claude and Dorico are right. The 8va line is there to ease the readability of very high pitched notes, but it does not change the fact that it is the real pitch. Your brain has done a kind of reverse engineering job, which I can really understand (having used unlogical apps myself), but the logic is to input the notes where you want to hear them and then adjust the way they look on paper (with 8va lines).
Anyway, I do not think selecting these notes and applying an octave up should be such a problem, shouldn’t it ?

I would agree with you if I were entering the notes via midi keyboard, then your reasoning would be correct. I enter notes as I entered them on paper. The task of shifting the notes an octave higher would be easier if notes stayed selected.

The development team has for some time said that 8va and like indications would be considered clefs in Dorico, which is why you find them with the clefs.

The solution is clear. You can…

  1. Enter the notes at sounding pitch, and then apply the 8va
  2. Enter notes at written pitch, apply the 8va, and then transpose them.

If enter 8va as a ‘clef’ in the popover before entering notes, you can enter them where you want to see them.

I understand. There are many things, when I first started using Dorico, I thought were counter intuitive, which now I agree with. This is most definitely not one of them. Thanks.

I tried that, it dosn’t work.

Odd… it works for me?

Maybe it works if it’s the first thing in the measure, not in the middle of a measure.

Still odd… that works for me too. Just tried it to make sure.

Ok, I’ll try it again, thanks
Great, it works. I didn’t realize you could invoke 8va while in note-input mode. I thought I had to enter the notes first, then select them. Thanks very much for your help.

Here is the simplest process I have found (other than entering notes at finale pitch before applying the octave indication).
octaves.png

The same idea works for other operations that deselect the notes. For example if you want to split a beam and put a slur over the group of “split-off” notes, editing the beam leaves the notes selected, but creating the slur deselects them.

So it saves time to do the steps in that order, not the reverse.

Great idea, thanks