I love the shift-arrow keys method to define selection, but when used on a note in a chord, shift+vertical arrow keys selects the entire chord. I cannot find an easy way to select specific notes in a chord - apart from the marquee system which is very buggy (e.g. often just holding down left mouse button with the cursor on a blank area of the page does not start the marquee process but selects notes or items somewhere nearby).
Is there a method I’m missing?
Thanks!
Try using the up/down arrow keys once you choose the chord. Up-arrow selects a single note moving up from the bottom, and down-arrow selects from the top down.
Hold down Option-Shift (or Alt-Shift on Windows) and keep clicking until you get the one you want.
No, the up arrow does not select a single note. It selects the entire chord (and sometimes other elements as well).
What works for me:
Click on the chord, and then press the up-arrow or down-arrow to move through the individual notes of the chord. Only one note at a time should highlight.
True, if you just want to highlight one note. But, if you want to highlight two notes, what then? For example, I want to copy the bottom two notes of a chord to the staff below. There’s a convenient key command to do so, you just need to highlight notes first…
The only keypresses available for extending the selection will, in this case, select the whole chord. In the situation you describe, I usually zoom in a few times until the chord is large enough to be able to click on the notes without accidentally selecting the wrong one. After selecting the first note I then use either shift-click for notes in the chord which do not have any other notes between them or, for non-adjacent notes, cmd-click (this is on a Mac, the Windows equivalent is probably ctrl-click). When zooming, keep in mind that Dorico zooms in to what is centred in the window, not to what is selected. So, if your chord is in the centre of the window, you will be fine. If it is off to one side, it will possibly move out of view as you zoom in.
Honestly, the easiest solution is to press Z several times to hyper-zoom-in. Makes it simple.
So I have been using Ctrl-Click to select the notes I want… it’s just much slower - and when you’re doing this 40 times in a row it adds up.
I appreciate the help though!
If you want one note in a row of chords, filtering works well. (Nobody mentioned it yet.)
If you want multiple notes, you can filter to deselect the ones you don’t want.
@madfloyd Yes filtering is the way. You can set key commands for that. And then move the note or notes between staves. You can also filter the notes of a big selection at one time and move it.
Thanks, guys, I’ll try that!
Is there really no reliable way to extend the note selection within a chord other than hyperzoom then alt-click? e.g. when I have a complex five note chord and want to enharmonically shift the middle three.
I know that for this isolated example selecting the first note and shift-clicking to the third would only save me one click versus alt-clicking, but today I have hundreds of these chords to enter via MIDI and that means a lot of alt-clicking to get them spelled right.
Ideally I’d do this entirely with keystrokes.
I’ve had a short look at macros but I can’t shake anything out.
Any clues welcome.
{EDIT FWIW least painful way for me with this particular job is, rather than enter the chords with MIDI and edit afterwards, use chord mode, enter the notes one by one and enharmonically adjust each one as necessary before entering the next one.]
Alt-click copies whatever was selected to where you click. You probably mean Shift-Alt-Click, right? Or Cmd-click?
Anyway, with all notes selected, set your filter engine to deselect, then filter top note and bottom note (I have shortcuts set to cmd-F, N, T and cmd-F, N, B for those two actions) and only the middle notes wkll remain selected.
Don’t forget to turn your Filter onto Select once you’re done 
doh, yes I mean cntrl-click on windows
deselect filters…mmm in a few cases yes this would be useful (if I get those shortcuts learned), and I’m going to steal your idea of having cntrl-f as a jumpoff for the filter options. Thanks.
It’s not actually a ‘click-count’ thing for me, it’s a UI inconsistency that has me battling against decades of muscle memory:. In countless apps Shift-arrow or shift-click is for ‘extend selection’ , and the fact that Dorico works exactly like that for whole-bar selection and extending a selection to another instrument but not to adjacent notes in a chord fries my brain a bit.
The real issue here is that I can’t seem to shake out an ‘extend selection to next/previous note in chord’ command to script a shortcut to, and if there really isn’t one I think that that’s is an oversight.