Enharmonic spelling oddities

Dorico
1

I noticed that I somehow ended up with a lot of double flats and other odd spellings, so I tried Reset Appearance but that didn’t fix it. I tried transposing at the unison with the option set to avoid double sharps and flats, and that fixed it, but no matter if I choose common practice, 2nd Vienna School or Modernist, I keep getting oddities like this-instead of a consistent F# or Gb, in the same measure, it mixes them up. Any way to fix this globally?

Screen Shot 2024-10-04 at 7.48.34 PM
Screen Shot 2024-10-04 at 7.48.34 PM1095×193 95 KB

new work.dorico (1.5 MB)

2

Does Respell Automatically work in this case?

3

Yes, but when I first tried that the other day as applied to the entire score to date, it produced a bunch of double flats, etc that I never use. Going through this and selecting a few measures at a time does work though. Finale has something similar but I’d love for “respell automatically” to be essentially standard at some point. Thanks!

4

Could you add some further info about how you’re inputting these notes, for reference? Or midi keyboard? Any key signature? Etc.

5

Sure. MIDI keyboard and atonal (no key signature). I set up a keyboard shortcut (CMD-R) for respell automatically and fixed things as I went. Just surprised when I had an F# adjacent to a Gb in the same measure. I would have assumed the internal algorithms would have caught that automatically.I know there is no way to specify a preference for sharps etc but it might be good at some point to have an option to avoid things like double flats or Cb and B# etc. Thanks.

6

Just entered these four bars:

Slice 1
Slice 1879×408 8.59 KB

(MIDI keyboard, no key signature) and it’s interesting how the second and fourth measures in the right hand are spelled differently, while the first and third bars in the left hand are also not the same, but enharmonic equivalents. Easy to fix, but again, I would think that would automatically be notated the same with regard to the accidentals. I’ve had very few speed bumps as a Finale expat using Dorico for the past week or two as a new user and am very pleased overall, but would love to understand if there is something I should be doing differently on my end to avoid this sort of inconsistent spelling.

7

An interesting and rather “severe test” of the algorithm.

The difference is made by context. Note that the first bar goes in as sharps at first, then changes retrospectively when the 2nd bar is added. I wonder what setting you have that stops the last A♮ from showing. (It shows for me.)

I don’t think there’s anything we can do differently for such cases.

8

I think at this point (your second example), @dtoub, what you’re up against is not some flaw of Dorico, but a deeper problem resulting from the confluence of an essentially diatonic 7- (or :sunglasses: letter-name system trying its best to present the full chromatic.

That doesn’t explain the odd behavior in your OP example, of course, and I agree that some basic options like (“avoid double #/b” could be handy.

9

Thanks. Attaching the file. I’ve adjusted some things but it does still happen that some adjacent notes are spelled differently.
verbigeration.dorico (1.5 MB)

10

This thread just caused me to look through the documentation, which has reminded me there is a switch to disable retrospective respelling!

I have struck out my last line, above.

2 Likes
11

Every day’s a school day…

12

Interesting. I will try that-thanks!

13

That’s true – there are also relatively recent additional options around note spelling in atonal music specifically, as mentioned here.