I apologized for reposting this, but since the forum notifications have gotten messed up, we lose track of topics, and this is one that I care about. So I’m starting again.
In short, in exploding music to the staves below, dynamics not only don’t go with the music, they actually mess up the “explosion.” In a 3-note chord with an forte under it, exploding it results in nothing being moved to the lower staves. What does happen is that the bottom note of the chord is stripped away, and there are now two forte’s attached to it.
I’ve attached three pics: the first shows the original two chords, each in its own measure, one with and one without a dynamic;
the second one shows the result of exploding the two bars one at a time (the one with the mf doesn’t work);
and the third shows the result of exploding both bars in a single action (both bars are messed up, even though only one had a dynamic in it).
Help!
It’s very odd, Lew, that I don’t get the same results as you. Can you try opening the attached explode.dorico?
- Select the two bars in the alto sax staff.
- Copy to the clipboard with Command-C.
- Do Command-A to select the whole flow. (You could also select those two bars with the system track, or with click and Shift-click, it doesn’t matter, but all four staves need to be selected.)
- Do Edit > Paste Special > Explode.
The only incorrect result I get is that the forte marking in the second bar is duplicated in the alto sax staff (which is actually expected for now, as dynamics don’t overwrite each other when you paste them).
explode.dorico.zip (250 KB)
Thank you, Daniel — your directions showed me that I’d been skipping a step. I wasn’t selecting the measures/instruments into which the exploded parts would go.
I didn’t realize it was necessary, because if no dynamics are involved, just selecting the chords to be exploded (not the staves into which to be exploded) and then doing the Paste Special/Explode is all that’s necessary. Dorico explodes the chords into the number of staves equaling the number of notes in the largest selected chord, and everything works perfectly, including doubling the parts that are “extra.” (If some of the chords contain fewer notes than the largest chord, Dorico doubles the lower notes into the lower parts.)
It’s actually very convenient — no extra step of selecting the staves into which to explode the chords. However, since it doesn’t work with dynamics, I’ll have to figure it out. I use Keyboard Maestro to do the exploding with a single keystroke, so it will be a tad more complicated if dynamics are involved.
Anyway, thanks much for helping me solve the problem — I appreciate your quick response, as always. And btw, this seems like a good time to again say Thank You for the really first-rate upgrade to Dorico Pro. This has added everything to Dorico that I considered missing.
Given that playback isn’t important to me other than as a proof-listening tool, and also that I do exclusively traditional notation, Dorico now does everything I need. And besides its utilitarian excellence, the fact that it’s so elegant makes it a joy to use. So again, Thank You and your team!
Stefan did intend it that you should be able to use Explode without making a destination selection, but I admit I don’t use the feature that way. I’ll talk to him about whether he can fix the issue you’ve found here, and make that work in the same way regardless of whether there are dynamics in the selection. At least for now you have a working way of exploding.
