Design pattern blocks (non-linear) / Piano Roll in WRITE mode / Retain accidental when shifting via semi-tones / Highlight current measure / Jump to section-measure

Dorico
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Hi all,

Loving Dorico so far. Using SE and figured out most things either intuitively or through google/forums. Great UI, aesthetic, design etc. I am also fairly new to notation too as I’m normally an electronic music composer with Cubase Pro.

Apologies for so many requests but I have decided to invest time into Dorico but in doing so I’ve found things that I’d love to see in future versions that’d save me epic time. Some of these may be features already but I haven’t seen it yet.

Q1. Other than using some sort of existing notation to repeat etc, is there a way to copy/paste ‘blocks’ of measures such that editing one ‘block’ changes it in all other blocks of that type too?

So I have ABACABA form, and Dorico has a higher abstract view of the project in that way, and changing it in A will change it all in A.

Q2. Sure PLAY mode looks cool but for people who are still learning music theory such as myself can we please have a basic piano roll in WRITE mode that will highlight notes on the virtual keyboard as we either press them on a MIDI keyboard or select them from the staff?

Q3. Yes, it’s excellent that shifting an octave will retain the accidentals, but sometimes when auditioning notes, which is a common use case for me, I sometimes go far into the next octave, but then the accidental gets lost. Can this be retained?

Q4. Is it possible already to have the current measure to be highlighted in some way, yet keeping current notes highlighted in contrast too, as it plays? Makes it way easier to track.

Q5. Can we skip measures in playback for the impatient with a keyboard shortcut? Can we map measures to specific keyboard shortcuts so we can jump to them? Considering there may be dozens of measures we can assign them via navigating it according to section and then the measure relative offset in that section? Say introduction first measure: holding down one key traverses through sections looping through them and then when you let go it navigates hierachically down into the sub measures and similarly loops through those too.

Thanks again and regards,
Francis.

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Welcome to the forum, Francis.

I’m pretty sure that the (current) answers to all five of these are “no”, but there are some great suggestions in there, some of which are new, and I’m sure the development team will take note of your post and its content.

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Thanks for your feedback and suggestions, Francis. One question:

I’m not sure what you mean by this. Could you elaborate?

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Hey there,

When there’s an accidental on a note, say as # on C#, and I manually shift it up an octave with 12 alt-ups, it loses the accidental. But when I do it in one go as ctrl-shift-up it retains it.

I would like to see it ‘stick’ regardless of the note but I can see reasons why not to implement this suggestion, as chances may be greater the user may prefer it to default to not – as most transpositions would be less than an octave and most likely aligned with how it is now. Sorry if I was a bit confusing and I get fairly caffeinated.

PS. I’ve already finished a 3 minute piano solo in Dorico on my first try – all I can say that this is a wonderful product and have been pleasantly surprised. Really love the powerful keyboard shortcuts with mouse/MIDI keyboard, and sometimes I think I’m back at work (AutoCAD) in a good way because of the massive productivity I’m getting out of it. Dorico summary: Think less, make more.

Thanks and regards,
Francis.

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It sounds like you’re not familiar with the key commands cmd-alt up/down arrow (I guess ctrl-alt on windows) to shift notes a whole octave up or down. That will definitely leave the accidental intact.

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Yes, I just mentioned that does it. I just meant when doing it incrementally it doesn’t reproduce the same behaviour.

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That’s because they are intended for different uses. Shifting a note by an octave assumes you’re simply shifting register. When shifting a single note at a time, there’s no reason to assume you want to retain the same alteration to the new pitch that is different than the previously established chord. It’s very simple to press the plus or minus keys if you need to add an accidental back. I would personally despise it if the behavior was changed. For example, let’s say I’m in A major. I have a #G (and I had to manually mark it because of a previously altered G in the same bar). Why on earth would I want dorico to presume that if I shifted the pitch up by one I desired an #A in the key of A major? It’s reasonable to presume that if I shift the octave I want the G to remain sharped and in the key. But if I decide the pitch is wrong and alt it by one pitch upwards #A would rarely make sense.

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Yes, I’m with @Romanos here. I wouldn’t expect us to change transposition via Alt+up/down to retain the accidental. It would almost never be what you want.