Some more trivia not related to music notation/composition: aeroplanes fly around the world on GMT, or Zulu time as it’s called in the military. Needless to say, the pilots don’t know whether they’re coming or going.
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The reason my post appeared out of sequence is that I merged two threads.
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Sounds like time travel to me.
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Can I merge my 20s and my 60s and end up 40 again?
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Hi,
Subject close to the tuplet one. In a syncopated rhythm I have a quaver that is notated as two semiquavers tied. In notation options I have chosen everywhere a “full” note instead two “half notes tied” and it changed nothing, still two tied semiquavers. The consequences are bizarre, because these two tied semiquavers are marked staccato, but Dorico plays one natural quaver instead of one staccato quaver. When I untie them both s-qs are played correctly, but obviously twice instead of once. I know a workaround and used it to continue working, but question remains, is it as intended or is it a bug?
As usual, if I make something wrong I will be happy to be enlightened.
If, on the other hand, this is not as intended I officially signal a bug.
Witold
As far as I know, there is no option that allows any syncopated rhythm to behave such as you describe. There are Notation options and they are highly dependent on different factors: the meter, the place in the bar and what other musical objects surround this rhythmic element. All cases not described in the Notation options need you to use force duration to achieve your goal. I am not sure this is a workaround, I’d talk about workflow. And I wouldn’t call this a bug, because it’s working as intended.
If you find a situation where you genuinely think it does not comply to the rules you’ve set, please share at least a picture, at best a cut-down version of the project that exhibits the problem (because yes, bugs happen, and it’s very nice when the team resolve them)
Marc,
To illustrate I attach a smal picture. 1. I clearly indicated in setup that I want all single notes instead of tied. 2. What happens now is that dotted crotchet is played staccato but tied quavers are played natural. In no way it can be considered normal. This is a bug.
Witold
What I can see in your picture is that the half bar is visible, as it should in a 4/4 bar. Which setting in Setup are you referring to?
You can override the visible half bar rule with force duration, of course. Or write this note as a quaver 
Behind Bars pp170-171
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If one wants a [3+3+2]/8 syncopation, one needs to put it in the time signature or use Forced Duration as Marc suggests. What Dorico does by default is certainly not a bug.
And of course if you really want to contravene the half-bar rule it’s as easy as forcing duration.
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I have activated these options
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the example I gave behaves as shown in all n/4 metres,
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Sibelius does not see any notation problem here (attached pic)
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this whole discussion misses the most important point, playback.
The notation subject is interesting, but I will willingly skip it when the music is correctly played. The root problem is the two tied quavers with staccato articulation are NOT played as staccato, but automatically turn into natural. This happens when the length of the note crosses over the beat line.
And that is the bug.
Witold
Here’s how it works, for clarity, using the factory default playback template (and it’s identical with NotePerformer):
Per Playback Options > Timing > Note Durations, staccato notes are shortened by 50%. They all have “Natural” playback techniques regardless of where in the bar they are.
This shortening is applied specifically to the final notehead in a tie chain. That does indeed mean that if shown as two eighths tied together, it’s only the second eighth that’s shortened, meaning the entirety of the tie chain plays 75% of its full duration (a dotted eighth), whereas if a single quarter is shown it plays 50% of its duration (an eighth).
On the one hand, one could argue that this is a bug (to which the developers will likely point out that it works the way they designed it, ergo it’s not a bug). On the other hand, it could be argued that two eighths tied together with a staccato is bad notation, just as a single quarter on the third eighth of a 4/4 bar is bad notation. If a human player sees an eighth tied to a staccato eighth, how short would you expect them to play? If “50% of the full printed notation” (not that this is a universal rule), why would you write an eighth tied to a staccato eighth? Wouldn’t a single non-staccato eighth and an eighth rest be clearer?
Sibelius’s visual handling of this is irrelevant - Sibelius expects the user to know how to notate correctly within whatever meter they’re in but will allow the user to notate badly, whereas Dorico (largely) corrects the user’s rhythmic spelling and needs to be told to break universally-accepted rules.
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If I see two tied quavers with a staccato dot on the second one, I (as a musician) would interpret it as ‘hold the first quaver exactly until the next quaver’, and stop the note abruptly. In practice, that is roughly halving the overall value, and not corresponding to the 75% of the automated playback. In effect, playing the first quaver explicitly until the onset of the next beat will in general produce a note longer than a simple staccato crotchet, depending on style and tempo. It’s basically a form of tenuto. Intuitively, I would play the tied forms above quite differently than the crotchets.
