Finale has the ability, under Utilities>Change>Note Durations, to change the duration of all selected notes. Is there a way to do this in Dorico?
I would love the functionality of the entire section of Finale, but what I really need to do at the moment is double and/or halve the note durations of an entire project. That is, I want to change something I’ve written using 1/4 and 1/8 notes to 1/8 and 1/16 notes respectively, and vice versa.
Thanks in advance for the help!
When one or more notes are selected, on a Mac (US) you can type option-shift right or left arrow to lengthen or shorten all the notes by the grid duration (lower left hand corner). You can change the grid duration with the 1 and 2 keys.
It also intelligently does dotted quarter plus eighth, etc.
I haven’t used Finale in years but this looks like it works even better than the Finale dialog box.
The difference is that Finale will change all note values proportionally, whereas D. will lengthen or shorten all notes by the same amount. With an 8th note grid a quarter note will become an eightnote, but a half note will become a dotted quarter… While handy in many situations, it’s less suited to mass edits. I’m sure we’ll see other options in the future…
Thanks to you both.
Unfortunately fratveno is right, what I need is proportional editing. I’m dealing with the latin music community, some of whom want to read in 8th notes in 2/2, and some of whom want to read in 16th notes in 4/4.
I’d rather not re-write entire scores I’ve already written, so I guess for now I’ll do it in Finale then export to XML and do the rest in Dorico.
Thanks again!
They’re both important - I find myself using the Change Duration commands all the time when inputting music or composing, just trying things out. But for mass edits, I agree a proportional option would be handy.
If I understand the question right it is a pretty easy maneuver.
In my examples below I’d like to change the marked quarters to dotted half notes.
[Edit] …or doted eight notes in “After_2”. Actually a really powerful tool. It’s great that Dorico also respells the music correct!
Ah, sorry, I missed that you wanted to change the durations by double/half etc. on a whole section at once. Then my post above won’t help you very much. 
I know this thread is very old, but for the record:
What you need is the options in Write > Edit Duration. This contains various options, including doubling and halving the note durations.
I have similar problem, i cannot change the tied notes into Half Note, no matter what
it is imported file from sibelius (xml)
anyone can help ?
Click on the tie chain.
U to untie
Select the first quarter
Turn on note input
O for Force Duration
7 for a half note
E to input the note
Exit note input
Select the 16th note before the half note you just created
O for Force Duration
T to tie
If that seems convoluted, the operative point is simply that you can turn on Force Duration to input notes exactly as you want them, which is all you’re doing here.
works like a charm ! hats off to you sir!! … thank you so much
Thank you for this.
With insert mode on, this works nicely.
Hey, that’s a Ming Freeman’s solo on a tune from Yanni. Recognized instantly.
