What is currently the “least bad” workflow to get from 2/4 to cut-time without either Dorico freezing or getting the score messed up?
I have written a march for wind band, nothing complicated, a few triplets but otherwise just regular stuff.
It was written in 2/4 and now I want to change to cut-time.
But wenn I select all and do “double note duration”, Dorico freezes completely or just does half of the file.
Triplets seem to be their own source of errors…
All in all, I did not get to the desired result yet.
What is the best workflow currently to get this task done with the least amount of additional grey hair? Work in batches of 10-20 bars each? How about triplets?
I would do it one instrument at a time (with a wet towel on the forehead).
Hopefully you are only dealing with one voice per instrument. If not, be aware that doubling the duration will not move the first entry of additional voices.
For triplets, you need to delete them, double the durations, then reapply them (all this with insert mode on). So the steps are (For each instrument):
Engage insert mode
Select all
Filter select>Tuplets. Delete
Double durations
Select the first note of each removed triplet and recreate (;3:2e as appropriate etc…)
Disengage insert mode.
You will manually need to move all dynamics and system objects.
I have no idea if there are problems doing this on percussion parts (I have no experience of trying)
First removed all special bars (repeat signes, double bars), as they would probably confuse me later.
I followed the steps not player by player but section by section, because I felt that this would give me a bit more control over the process.
Knowing the trouble with tuplets, one thing that worked out better than expected were Grace Notes. They were transformed beautifully.
A bit of a bummer was that not only did the dynamics not follow, but also most of the slurs are gone. Shouldn’t they be attached to their notes?
Before:
(The slurs of player 1 and 2 in bar 18 have vanished, as have the slurs in bar 19 in player 3 and 4. The slurs in 17 and 18 for players 3 and 4 are still there for whatever reason.)
So there’s quite some work coming up that was a bit unexpected.
I’m happy I still have a backup copy of the file to compare…
Thanks again @Janus for your helpful tips. Very much appreciated!
What I’ve learned: It’s very important to decide between 2/4 and 2/2 (or 3/4 and 3/8 or 6/8) early on, and I have to say that this feels unexpectedly different from many other approaches I love about Dorico, where you can just doodle around and Dorico will happily re-transcribe whatever music I have put in.
I guess the problem here is that “double note duration” can be applied in many circumstances.
Sometimes you just want to do that: Double all notes’ duration of some selected notes right in the middle of a piece - without doing anything else.
Sometimes you want to double the duration and move dynamics along with the now longer notes.
Sometimes you want to double the duration of a whole piece where optimally everything should be pulled along: Dynamics, tempo changes etc.
The difficulty is increased by some of these things being attached to notes (like slurs), most of the other things are attached to rhythmic positions within bars, and those dont “know” the music they belong to.
So yes, I do fully understand that this topic is a pretty difficult one. I hope that some day in the future I can select some full bars via the System Track, apply “Double/Halfe Note Duration” and can check what other elements I want to be pulled along. Like in the Transposition dialog where I can select to also have key changes changed along with the notes.
Yes, making a PDF of the file before applying the changes would be (for me) a critical step in the process (not that I wouldn’t forget to do it and then have to scramble).
