I’m looking for a way to remove all entries (notes and rests) from a measure or measures. A simple select and DELETE isn’t working. Back story: I made the mistake of entering cross-staff beaming with too many voices which led me to make numerous REMOVE RESTs. (See ms 13-21 in attached Dorico_Delete_Snafu_step 1.) Dazed and confused, I deleted ms 13-19 and Dorico_Delete_Snafu_step 2 is the result: a rest in some voice remains which required another selection and DELETE bringing us to Dorico_Delete_Snafu_step 3. I thought I was making progress until I deleted ms 21-23 and things got even funkier. See Dorico_Delete_Snafu_step4.
Dorico Delete Snafu_step 1.dorico (881.3 KB)
Dorico Delete Snafu_step 2.dorico (877.7 KB)
Dorico Delete Snafu_step 3.dorico (877.4 KB)
Dorico Delete Snafu_step 4.dorico (875.1 KB)
I looked at snafu 4 and fixed a few things. In bars 20-21 of the piano I selected the two measures with a quarter rest in each and simply deleted them. This returned the measures (all of them) to their default state. I then went through your voices in the piano part to clean up and remove extraneous voices. I’m unclear if this gets you where you want to be but the file is cleaned up. As far as voices are concerned treat each staff (even of a grand staff) as a separate set of voices. So the G-clef can have an up stem voice 1 and a down stem voice 1 and the same for the F-clef (i.e. when you look at the voices in the ‘change voice’ dialog you will see 4 of them - two up stem and two down stem. Sorting them by color (and the differences can be subtle) is one of the best ways of sorting out voice problems. One of the strengths (and weaknesses) of Dorico is that you can have as many voices on a staff as you like. Creating them is so easy that new users often add voices without realizing it. You switch between voices (when in write mode and the cursor is active) by hitting the V key. You add a voice by hitting shift + V (and note the voice you’re adding - you can cycle through voices before committing by hitting shift + V repeatedly - commit by adding a note).
Dorico Delete Snafu_step 4_FIXED?.dorico (446.8 KB)
Thanks, but what was your solution, though? If this happens again I’d like to be prepared.
See edit above.
To clean up the voices look closely at the colors and make sure there are only 2 to a measure (if you’re doing a 4-voice texture - soprano, alto, tenor, and bass). If you have an odd rest it’s likely because you have an extra voice somewhere in the music - the odd rest and the extra voice will have the same color. To remove that rest it’s best to select the extra voice (all notes in that voice or the notes separately) and use the “change voice” command to change a note to an existing voice. Once you’ve done that save the file, close it, and then re-open the file. The extra voices you created should be gone from the file (in the change voice dialog where you saw 4 voices/staff you should only see two/staff.
And this day started out so well…
But thanks for your help. I still think it’s odd that it took two deletes to get rid of everything in those measures.
I’ve looked at the CHANGE VOICE box so many times and still haven’t figured it out yet. I’m done for today.
Timesaver tips: V cycles the selected notes through existing voices, so you don’t always have to use that submenu. I also made myself a Jump Bar alias for the “Change Voice to Up-stem Voice 1” command.
One thing I find helpful is that the Change Voice submenu lists all the existing voices at the top, so you can see how many you’ve got. When you remove all notes out of a voice, it is “cleaned” from the file when you close and reopen the project.
Ask more questions anytime!