Chord mode with Pitch Before Duration - does it mean anything?

Dorico
1

With normal Duration before Pitch, users can enable the chord mode (Q) which allows notes to be added without advancing the caret. It will also add notes so you can play notes separately or roll them.

I have been observing when using Pitch before Duration, ‘Q’ appears to have no effect. Thus I cannot roll or build a chord note-by-note, and also as soon as I tap a duration, the caret will advance.

Not sure if that is intentional but it would be great if the chord mode could have an equivalent purpose while in PBD: to roll out really extended voicings, and also to not advance the caret when working on music on the same measure but moving down to other staves (e.g., if I’m building a chord across my entire orchestra within the same measure, I want the caret to stay put and manually move it down to each staff as needed).

2

It makes a difference when using the computer keyboard to build chords, but it doesn’t make any difference when using a MIDI keyboard. This is the case both in duration-before-pitch and pitch-before-duration input: when you are using a MIDI keyboard, it is assumed that you can always play all the notes you want to input as a chord simultaneously.

3

Thanks for the explanation. When I use a midi keyboard, using chord mode in duration-before-pitch I am actually able to play notes separately and very spaced apart, without an issue - I just tried one spanning 4 octaves using one hand, no problem :slight_smile: But more importantly in chord mode, the caret does not advance. When working out chords in a large orchestral or section tutti across numerous staves, while in pitch-before-duration, it would be nice to not have to keep moving the caret back a measure, which is what I was expecting chord mode would assist with (since that is the behavior with duration-before-pitch with ‘Q’ enabled).