Dorico 5.1.80 chord input from midi

I have found that chord input via midi is at best unreliable and at worst not working at all on MacOS Sequoia. Midi appears to work fine in other apps, and the midi monitor light in Dorico shows that midi is being received, but most of the time no chord appears in the popover, though occasionally a random chord does appear, apparently bearing no relationship to the notes played!

Can you clarify what you’re referring to, Steve? Are you talking about the Shift+Q popover, or using the caret to input directly into the staff?

I’m using the shift-Q popover, which has always worked well up till now. Note input is working fine with midi - it’s only inputting chord symbols that’s a problem.

If you restart Dorico, do you find that popover input works more reliably, if only for a while?

No, a restart makes no obvious difference. I have found that if I play the chord notes in a slow upward sequence I sometimes get a result that treats the first note as the bass note and the others as a chord - which without the bass note is strangely notated, as you’d expect!

It sounds like perhaps an issue with the “dead time” for interpreting the input as a chord. Check out this earlier thread:

My problem is not with the notation of the chord within the stave, but with chord symbols - Am, E7 etc.

The same hidden preferences value controls the interpretation of chords both for the popover and when inputting into the staff.

I have tried changing all three of the dead time values to 200 as suggested.
I am now sometimes able to input a chord symbol, but it only appears to be recognised if the chord contains more than a simple triad. Even then it generally takes several attempts to get a result. It also appears that if I am trying to overwrite an existing chord symbol there is never a response - it is necessary to delete the existing symbol first, and then enter a new one.

Further info! I have gone further and increased the values to 300ms. I am now getting fairly reliable chord input, and I can overwrite an existing symbol. I think we may consider this issue solved! At worst, if I experience any further difficulty I can increase the values a bit further. I am at something of a loss as to why the new version should be so much more sensitive to this than the previous one, where I had no problem at all!

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Anyhow, many thanks for your advice and for the very prompt service.

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