Feature Request - Mix notes and slashes in same bar on same voice

Dorico
#1

I’ve recently switched from Sibelius (after 15+ years of pro use) and I’m absolutely loving Dorico.

There’s just this one issue I’m having in that, a lot of the charts I write switch between notated phrases and then slashes but within a specific rhythmic phrase.

In Sibelius, it’s straight forward to mix notes and slashes as it’s just a case of switching the notehead. I actually really like the way Dorico handles slash rhythyms - retaining the information. However, it seems a little odd to me that you are prevented from doing this within the same bar.

I note the suggested methods in other threads of moving to a different voice and then removing the rests… but then I have issues with beam grouping. If for example I want a group of 4 semi-quavers, first 3 notes, last one a slash (for e.g a push on last semi-quaver of a bar to a chord in following bar) it looks messy having a split beam.

Unless there is something I am missing already?

#2

Welcome to the forum, douggy12345. I’m glad you’re enjoying using Dorico so far.

You can actually have a slash region start and stop anywhere within a bar: select the circular handle at either end of the slash region and drag it with the mouse, or use Shift+Alt+left/right to lengthen/shorten the region, or Alt+left/right to move the whole region. You can then use a slash voice with stems to fill in the rest of the bar with whatever actual rhythms you want to show; use Edit > Remove Rests to hide any additional rests you don’t want to see.

#3

Hi Daniel - thanks for your reply

Sorry I probably should have been clearer. I’m not actually using slash regions, I’m using slash voice stems and wanting to mix between notation and slashes within the same rhythmic phrase.

I’ve attached two images of the same example in sib and Dorico to demonstrate what I mean.

In order to achieve it in Dorico, I had to use ‘New up stemmed slash voice’ and then had to delete the rests.
The problem though is that, with them not being on the same voice, the beam grouping is broken.

sib-example.png
sib-example.png910×243 27.7 KB

dor-example.png
dor-example.png1092×249 16.6 KB

#4

That’s easy to do, actually. Select the notes, and change the noteheads to slashed noteheads via right-click—Noteheads.

#5

Ah I’m an idiot - I actually did happen across note-head options earlier and tried it, but then ended up down a rabbit hole because it was just changing the note head but still plays the note. Totally forgot I’d done that already - been a bit of a steep learning curve!

Do you happen to know off the top of your head if there is a way to universally switch off Dorico playing slashed note-heads - as is the case in Sibelius?

#6

Dorico doesn’t distinguish between different types of noteheads in that way, but you can select them and toggle on the “Suppress playback” property from the Properties Panel.

#7

There is an option on the Repeats page of Playback Options that controls the playback of slash voices, but it won’t affect “normal” voices whose noteheads you have overridden to be slashes.

However, you don’t need to use “normal” voices in this way: you can have both a stemmed and stemless slash voice in the same bar. The only issue is that you may have to select rests you don’t want to appear and remove them via Edit > Remove Rests, to which you could assign a key command in Preferences if you think you’ll be using it a lot.