Hi there,
I’m quite new to Dorico and currently stuck at a completely stupid issue:
How the heck can I change the playback speed in Dorico? It is currently @ 120bmp which is way to fast, but I can’t find the Option to change this …
Any hints?
Regards
Carsten
At the upper right on the top panel, you’ll see a tempo box, “q=120.” Click on the quarter note icon to turn it from blue to grey. Then you can click on the number and drag it up or down.
Alternatively, you can enter a tempo mark using the Tempo popover (Shift-T).
Thanks for the hint - this works.
Just FYI, I tried to do this quite some time ago, but couldn’t figure it out. It looked to me like it should perhaps allow the speed to be varied, but I couldn’t get it to work. I then found a forum post asking for the feature, and was at least glad that I wasn’t the only one wanting it. Then, I stumbled on a video which demonstrated it, and was pleasantly surprised the feature actually DID already exist.
I think the U.I for this could be made more intuitive.
I’ve now found the relevant section of the documentation: Changing the tempo mode
Also, I think the forum thread I had discovered was actually about a slightly different feature request - the ability to easily speed up or slow down playback, in a relative fashion. (i.e, 20% faster, 30% slower, etc etc). So, this feature would presumably honour “follow tempo mode” as well.
I’m very pleased with the existing functionality for now, and am relieved it’s there. I simply had failed to find it in the doco. (I was searching more for “metronome” topics, than “tempo” topics)
Dorico is blessed with so many capabilities which are increasing all the time (not to mention sometimes multiple ways to access them) that it would be surprising if all the capabilities were equally visible–or “intuitive,” since that really depends on each user’s prior experience.
As one becomes more familiar with Dorico’s concept and architecture, one finds it easier to know where to look for a given capability.
If you haven’t added a tempo marking at the beginning, that is the first thing to do to control the tempo, before messing with anything else. If you HAVE entered a tempo marking, and the default isn’t what you want, adjust it in the Properties panel (while selected).
Hello!
I was wondering if Dorico 4 had that “relative tempo” feature which was talked about earlier on this thread? I have a piece with several tempo changes, and my goal is to make rehearsal recordings at different speeds (slow, medium, normal), for the sake of my students as a play-along. For now I have to adjust each tempo marking individually, but it would be interesting to go with a % instead, applying throughout the entire flow (like 50%, 75%, 100%, etc.). Intuitively I thought the “fixed tempo” feature would do it, but indeed the tempo is fixed to the metrical value no regard to the tempo changes.
What has changed lately is the return of the tempo lane in the key editor. I haven’t tried it, but if it behaves like, say, the dynamics lane, it should be fairly easy to modify all values by a percentage with one movement. Anyone got a chance to test this?
In Dorico 5, it seems like the ability to adjust playback speed with the mouse in the transport/tempo field simply does not work, at least on Windows. Clicking and trying to drag the tempo has no effect, regardless of the state of teh adjacent quarter-note button. This is quite frustrating, as the only way to adjust the tempo is to insert or edit tempo markers in the score, but I only want to fiddle with the tempo temporarily during playback to hear a section more clearly.
I don’t see how this could be anything but a bug.
IIRC, it has never been possible to adjust the tempo while playing. When I try to do this in Dorico 4, the playhead moves to where it would be if the whole flow was played at that tempo – but playback itself is unaffected, so the playhead is no longer in sync with the sound. (And I can do this only by starting playback from the keyboard, of course. Clicking the green Play button makes the tempo slider disappear and you can’t get it back while playing.)
I do understand that it can’t be changed when you’re playing. In my experience, it is never possible to drag the tempo indicator up, or down, or anywhere. It simply does not respond in any way under any circumstances to any kind of mouse input, regardless of the state of the adjacent button(s).
I have never experienced versions prior to 5, so I can’t say if this is a change or not. But every time I read people describing this tempo-change feature I scratch my head. It has never worked despite persistent efforts.
Ok, I figured out what’s happening: I’ve been “hearing” the wrong thing: it’s not that you click the edit field and hold the left button while dragging the number (like you would in nearly any DAW), it’s just that if you’re in the right application state and click the number without trying to drag, an otherwise utterly-undiscoverable slider window pops up.
In most apps, hovering over the number field would alter the mouse or visual representation of the field to indicate that it’s kind of like a button, and the absence of that visual feedback is kind of a UI design shortcoming – it looks like static text. And if you click it without the right correlated app state, nothing happens so the user concludes “it doesn’t do anything.”
As a newcomer to Dorico, my general sense is that the UI has a long way to go to get to modern user expectations for ease-of-learning and ease of use. But it is certainly powerful once you discover any of the zillion secrets.
In Dorico 3.5 and earlier, you could indeed drag up & down on the number! This was much more discoverable because it matched controls in so many DAWs. The change in Dorico 4 was for consistency with the iPad touch interface, and I never liked it.
Mouse wheel… 