Dynamics weirdness

First of all, sorry for the barrage of posts over the last week; I’m new to Dorico! I’ve searched the forum for this stuff, but can’t seem to find exactly what I’m looking for.

I have several new questions related to dynamics:

  1. Is there a way to automatically group all dynamics on each system? (And have it automatically regroup as needed if the layout changes?) I know how to do it manually and already assigned a keyboard shortcut for it, but it seems like an extra step to me. I’d rather have them automatically grouped to look more clean by default (i.e., aligned horizontally), and manually ungroup ones that I don’t feel need to be aligned with the rest.

  2. When inputting a dynamic in the middle of a long note, I move the caret to where I want and input from there. This works fine for immediate dynamics, but the weird thing is that for gradual dynamics, the popover does not work. For those, I have to mouse over and click on the button I want in the righthand panel. A small inconvenience, but a little annoying! Is it a bug or am I misunderstanding something?

  3. Another weird thing: let’s say I want to add a “subito” to an existing “f”. I click on “subito” in the righthand panel, but then if I change my mind, I cannot unclick it. There seems to be no way to remove the subito apart from deleting the dynamic and starting over. The same is true for gradual dynamics. At least for “poco a poco” and “niente” there are options to disable them in the bottom panel, but if I click “poco”, I seem to be stuck with it.

  1. It could be that you’re entering the <, or whatever, but then not giving it a duration with the spacebar?
  1. No. It’s pretty quick to select one, then Select More, then group (assuming you’ve assigned a shortcut to grouping).
  2. It works fine. You just have to type Space after you’ve put in the gradual dynamic, in order to give it length, or advance the caret to where you want the hairpin to end then type ? (or type Shift-D then the next dynamic Enter).
  3. Double click the dynamic on the page (or select it and hit Enter), then get rid of the bit you don’t want. If you have a poco hairpin, double click it on the page (or select it and hit Enter), then simply hit Enter again. Dorico will understand that you don’t want the poco (which doesn’t appear in the popover anyway) and replace it with a plain hairpin.

Terrific! Many thanks!

Followup question: why, when I group all dynamics in one player, do any linked dynamics in other parts duplicate themselves?

Because they’re linked. Linked dynamics have to be identical. If you want to perform that operation, unlink all dynamics first in the score, by selecting all and unlinking dynamics.

Another weird dynamic thing I encountered:

I was playing around with frame breaks – I wanted to see if a dotted-line gradual dynamic that continues to a new system would include a parenthesized indication at the beginning of the following system, to remind the reader what the dotted line is for. Can Dorico do that?

But my main question here is, why does Dorico duplicate the dotted line on the second system? I can delete the extra dotted line, but I’m afraid if my layout shifts in the future, new instances of this doubling will sneak past me.

Hi brittencellist!
This is not the expected behavior. Does it still show when you close and reopen this project? If so, it might be useful to attach the zipped project here or send it to the devs.

Weird, now I can’t get it to reproduce that behavior! If it happens again I’ll share…

As to my other question, is it possible to automatically restate in parentheses the purpose of a dotted line when it crosses to a new system? The same way Dorico handles pedal markings. I don’t like to turn the page and see a generic and mysterious dotted line.

In other words, if at the beginning of the indication, “cresc…”, then on the new system, “(cresc.)…”

No, at the moment this isn’t possible, but it’s something we may add in a future version.