Force Stem Direction in Cues not working

Hi, I’ve been diligently learning the ins and outs of Dorico, but have run into a brick wall on something.

I’m using a “Cues” player (using Bass Drum as instrument) to write in all of my lead sheet’s topline rhythmic cues, by using the Cues popover. However, I can’t seem to get the Lead Layout to keep the Cues Layout’s cued notes with the stems UP. I’ve tried using the Properties panel to force the Cues’ stems up. I’ve made sure the Cues Layout has all of its notes forced stem-up (no issues there).

Screenshot:

Am I missing something? Thank you!
Made in the Shade.dorico (1.3 MB)

HI @Will_Padgett Welcome to the Forum

Just start entering the notes (the melody) and the stems of the cue will change the direction automatically. You do not even have to force the direction of the cue.
See @FredGUnn answer in Little notes above system to indicate a rythm - #4 by FredGUnn for at least other way to get what you are looking for.

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Indeed you are right! Thank you.

However, what if I want to keep the measures empty, and maintain upward stems?

using the second option in the post i linked before.
In your file (in the full score layout):

  1. delete the cue
  2. select all the content of your “cue” player (for example by selecting the rest at the beginning of the first bar and then use "select till the end of flow).
  3. copy the content to the “voice” player using copy & paste or alt click.
  4. with the content still selected (keep it selected through all steps) filter notes and chords
  5. edit>notations (or right clik) voices>change voice>new slashed up-stem voice
  6. change to engrave mode (Ctrl 3), open the properties panel (ctrl+8) and make sure that in “set local properties” globally is selected.
  7. In the properties panel activate the Slash pos. property and set it to 7 for example, activate the “hide ledger lines” property, activate the scale property and set it to Cue:
  8. Since there are no notes in other voices, the stems are still pointing down although they belong to a “slashed up-stem voice”, just press F to flip them. That’s it.

I also can’t understand how this function is supposed to be working, here’s an example:

How do I make that note “stem-up” ?

Forcing the direction doesn’t do anything

Your screenshot doesn’t show a lot of context, but it looks like you might be cueing onto a grand staff instrument where none of the voices belonging to the right-hand staff thus appear. That is causing Dorico to ignore the Voice direction property set on the cue. There’s no ideal way to resolve this, but you can add a bar rest to the right-hand staff (caret on the right-hand staff, Shift+B, rest, Return), which will cause the cue to flip. You can then hide the rest by e.g. overriding its colour.

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thanks, and apologies if the screenshot wasn’t clear.
Here’s a better one taken from galley view, I believe you identified the culprit.

I didn’t manage to solve it, as creating a rest in the right hand staff does indeed flip the voice, but I haven’t been able to hide the unwanted rest. I’ll leave it as it is now as it’s such a minor hiccup and it’s not worth it. It would be great if in the future the “force stem direction” was more flexible as I can already imagine a few use cases for that.
Thanks!

Hi @mikeheels, here the workflow suggested by Daniel. You can use the opacity set to 0% for the Rest Color property (and set the Rest Position property to 0 to avoid the ledger line):

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Brilliant!
That’s what I was missing. I tried changing the color to white, but couldn’t think of the “opacity setting”

Thanks a lot!!!

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