When selecting a few notes which have already dynamics and choosing a new dynamic, the new one doesn’t replace the old one, but is added, which makes no sense .
What exactly do you mean by “selecting a few notes which have already dynamics”. If it’s in the score, then of course you only put in one dynamic (like p or f) which is valid until changed. Are you possibly referring to editing dynamics in the velocity or CC lanes in the Key Editor? Or perhaps even articulations like accents which affect the dynamic?
No, I’m in write mode, selecting one bar for several instruments which already have a dynamic (saying p) at the start of the bar which I want to replace by another (saying f). At the end of the manip, notes have p and f. (p is not replaced by f and f is added)
would it be possible to attach a short video clip showing exactly what you’re doing so I can try to reproduce? I’ve seen this sort of thing as well but can’t remember at the moment under which circumstances. Are you using divisi? Normally if I replace one dynamic with another in the score it simply replaces.
Or perhaps someone more awake than me will be able to put their finger on it straight-away!
If you want to replace a dynamic, a more reliable method is probably to select the existing dynamic, press Return to bring up the dynamics popover, replace the string in the popover, and press Return again to confirm.
There are (or were) a few situations where a new dynamic still gets input though, I think, such as when replacing an immediate dynamic with a combined one, such as f → mf-p.
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Do you know that it is possible to assign a key command to change the dynamic intensity? That way you can easily change p into f without the need to create new dynamics.
this what I always do and I assumed Axel was doing likewise? In this clip (ignore the notes – I just copied one line as a quick demo) if the parts are linked, you just do as in the clip and it works fine.
As Lillie says, there are certain situations this doesn’t work but I don’t think they are what you’re referring to.
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do you mean “decrease/increase dynamic intensity”. That has to be done stepwise doesn’t it? But I’m sure a good method for some which I’d completely forgotten about.
After several tries, it seems that this happens when the selection contains rests
This happened to me all the time in every previous version of Dorico, wherever grouped dynamics were involved. It’s just something that I’ve accepted as either an unfortunate quirk of the software, or (probably more likely) as a knowledge hole on my part that I’ve been too lazy to fill.
It’s pretty simple to reproduce. Here, I do it in Dorico 4:
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I wonder if something else is at play there - the attachment lines are suggesting that the crescendo’s duration extends to the C/E on beat 2. If you adjust that first dynamic phrase such that the hairpin ends at the start of the bar, and the f is at the start of the bar, do you then see the same result (namely the fff replacing the f)?
If I move the right end of the hairpin to the end of the first bar (instead of the beginning of the second bar), then the problem goes away.
Unfortunately, Dorico regularly has my hairpins cross barlines in these situations, whenever I select a note and a dynamic (or the note to which the dynamic applies) and then press < :
Selecting just the note is sufficient to input a hairpin of the correct duration. Selecting the f in the next bar is quite possibly prompting Dorico to think you want the hairpin to last until the end of the f’s duration, and the default duration of dynamics is a quarter note.
What you have selected before inputting a gradual dynamic (or any item with duration) determines the overall duration of the new item: it’ll start from the earliest selected position, and end at the end of the last selected item. E.g. if you have a run of 4 quavers and want a p<f dynamic phrase with the f on the 4th quaver, select the first 3 quavers and input the dynamic phrase – the hairpin lasts from the start of the 1st quaver to the end of the 3rd quaver, with the f going in at the end, aligning with the 4th quaver.
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Sure, as I intimated, this is largely about me just not knowing enough about Dorico’s notational idiosyncrasies.
Although, I’ve done it the way you suggest, and I’ve still gotten hairpins crossing barlines, many times. For example (please excuse the nonsensical f to mf crescendo):
It hasn’t been a big deal to me, honestly, so I’ve just let Dorico do its thing.
In this example, the dynamic “appears” to cross the barline because its rhythmic end point is at the end of the bar (which is the same as the start of the next bar). If you then selected just the hairpin, I suspect you’d see its end attachment line going to the downbeat of the next bar.
There’s an option for allowing/disallowing hairpins to cross barlines in terms of their appearance.
Attachment lines will always tell you in rhythmic terms where things start and end in time. With gradual dynamics this is important because sometimes hairpins can be longer in underlying terms than they appear, because subsequent immediate dynamics automatically truncate them.
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