I have used Sibelius for many years, and am accustomed to using fermatas to effect phrasing during playback. In Sibelius I can add a fermata, then use the Property Inspector to change the length of the note (how long the pitch is held) and the duration after the note.
I have recently downloaded Dorico 1.1, and am delighted that I can send MIDI output to LoopBe and thence to Hauptwerk–I have working playback! That is, right up till the first fermata–which Dorico does not seem to recognize or respect.
How can I use the fermata, or some other means, to affect how long a note is held, and how long a duration to pause after the note? In my situation I want a fermata on a single bar to effect output from all bars.
Am I missing something obvious? Or is this a yet-to-come feature?
No, though you can do something to that effect by manually changing the tempo in its dedicated lane in Play mode — which is, I guess, what Dorico would’ve done for you when playing a fermata, I guess.
It depends on the musical content - whether you want want to hold the note and then have a pause before playing it back. If there’s no gap between the notated notes then this is harder to achieve. You might need to shorten the notes in Play mode too too create the gap.
Can I add options for immediate continuation or a short break after. This doesn’t always want to be written with a caesura or breathmark (although could be indicated with a hidden one).
I also would like placement to automatically alter and tie rhythms on other staves so that the pauses are all on the same beat. No other software does this but it is a short route from Dorico’s already intelligent implementation.
Adding my vote for Dorico v3 release
Hope there will be several options to pause for shorter or longer periods like:
Fermata with straight lines .^
Caesura //
Brief caesura ’
My suggestion is each will be able to modify parameters for how much pause effect in playback
I agree this would be a nice (and logical) addition, and I’m quite confident this is a feature that has (probably always) been in the dev list of features to implement!
Hello Dorico crew,
I hope in the next update we’ll have options to control the playback duration of the fermatas, caesura and breath marks!
Please, do something on this, because it’s important! N.B: The most important thing here is to have per symbol duration control, for every inserted fermata, caesura, or breath pause!
In some places we may want to have longer duration, in other - shorter.
Overture 5 may serve as good example how the playback for these symbols is implemented. Double mouse left button click over the symbol
brings a Playback Option dialog for it.
I’d hope that the user would be able to specify the “dwell time” (how long you hold the note) as well as as the pause time (any extra time after note-off before resuming time.)
Each of the symbols should have its own defaults, plus local properties for each occurrence of the symbol.
