I have music where multiple instruments are holding a long note. I want to be able to create a crescendo hairpin that starts after the beginning of the note for all of these instruments, and I’d like to be able to add the hairpin for all of these staves at once rather than one by one. What is the best way to do this?
One way to do this is to start Note Entry in the top staff, move the caret to the rhythmic position where you want the crescendo to start, hit Shift+Down arrow to extend the caret to the staves below (or Shift+Up arrow for staves above), and then enter the crescendo. In the gif below I did that by hitting Shift+< and pressing space to extend the hairpin but you can also use the popover.
You could also only do this for one staff, then select the crescendo and Alt/Opt+click to place the crescendo in other staves.
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Thanks, Shift+Up/Down was a key command I haven’t really added to my arsenal yet, and I think that was what I was missing.
However, for some reason when I try to use Shift+<, no hairpin is created. The same thing happens if I try to use it only on one staff. Similarly, Shift+D to bring up the dynamics popover and typing < will not create the hairpin either. If it helps, my music is in 6/8, and the selected note in the first staff (and all other staves) is a dotted half note. I tried to create a hairpin on beat 4. On the left sidebar, the Select, Start Note Entry, and Dotted tools are selected, but changing these doesn’t seem to make a difference.
The only other thing I can think of is that the measure I want to add a crescendo to happens to be a couple measures after a linked dynamic, but unlinking them doesn’t fix the issue.
Is there a place in the Key Commands preferences where I can check what the Add crescendo shortcut is set to? I couldn’t find it.
When you use one of these shortcuts with the caret active, you create a 0-length hairpin. As indicated in @Zalde 's post, you then have to press the space bar to extend the hairpin; the space bar will advance the caret by the currently selected note duration.
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Yeah pressing space is essential when creating hairpins with the caret active!
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Ah, thanks. I wish the 0-length hairpin had some sort of UI indication that a hairpin was created.
Is there any way to create a hairpin with this method that is shorter than the selected note? Since the selected note in the measure is a dotted half note, it’s creating a hairpin of that length, which is longer than I want. If there’s a way to incrementally shorten or lengthen the hairpin by the currently selected grid duration, that would work for me.
Never mind, I figured it out. You have to change the duration of the note value in the note entry options. It’s not based on the currently selected note, but the note entry value will default to the length of the most recently selected note, which is why I got a dotted half note-length hairpin. Thanks everyone for your help!
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