Consistent with Dorico’s usage, I will refer to the system of accidentals and key signatures applied to the five-line staff as a “tonality system.” Within a given tonality system, I will refer to the audio frequency of the pitches assigned to the staff lines and spaces, accidentals, and key signatures as a “tuning system.” I suggest these four improvements:
- Make the pitch frequencies of a tuning system changeable within a tonality system without triggering a change or reset of the tonality system. (Equivalently, do not have Dorico infer that, just because the tuning system is changed, it is to be applied to a new tonality system. See the example in my previous post at "Changing the tonality system" Ate My Accidentals, where merely changing the pitch frequencies caused Dorico to forget all about the current tonality system.) Tuning systems would thus be contained within tonality systems, as “Tonality System > Tuning System”.
• Changing only the tuning system would thus not trigger the need to change/update the key signatures in the “Used in This Flow” of the Key Signatures, etc. panel, which is the case now.
• Dorico should retain the current, non-deletable default tuning systems, but locate them in their corresponding tonality systems. They could still be duplicated and renamed for user modification.
• This structure would support expansion by the same “New Tonality System” and “Duplicate Tonality System” buttons.
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Dorico’s current indication of, for example, “Equal temperament (12-EDO)” is a conflation of the tonality system (Western common-practice notation) and the tuning system (equal division of the octave). If it is desired to retain this in the user interface, it should be thought of as a shortcut, and be located outside of the Tonality System > Tuning System pathway.
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If the user changes the tonality system for music already written in a different tonality system, Dorico will have to decide what can be accommodated and what can’t, as is the current problem. Going from Western common-practice notation to either the Gould (arrows) or Stein-Zimmermann quarter tone notation, for example, requires only that the quarter tone symbols be added to the existing common-practice symbols, which are not affected. Going the other direction is difficult. What Dorico currently does is blank out the accidentals that don’t fit the new tonality system, without warning. Mercifully, they are not deleted from the Flow file data, as they reappear when the original tonality system that created them is restored. Instead of blanking out these accidentals, Dorico should flag/color them so that the user knows to do something.
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Have the option to make the pitch frequency of accidentals be a function of what staff line or space they are placed on. The same symbol can then be used in different places, with the pitch frequency determined from the context of what line or space it is on. This is consistent with the current method of letting the user specify different pitch distances between the natural, letter-name notes (in “Divisions for specific intervals”, under “Divisions per octave”), while using the same natural sign to indicate/restore the pitch of any letter-name note to whatever pitch the user had set up for it.
These changes do not address the following issues, but neither do they interfere with Dorico’s current protocols:
• Notating and tuning transposing instruments
• Sending pitch data to the Player or to MIDI or VST instruments
• Whether Dorico should even be in the business of tuning fixed-pitch, 12 key- or note-per-octave instruments, or instead, defer this to the MIDI or VST instruments
My motivation is to find broadly applicable but currently underutilized concepts that can enhance the realism of playback. Dorico can already calculate, hold, and assign audio frequencies (or their proxies) to pitch notation elements, which I take to be the heavy lifting. Because musicians of all genres playing pitch-bendable instruments use pitch as an expressive dimension, a deeper engagement with Dorico’s tuning resources will better capture this nuance in playback.