I was wondering if there is a keyboard shortcut to hide intensity markings. I couldn’t find this option in the Key Commands section. It would be a significant time saver for those of us who engrave classical music, wouldn’t it?
Thank you for your assistance!
Hello,
Do you use custom text for expressions? It seems like a clever approach.
Over the years, I’ve used many custom settings and features in Finale and other software. However, I’m now looking to rely on the standard features provided by the software.
I realise that I may need to rethink my approach.
Thanks for your help!
That’s certainly a good starting point, but Dorico is designed for users to set their own options; and add their own Font Styles, techniques, templates, etc, etc.
I wouldn’t call it “custom”, as such. But yes: I’ve added a Paragraph Style and given it a key shortcut.
To the original question, I would love to have a keyboard shortcut for intensity markings which are not expressions - but basic text dynamics. For some libraries you have to do extensive dynamic markings to cheat a better sound that you wouldn’t actually want to show a live player, so being able to quickly hide them with a key command would be ideal.
There is a key command for “hide/show item” but it seems to only support a small portion of elements which are in fact hideable in the bottom panel. I would like for this to be consistent. For example right now it works to hide playing techniques, time & key signatures, but not dynamics, or ornaments (such as arps). I feel that if it’s hideable at all in the panel, this shortcut also ought to do be able to do it!
Yes, it would be very nice!
Hi @prko, you can record a macro that not only hides the intensity marking, but also left-aligns the remaining text to the notehead. You can then (after saving the macro and restarting Dorico) access the new macro from the Jumpbar (J) and then typing just the first letter of the first two words of the name of your macro. In my example I named the macro hide intensity markings, so, after selecting the dynamic/s, I press JHI and Enter. The Jumpbar also remembers the last used command, so the next time you only need to press J and Enter (or you can of course select all the desired dynamics and apply the macro):
Video (record a macro and access it via the Jumpbar):
Also: on MacOS you can assign shortcuts to every single menu item (and the recorded macro script is a menu item) directly from the MacOS settings > keyboard shortcuts >app shortcut>add an item with the + icon>choose your program (Dorico in this case), and insert the exact name of your script and assign a shortcut to it, so no need for the Jumpbar, in this case.
That’s interesting, thanks for sharing! It seems macros are uni-directional, meaning they cannot be toggled in reverse? I tried this one just now and got it to work successfully for turning on “hide intensity marking,” but it seems the same macro cannot be used to turn that same switch back off. Is there any way a macro can be bi-directional?
Otherwise I find this is very helpful in the meantime!
In this case the macro just records what you do: from a deactivated property to an activated property in my example. It does not toggle the property switch.
You can record another macro that deactivates the two properties: first select the dynamic to which you applied the previous macro, start recording a new macro, deactivate the Text alignment property, and then deactivate the Hide intensity marking property, save the macro as show intensity markings. After reloading Dorico you can then use the Jumpbar after selecting a dynamic, and show the intensity markings with JSI (so you can kind of “toggle” between the two with JHI and JSI):
That sounds attractive. Which libraries do you mean?
I have the following libraries:
I currently only use NotePerformer because of the ease of integration. I intend to buy other libraries. I would consider buying the libraries you mention.
Thank you for your excellent tutorials!
I have not used Jumbar yet, but your example shows convincing use cases of how to increase productivity with Jumbar.
Ok, great, thank you. It’s a decent and workable solution for now. I of course prefer to toggle with one shortcut (I was was using your secondary step in the MacOS App Shortcuts menu to go one step further - but ideally for on/off switches I prefer to reduce the cognitive burden of memorizing separate shortcuts); however it is far more frequent that I will need to hide a marking than I will need to show it again, so it’s not a big deal. Either way this is very helpful and I really appreciate your insightful technical advice – very clever solution!
Oh, I did not mean it as a good thing. I don’t like the fact I have to do it, it can be very tedious, but it’s a way to prevent some notes sticking out as louder than other notes around them. I find it can be most frequently a problem when switching quickly between shorts, longs, and legato notes.
NotePerformer, for the most part, automatically balances these issues so even if you are using an NPPE, switching between various notes sounds very balanced. But to answer your question, I do use some alternate libraries for certain instruments, although I cannot recall off the top of my head which ones create this issue for me. I’ve used a bit of SampleModeling Brass for horns & trumpets, as well as Acoustic Samples VHorns for Saxes (which sound great). Those are particularly sensitive and might be one of the libraries where I have to do this on.
It would probably easiest if I screengrab an example of how I have used many hidden intensity markings. Let’s say I have a trumpet phrase which I want to sound at mf and looks like this as I would show the live player:
However some libraries, and sometimes even NPPE’s, might give me some real problems with those short staccato notes as sounding way too loud, or the legato notes as sounding drastically quieter (like pp). Depending on the library the balance can jump around a lot. Yes this can be fixed in the key editor automation, or sometimes in the expression maps themselves, but for one small phrase I often prefer to fix using text dynamics without leaving the score, which can end up looking like this:
At which point I hide the ones which are unnecessary to see in the score:
(although I usually select these all at once and hide them simultaneously, so it doesn’t take that long.) For the record I don’t have to do this all the time but some instruments really require it to sound balanced! Hope that helps clarify.
Oh… that!
I often do that too!
The current playback engine is already top-notch, but I think this kind of work is hard to replace with AI, even if the AI is highly developed. (That said, the technology would be very welcome.)