In everyday classical music, a staccato crotchet is indistinguishable from a (staccato) quaver. So, in the example above, I’d notate the off-beat notes simply as staccato quavers, and wouldn’t bother using ties. Keep it simple.
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Where did you get that idea?
I see the subject gets hot.
Now, I entirely disagree with this pianoleo’s statement: Sibelius’s visual handling of this is irrelevant - Sibelius expects the user to know how to notate correctly within whatever meter they’re in but will allow the user to notate badly, whereas Dorico (largely) corrects the user’s rhythmic spelling and needs to be told to break universally-accepted rules.
The two notations have their place in real music on purpose. The one called by pianoleo “a correct” is mostly used to let the reader know where the beats within the measure are (my first example from Dorico). The second, the one from Sibelius shows real values of notes assuming that the musician does not need to be reminded about beat lines. No need to argue about it, because even the options in Dorico recognize these two ways of notation. Not to mention examples from real world music. We do have our preferences and I do prefer less clattered notation, which makes my partitions clearer and easier to follow. But, of course, we choose what is better for any of us.
Once again, the very basic problem is being talked a lot, but not answered at all. So, let me rephrase: how should I notate in Dorico a staccato dotted crotched followed by a staccato crotched so both are played staccato? The very simple logic says: if the staccato is to be executed by simple halving the length of the note (piano) there should be option to write dotted-undotted as single notes, no matter their place in the measure. If, on another hand, we want to use a more subtle way, using tied notes gives a better precision, but still not without doubts.
There probably is one overlooked element that makes the whole discussion more complicated than necessary, and that would be entirely my fault.
The particular problem I am trying to address and solve is not the length of the 2 staccatoed tied quavers but the change of articulation used to control a library.
In use of libraries that have staccato samples for every continuous instrument (strings, brass, woods etc.) expression maps use staccato as a control parameter to trigger required samples.
Actually in Dorico when tied quavers are just one crotchet, the staccato is kept and library plays it, when they are notated as tied Dorico changes it to “natural” and library plays it wrong. It is easy to imagine how badly the staccato passage will sound if you have dotted-undotted-dotted-dotted-undotted. For fun I wrote such a passage and Dorico assigned stacc-nat-stacc-stacc-nat.
If that is not a bug, then what is?
Witold
PS Of course, with libraries cheating this problem as easy as PjotrB says and this is what I did to continue my work. Just deleted the second of tied notes, but that is and will remain “cheating”. What if I write a mockup to be further played by a real orchestra? First I “cheat” to have it sound correctly and then I correct it everywhere in the partition so it is played correctly? That cannot be called a “workflow improvement”.
It can be seen that seemingly unimportant notation issue may have a far going consequences and I would very strongly recommend that Dorico team have a look at it.
If you want a non-standard notation, the you have already been told how to do it, and Dorico has a way to do it: use Forced Duration (or reset the time signature and hide it if you use this pattern constantly).
Claiming the software contains a bug because you can’t do what you want automatically is misrepresenting the situation.
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Sorry, but you probably did not entirely read my message. The problem is in wrong application of articulation keys. There is noting that justifies changing staccato to natural, no matter notation convention, when the note is articulated staccato. And that is a bug.
Witold
Sorry, it’s most definitely not a bug. Having a quarter note on the & of 2 in 4/4 is simply incorrect according to virtually every notation manual and house style guide published in the last 100 years. Derrick has already told you how to do this if you want it anyway, or if you want to group [3+3+2]/8, but notationally what you are asking for is incorrect and not the standard most performers are used to reading.
A staccato on a tied note is often not clear notation as you are asking a performer to both make a note longer and make it shorter at the same time, so I usually try to avoid it. Historically, when a staccato is used on the last note of tied notes, it often meant a mild stress on that note, and the staccato only applies to that note, not the entire tied group. Kurt Stone has the following examples on page 43 of his book “Music Notation in the Twentieth Century” where clearly the staccato does not apply to the entire tied group:
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No, @witold , I read your entire post just fine. Your characterization of the situation as a bug is unreasonable. Dorico handles a note tied to a staccato eighth properly, since few folks want a half-note tied to an eighth to last less than a half-note; and carrying a quarter over the mid-point of a measure (except in rare circumstances, which Dorico does handle in some of those cases) is a special case.
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Derek,
Are you replying to me (Witold) or to FredGunn)?
To me it looks like you are talking to Fred.
Witold