Any fast shortcut/option to ad an Octave to a group of notes

[Rob_Tuley]

I couldn’t really tell whether you were trying to make a joke and failed, or trying to be sarcastic and failed.

Either way, it was just water off a duck’s back.

[thiagotiberio]

@Daniel at Steinberg

My idea for building upon this is to add a new popover, probably bound to Shift+I for interval, that would allow you to quickly add intervals above or below the selection by typing…

Daniel, that sounds really great! You have my vote, whatever it’s worth. -π

[dspreadbury]

The new popover has been fully implemented and will be in the next update. If you want to get a peek at it in action, I believe John might show it in this month’s Discover Dorico session (which is on Dorico’s first birthday on Wednesday this week).

[MarcLarcher]

Great! I won’t miss that birthday

[thiagotiberio]

@Daniel at Steinberg

The new popover has been fully implemented and will be in the next update. If you want to get a peek at it in action, I believe John might show it in this month’s Discover Dorico session (which is on Dorico’s first birthday on Wednesday this week).

FANTASTIC!!! Thanks Daniel & team — and happy birthday, Dorico!

[alluvialsphinx]

Apologies for resurrecting an old thread here, especially one that led to such a great new feature (the shift-i shortcut to the popover)! But I do believe there’s an aspect of this topic that hasn’t been fully explored quite yet.

Back when this was originally discussed, Daniel posted:

@Daniel at Steinberg

My idea for building upon this is to add a new popover, probably bound to Shift+I for interval, that would allow you to quickly add intervals above or below the selection by typing e.g. “m3” to add a minor third above, or “3,6” to add a diatonic third and sixth above, or “-2,4,7” to add a diatonic second below, and a diatonic fourth and seventh above. I think this will ultimately be more powerful and even faster than what we devised in Sibelius years ago for adding intervals above or below using the number keys.

It is indeed extremely powerful and a great feature to have, and we’re all better-off for it! However, there are two aspects of the Sibelius system of adding intervals above and below using the number keys that I believe were underestimated, and which are currently unavailable through Dorico.

1. First, there are two fundamental ways to think of a set of intervals within a chord – either in relation to one note, usually the lowest (3,5,8 for a major chord spanning an octave), or in relation to each other (3,3,4 for the same chord, if you’re thinking diatonically). Dorico’s current system is great if you’re using the former approach and building common conventionally voiced chords. When building a complex chord, however, like a large cluster or a widely voiced chord, Dorico’s entry can become unwieldy as the intervals quickly grow too large or too numerous to easily calculate. In these cases, the latter approach of thinking in terms of stacked intervals relating to the note below them is much more efficient. Often, for those of use who like thinking about chords in this way, this is also a much easier workflow than the former even when dealing with conventional chords.

This is where Sibelius’ system shines, because you not only have the ability to stack each interval on the last, but it happens (very quickly) as you type each number, rather than making you think out the full sequence before entering it. Dorico’s system does allow you to input one interval after another in this way, but it takes a lot more work: shift-i-3-enter, shift-i-3-enter, shift-i-4-enter. It might not seem like much, but this is so much less efficient than just quickly tapping out 3,3,4, especially if you’re composing or copying entire pieces full of large chords. It’s also possible to use chord-input mode, but then you have to think in terms of notes rather than intervals, and it’s not as clear where you want the new note to appear (above or below). The beauty of the diatonic system of quickly adding intervals above and below is its efficiency, not its power.

2. A related feature of the Sibelius system was that after each interval was added, the chord would be played back to tell you what it now sounds like. For composition, this is extremely useful feedback, especially for building unconventional chords or for quickly testing out different voicings. As far as I can tell at the moment, Dorico does not have the option to turn on a function like this, and while you can exit note input mode in order to click on the stem of the chord, or highlight it and press play, neither of these is nearly as efficient or useful as hearing the chord literally as you build it.

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I know that it’s better to explain what we feel is missing rather than to ask for a specific features, but for the sake of clarity I’ll say that I believe something like the ability to enter purely diatonic intervals above and below with a key command like “shift-number” and “shift-cmd-number” would fix this issue for those of us who prefer to input chords in this way. Or perhaps number keys could be repurposed in chord-input mode. With something to that end, and with a way to hear full chords as you edit them, I can’t imagine any other notation software coming close to the entry functionality that Dorico has! (I would also love for full chords to play as you cycle through notes by hitting the left and right keys, but that may not be close enough to how Dorico works.)

Thank you all for your incredible work, and for maintaining such a great community of feedback here!

[niversen]

@Daniel at Steinberg

Those pop-up menus are really buttons with menus attached, which means that they get activated when you hit Return. This would be possible to change, but not imminently. Hit Tab to move the focus elsewhere and then hit Return and you should find that the dialog is confirmed correctly.

Please do this! But if you can make it based on chromatic intervals, that would be even better. i.e. a major chord is (4+3), a minor chord is (3+4). This would be huge for me and others that work with systems of intervals that have nothing to do with diatonic thinking. For entry, it would be wonderful to be able to click a note and say (3+2+4) and have it put those chromatic intervals above the selected note in order: up three tones, put a note, then up 2 tones from there and put a note, then up 4 tones and put a note. I would use this constantly.

[pianoleo]

niversen, you’re asking for a feature that was implemented over a year ago. It doesn’t work in way you’ve asked, but you’re late to the party…

[alluvialsphinx]

pianoleo, I know you’re responding to niversen’s post and not mine specifically, but did you feel that the reasoning presented above is irrelevant at this point? I was trying to raise some issues that I think were overlooked the last time the team worked to address this area, and there are clearly a number of us out there that feel this important functionality that’s missing from Dorico.

Also, the functionality that niversen was asking for is not available through the implementation that was provided. It’s not simply that it doesn’t work as he wants, but that there’s a type of writing/working that isn’t possible right now.

[pianoleo]

alluvialsphinx, I apologise. Despite its length and detail, I entirely missed your post, probably because (as the 26th post in the thread) the forum software put it at the start of the second page. I read niversen’s post, then skipped back and reread all of page 1, then replied.

Of course you raise valuable points.

[alluvialsphinx]

Thanks for your response, pianoleo; it’s much appreciated, and completely understandable! Do you think it would make any sense to create a new topic and repost those points above? I wasn’t sure whether it would be better form to add to this chain where it seemed relevant or to start a new one.