That’s great! Thank you for your insight! Of course please consider slurs too; meaning having the ability to place them between selected notes and not having to constantly specify the placement (first note / last note of the chain etc). This is a case by case decision so a third option in the Preferences saying :” Ties placement : selected note in the chain “ or something like that would be super useful!
Hi, again.
I’ve found two more problems with the “tie chain as single note” philosophy:
-
We cannot select a single measure containing notes that belong to tie chains. To copy something, we need to cut the ties, copy the notes, and then reapply the ties. This is just impossible for more complex music (you can see my score in my earlier comment for reference). It is completely impractical and will inevitably lead to errors—or at the very least, it’s so unintuitive that it’s a workflow killer.
-
When a fermata is placed on a note somewhere in the chain (with more notes tied after it), the tempo is affected as long as the tie chain continues! In the screenshot I’ve attached, you can see what I mean: the green line indicates the area the fermata should affect, but the red line shows the slowed-down tempo continuing until the end of the chain.
The problem? The end of the chain is on the next page! I now have to suppress playback of the fermata entirely to fix this, which is absolutely not how this should work.
These issues make it clear that the way Dorico treats tie chains is fundamentally flawed. Tied notes can and often do carry independent dynamics, articulations, techniques, and even fermatas, and treating them as a single inseparable entity creates more problems than it solves. This approach not only limits flexibility and usability but also reflects a shallow depth of musical understanding of how tied notes function, at least, outside of strictly traditional contexts.
Yes, we in the Dorico team have often been accused of having a shallow depth of musical understanding 
But seriously, you do of course make legitimate points here. Both of the issues you outline are awkward to deal with. We plan to make tied notes behave a bit like grouped dynamics in Write mode: the notehead you actively click on will show up orange, while the others will show up in the blue linked selection colour. You would then be able to, for example, create something at the position of the first orange notehead, rather than at the beginning of the entire note, and it would also potentially be possible for copying and pasting to truncate that note at the first and last selected noteheads in the chain.
This requires some thoroughgoing changes to the way selections work in Dorico, so it’s not something you should expect imminently, but we are absolutely alive to these issues… despite our shallow depth of musical understanding!
10 Likes
@aquarius55, looking at what Dorico can do and the myriad of functionalities for composers, arrangers, players that it implements, tells a lot about the Dorico Team’s deep understanding of how music works. Many of the team member are also musicians and are involved in music creation and execution in their everyday life.
If you didn’t see this (“old”) video, I suggest looking at it: is very interesting and makes me even more respect very much the wonderful work that the team has made and is making every day:
2 Likes
Thank you for the fast and detailed response! I really appreciate the insight into how you plan to address these issues, and I must say it’s very encouraging to hear that the team is actively thinking about ways to improve the behavior of tie chains. The proposed changes sound like they would make a significant difference, and I’m excited to see how this develops in the future.
I have to say, when I reread my comment, I immediately “felt the storm coming…!” Telling the Dorico team that they have a shallow depth of musical understanding is a bold statement, to say the least! I was already preparing to edit it because that wasn’t my intention at all! What I meant was that this specific design choice for how tie chains work feels like it could allow for deeper editing and flexibility. My phrasing definitely came across stronger than I intended, and I apologize for that—it was not meant as a general accusation.
If anything, I’m confident that the team will find solutions that address these challenges thoughtfully, as your response already indicates. Thank you again for taking the time to reply so quickly and thoroughly—it really means a lot to see these concerns acknowledged!
3 Likes
Yes, I have seen the video, and I believe I watched it when it was first published years ago. I was also following the blog from the very beginning! In my response to Mr. Spreadbury, I apologized—my phrasing definitely came across stronger than I intended, but the responses arrived faster than I could edit my comment! (It always impresses me how quick and responsive this community is, by the way.)
For point #2, if you place the fetmata on the quarter rest on the staff below, does that solve the problem? I suspect when you place the fermattas on the long tie chain note, Dorico thinks the fermattas should affect the whole “note”/chain. But I would think if you placed it on the quarter rest, it would only affect that beat, even though it would display the same way visually.
Thanks very much for being so gracious. No apology is needed, but I accept it with gratitude.
2 Likes
Thank you! That’s an interesting approach, and although it seems obvious now, I hadn’t thought of it. I’ll give it a try. However, I believe the origination of the fermata doesn’t affect its effect. In MIDI terms, it represents a tempo change, which affects everything globally, so Dorico simply applies it to every staff (which I think is the correct behavior). That said, I could be wrong—if the original fermata placement on a non-chained note does influence the underlying MIDI message generation, that might explain any differences. I’ll test this and update you if I notice any different behavior.