The first of probably thousands of questions to come from somebody who’s forced to switch from Finale…
I imported my score and Dorico gives wrong metric/rhythmic notation. E. g., in this case, The 8th note is tied to a 32th note, while it should be the reverse of course (grouping and 8th and 4 32th notes on the 3rd beat). If I click on the note, it always highlights all the tied notes. In finale, I would simply only click on the first 32te note of the beat and delete it, and then add a new one after the 8th note. How do I do that in Dorico?
Select the tied note. U (to cut the tie)
Select the middle note. O (to force duration). 5 (to make an 8th), T (to tie)
Select the first note. O (to force duration). T (to tie)
Just to unterstand better, may I ask: Why do I need that step “o” (force duration)? If I don’t do it in the last step, it goes back to the metrical wrong notation as seen above. Why?
And one more thing: how to I stem the 8th note together with the following 4 32th notes? For now, the eight note has a single stem.
Dorico thinks more like a DAW than like traditional notation software when it comes to note values: as single units that are represented on the page with ties or dots, depending on meter, position within a bar and presence of barlines.
This makes it much easier to shift music around, rebar it, and potentially makes it quicker to input it (as long notes can be input as large single note values that may automatically be represented as tie chains). Notes can also be extended and shortened using the same repeated commands (Alt/Opt-Shift-Left/Right). And of course this thinking makes it the default that when adding articulations to notes, they go at the correct end of tied notes rather than on every single notehead.
There are a great many adjustable settings at Library > Notation Options, all of which can be Saved as Default for future projects, but there are some notable scenarios that aren’t well-handled, including the grouping of very short note values. In these instances, or if you just want to go against the rules in a few places, Force Duration is the way in which you can override them.
I think it’s only difficult because you are working on an XML import that has created the duplet.
Delete those notes and start from scratch. It will be much easier.
(But, yes, there is a peculiarity with dotted tremolos that both notes must be identical and not tied, hence the need to force duration on them)
The duplet came through because in Finale you had to write 2:1 dotted half notes. Dorico automatically correctly doubles the note values when you make the 2-note tremolo.
