Hello,
How should I proceed to write the snare as a 8th note, not a dotted 8th, in this example?
Not sure how to make it while keeping the dotted 8th in the hi-hat.
Copied from a traditional Sammy Nestico part.
Thanks for any pointer in the right direction.
I can’t see any way to do it without some fairly serious mucking about. All respect to Sammy Nestico, but writing a chord with different rhythmic values is a significantly nonstandard way of doing things.
I thought you might be able to fake it by putting the snare in a different voice, forcing stems up, and then setting HH and Snare to the same voice column in Engrave mode, but the stems don’t quite line up, so it doesn’t work.
I thought you might be able to offset the rhythm dot in the snare so that it overlapped with the notehead and became invisible, but you can’t seem to offset one rhythm dot separately from the other when they’re in the same chord. Same applies to setting the alpha channel to 0 - it makes both dots invisible.
I thought you could create a second hi-hat in a different voice and overlap it with the first using the voice column index, so that you could hide the rhythm dots in one voice but not the other. Doesn’t work - the overlapping still offsets the two voices slightly, and now all three rhythm dots behave as one for the purposes of offsetting and colour changes etc.
You might be able to position a tiny text box with the background erased over the top of the rhythm dot, but from memory ‘erase background’ doesn’t erase notes and rests, only staff lines etc.
So I’m out of ideas, sorry.
Do you think Nestico really means that the 8th note on the snare shouldn’t be dotted? Does the drummer perform it any differently if it’s not dotted? I know that might sound flip, but not everything that is easy to write with a pen is necessarily sensible for us to try to implement in Dorico…
You can fake it by writing the snare as a quarter note in a separate voice, and then setting the “Voice column X offset” property on the Hi hat to -1.26.
But life’s too short for that sort of messing about.
Thanks all for the feedback and suggestions - impressive one, Rob!
Indeed, an easy thing to do with a pen, and good (same information, less ink), but not necessarily something to implement in Dorico!
(Interestingly, the copyist saved ink on the dots, but used more by writing in the bass drum rests…)
