Bass voice and fingering

[John_Ruggero]

In piano music, where voices come and go freely, sometimes the bass voice is the only voice in the lower staff and sometimes it is the lowest of several. This means that at times the bass voce might be up-stem V 1 and at other times it might be down-stem V 1 . This bothers me from the musical point of view and also practically,

If I try to make the bass voice consistently one voice or the other, it plays havoc with fingering, which may wind up positioned over the staff instead of under, since the fingering seems to be tied not to the note, like other articulations, but to whether it is an up or downstream voice. In the following example both fingering numbers were applied to the bass voice, but voices in the first chord were reassigned and this caused the finger number to be placed above the staff:

The only practical solution I see (at least for fingering issue ) is to allow the bass voice to move back and forth between different Dorico “voices”. Is that what others do even if fingering is not a concern? Or am I missing something important?

[Derrek]

If it is piano music, why cross the voices as in the example you show? The printed version likely does not print in color.

[Mark_Johnson]

I know it is tempting to keep musical lines in the same (Dorico) voice, but it doesn’t help anything unless you really need independent voice playback. Just use V1 for everything with single stems and V2 for down-stems with two voices.

[John_Ruggero]

Thanks, Derrek. The example was only a demonstration.

@Mark_Johnson That’s what I’ve been doing, but it goes against the grain. But if that is what is generally done, that’s what I’ll do.

[StevenJones01]

I’m not sure which way round it works, but when you enter the fingering in the fingering popover if you put the letter l or the letter r in front of a fingering number it will place the fingering number above or below the note. It is also possible to flip the staff-relative position of the fingering number in Properties > Fingering and Positions.

[John_Ruggero]

Thank you @StevenJones01 Someone pointed out the r and l thing to me a while ago and its been very helpful. But of course, it slows one down, so I use. it only when necessary.

And I have intimately familiar with the Fingering part of the Properties panel, both in Write and Engrave modes, having to slide the whole panel over innumerable times a day to get to it to make various changes of positioning.

[StevenJones01]

@John_Ruggero

having to slide the whole panel over innumerable times a day to get to it to make various changes of positioning

In Engrave mode just select the fingering, making sure that nothing else is selected, and press F to flip the fingering between above and below. The Properties panel does not even need to be open.

[Wensleydale]

Isn’t there a way to have all fingerings for (say) Down-stem voice 1 appear above the staff by default? I assumed I just hadn’t worked out how to do it.

[John_Ruggero]

@StevenJones01 Yes, I do that also, but mostly I need to get to the Engrave mode fingering settings to move fingering above or below slurs. See:

Slur-fingering issue

I have the Engraving Option set to position fingering inside of slurs. But when I do, I get this: [Slur and fingering] Yet I read in the documentation: “By default, fingerings are positioned inside the arcs of slurs, but outside the start/end of slurs.” The only way I can get this result for the example is to set the option to place all fingering outside of slurs or engage the “Avoid collisions” toggle in the Engrave Mode Slur Properties for each one. But I don’t want most fingering placed o…

I have partially solved this problem but using the Engraving Option to place all fingering outside of the slurs, but there is still some fingering that has to be placed inside of slurs and this requires going to Engrave Mode and sliding the Properties Panel over, unfortunately. Automatic positioning of the Properties Panel when a fingering is selected would be very helpful.

[John_Ruggero]

@Wensleydale I’m not aware of such an option. Please let me know if you find one.

[Wensleydale]

I too get tired of constantly having to scroll across the Properties panel to get to the fingering stuff. Setting it to show only active properties helps a little. But it would be nice if you could choose which bits of the panel are displayed, so that the ones you mostly use are visible all the time. Or maybe have the option of a floating properties window which you could view (probably on a separate monitor) as two or three rows?

[Mark_Johnson]

There is a filter in Properties! To the left of “Show: Active/All”, you can type “fin” or whatever, and the filter even stays put through mode switches.

[Wensleydale]

Aaaah! I missed that. Thank you! But you can’t have a separate properties window, right? I suppose you could use two windows, and have the properties panel open in only one of them, but that seems like overkill if you don’t need two views of the music area.

[John_Ruggero]

@Mark_Johnson. Thank you so much! I had no idea that was lurking there! In light mode it is barely visible. That could be very particularly helpful when one is doing nothing but fingering. And it brings up the fingering section with just “fi”; that may be faster than sliding!

@Wensleydale Floating palettes! That’s music to my ears and something I really miss from Finale. I can’t really arrange my workspace optimally without those.