See the attached graphic. It’s the first measure of the harp part in Write mode in the score I’m working on. There are two minor issues in there.
First, notice that to the right of the pedal setting there is a rather large numeral 1. I managed to get that in there yesterday when I was learning to generate pedal settings. (This one I generated directly rather than calculating.) I don’t know why that 1 is there (i.e. how I got it in there), and I can’t figure out how to remove it.
Any clues?
Second is trivial, but as long as I’m asking: It’s about the text instruction above the pedal setting. How do I substitute real flats and sharps (and naturals) in text expressions rather than a b and # (and there is no sub for natural)? I’m obviously not the first person to wonder this.
Finally, an observation. Notice the content of the text instruction. That’s because the low C and D strings on a harp can’t be changed by the pedals. I wrote this piece 59 years ago and guess I must have known that then, which explains why I put in this special instruction, though I’d totally forgotten it. In next measure, the harp plays a low C# whole note and D above it. Note that I said the low D should be tuned to Db. (Not C to C#.) This is a rare case in which enharmonics work in harp music.
However, I find it amusing that Dorico did not turn that low C# red. It could not have known that I intended to add a text instruction to tune it specially. I guess that’s a bug, right? But if so, it’s a pretty subtle one.
That goes with the single bar rest. You can turn that off for your whole project at Engraving Options > Rests > Multi bar Rests > Bar count for single bar rests.
While you’re adding staff or system text, you can right-click and choose Insert Music Text, and then you can pick any musical symbol you want.
The lowest 2 harp strings (C-D) are unaffected by the pedals. Dorico has no way to ‘see’ if they match the pedaling, nor does it read and understand your text instruction on how to tune them. And it actually doesn’t matter. It’s perfectly fine to have a C# lowest string while playing Cb’s or C’s in the other octaves.
Could be a feature request: a warning that you might need to specify the tuning of the low C-D, and onlythen checking if the notes remain playable (and turn them red if they aren’t).
Yes,PjotrB got my point: that’s simply how modern harps work — the lowest two strings are unaffected by pedals. I don’t know the reason for this. And it could be considered a “bug” that Dorico overlooks this, but yes, it’s such an obscure point it’s not worth discussing further. I certainly wouldn’t think it’s important enough to make a feature request (and if I were on the software end of it, I’d grumble about the assignment).
I still need to check out the other issues I reported in this post.
