I am wanting to enter specific tempos in Dorico Se 5. All I can find is a slider that gives jerky, random variable results, that are entirely unusable for professional purposes. Is there a method to simply ‘click on the tempo number, type in a tempo, and… magic’?
I found Sibelius had the same issue and one had to enter manually on the score crotchets et al and a rather clunky process. They do not provide a method for manually inputting a specific tempo, for it is critical and essential to the feel of a piece of music to be able to control the tempo. Surely, surely, Dorico has dealt with this extremely important aspect.
Merely typing in a tempo rather than using the slider should be possible. I will be sadly, incredibly disappointed if this is indeed not so.
There are a few ways to add tempo changes. The quickest way is to use popovers. In Write Mode, select the measure or barline where you want to change the tempo. Then, use Shift+T to use the tempo popover. Type “q=120” and press Enter without the quotes to set a metronome marking where a quarter note = 120 bpm. Obviously you can replace the 120 with whatever metronome marking you want. You can also add tempo text before the metronome marking such as “Allegro q=120”. Putting brackets around the metronome marking makes it hidden (e.g. “[q=120]”). Here’s a full guide to the popover: link
You can also double click an existing tempo/metronome marking to change it. It’ll automatically pull up the tempo popover.
The long way to do this is to use the menus: Write > Create Tempo.
Somewhat confusingly, the metronome UI indicator at the top right is mostly for telling you what the metronome is currently set to at the playhead’s current position, rather than giving you a place to modify the metronome marking for your piece. You can increase or decrease the speed with that tool, but it’s more like a playback speed modifier, and the actual tempo is supposed to be specified in the score itself or in the Tempo Track.
In addition to @Eric_Falley’s excellent advice, you can also use the tempo popover to enter gradual tempo changes (rit/rall/accel…) and control how much of a change to make using the lower properties panel.
Finally, if you do not want to add notations to your score, you can draw tempo changes using the Tempo track of the key editor (write mode or play mode)…
Much appreciated, the pop ups will suffice for now. I just find it astonishing that one can’t simply click on the tempo and type in a desired figure. Surely a slider requires more coding! If they can do a slider then they can do a manual entry. Please Dorico engineers, this is a must.
Sorry what slider are you talking about?
Fixed Tempo adjustment slider.
Can I ask… What are you using the fixed tempo mode for?
The essential takeaway is that setting the tempo in the transport panel is a “special case”, rather than a usual practice.
Dorico is notation software, so it presumes that tempi will be set in the score, using notation – at specific points where the tempo applies.
Setting the tempo in the transport will ignore any tempo marks in the score, if for some reason you want to hear the whole thing slowly. “Fixed Tempo mode”.
I’m fairness, it’s not clear in the UI that it’s a fixed tempo setting. I think a lot of people who come over from non-notation software assume that it’s actually the primary way that you’d set the tempo in Dorico, and then they get frustrated when it doesn’t seem to work how they expect. If I wanted to try out a new temporary tempo just to see if it sounds better at that speed, it’d be nice to be able to just type in the tempo I want. And if someone doesn’t have any tempo changes in their piece, then the fixed tempo setting is simpler to use than using the popover, or at least it would be if you could manually type the tempo in.
But in general I would suggest using popovers to set tempo. Tempos set in the score are much more integrated with the rest of how the software works.
The fixed tempo adjustment slider is in the playback area, and generally you can rest assured that nothing done in the playback area can affect the score itself. I personally would not want the ability to add a tempo to the score from the playback area, because that would compromise that design.
It can also be invoked in Write, which likely causes the confusion!
I mean in the playback bar, this thing:
Which, yes, appears in all the modes. But, generally I know I can click on anything there (with the obvious exception of “record”) without worrying that I’m going to accidentally change my score in some way. I’m not sure I like the idea of allowing the person to add a tempo marking to the score by clicking there and typing in a number. If I were to click there and type in a number, I would expect it to just be a temporary value for playback and not go into the score. This is because that playback area is a “safe zone” where you can do things without worrying about messing up your score (with the sole exception of the “record” button).
I don’t necessarily mind the idea of typing in a number as a fixed tempo to hear it, but I don’t think it should automatically add that to the score where the playhead happens to be, otherwise you’ll have people accidentally adding tempos in random places.
Straight playback speed. Write a bar of music. Hit play. Adjust speed. Its there in the box.
Simple is good. There’s more than enough to think about when being creative. the slider is fine, just very inaccurate and can’t be duplicated. If the box is there with a number in it, let me enter it manually. I’m fine. No special commands to remember.
Then set a tempo (eg. shift-T q=146) at the start.
The slider value will not survive a file close/reopen operation, so you would have to reset it every time you open the score.
I’m not doing orchestral music with multiple changes of tempi; 99% of the music is all the same tempo for me as I want to write a lot of contemporary music. So for me, when I see a transport bar, with a tempo, I’m easy. That’s the tempo. And I’m sure most beginners would see it the same way. I don’t see special usage, especially when its glaringly there. I understand I can just put one tempo on the page, but I don’t necessarily want to. If no tempo is written, then the fixed tempo should just play whatever I request, directly inputted there. Again, I have so much software as do most, the less commands the better. Basics first principle.
So do I. When I’m working a piece I just want to adjust the tempo consistently to get a feel.
And yes, typing in a number there will not add a tempo to the score; yes its just the playback speed. All I’m asking for is to be able to type in the playback speed, given how important playback speed is. As they say, Creativity First.
Appreciated; I have more trouble going through the user manual and clicking in the index only to find no mention of the item on the page suggested. The amount of clicks I do due to bad user manuals out weighs the hassle of typing in a playback speed. That’s all. I don’t see why anyone would find a wonky slider that jumps about to be useful at all. I click there 25 times trying to get a tempo. Just seems like a pretty basic option given how many millions of other programs allow for a similar option.
There are other related improvements I would like to see too even in “follow tempo mode” - in that case I would like if the slider could be available as a way to increase or decrease the overall tempo by percentage, so that it would still follow along with all tempo changes and rits and accels and things like that, but give a way to slow it down or speed it up.
This is very helpful for live performance if using score following and musicians start going faster or slower than the marked tempo, so that you can slow down the computer to match.
I’m not that far in with multiple tempo changes, but yes, very accurate discrete controls in tempo is so important. 1 bpm is a big difference.