Edit note shorten duration with beginning rest

Dorico
1

Likely this question has been asked and answered, but after 30 minutes I could not find it :frowning:

Let’s say I’m in 4/4 time and have a whole note already entered - and now I want to change that into a half note - but the half note starts on beat 3. I.e. I want a half note rest followed by my already entered value. So you can do this in three steps:

1 - Select the note change it to half note - which creates the half note rest starting on beat 3
2 - Copy/paste the half note onto the rest
3 - Delete the starting half note.

Is there an easier way to do this?

2

You can move the caret to the third beat, type U to cut the whole note in half, and then delete the unwanted half note.
(Be sure you are not in Insert mode for this.)

3

Derrek - Thanks for quick response. AFAICT it’s a lower case “u”, but yes that works. (That’s also Key command for scissors).

But that only works up to the max granularity of the grid. Suppose you want to split a 16th into a 32 rest followed by 32nd note?

4

In that case you might have to retype the measure.
(But that’s not the question you posed.)

5

One way to do this would be to input a 16th rest at the start of the 32nd note: this would overwrite the first half of the 16th and leave the second intact. To do this, you’d select the 16th note, hit Return or Shift+N for the caret, then hit , to engage rest mode, hit 3 to choose a 32nd note, and type any note name (e.g. A) to input the rest. That should do it.

6

Daniel - That (more or less) is what I was initially trying to do, but I couldn’t get it to work. With your suggestion, I finally figured what I was doing wrong. Going back to my original example of splitting up a whole note, I didn’t notice that the carat was positioned after my whole note.

Meanwhile - as long as I have you here? Speaking as a fellow (semi-retired) software developer (I’m in business software) I am very impressed with how the Dorico team has managed the development and rollout of this product. It must have been fun to start fresh :slight_smile:

7

Thanks for your kind words. Yes, it has been huge fun to be able to start from scratch, but it has also been equally daunting. Fortunately I believe that our team is the best in the world and is up to the challenge! But we will not rest on our laurels and know we still have a good way to go.