I’m having the disappearing rest syndrome again. This time, however, the “Starts Voice” property doesn’t work. The screenshots show the beginning and ending of the offending stretch of measures. When the Chimes come in (m. 226), I can select the rest for the second voice and set the “Starts Voice” property. But for the upper voice, Dorico won’t let me choose that option for the rest or the note. I select it, but then after a couple seconds Dorico turns it off. I tried using both “Starts Voice” and “Ends Voice” for the last note of m. 178. That didn’t work either.
This was originally an XML import. Did the import bring in some unsolvable quirks?
This situation is simple, but it can be hard to understand at first. To restore the rests, go to the last note before the empty bars and turn off “Ends voice”.
(The “Starts voice” property doesn’t apply backwards. I never bother with it, because entering a note sets it where needed.)
Further details about how Dorico works with voices and rests on request.
Thanks for the reply, Mark.
Unfortunately, the “Ends Voice” is currently turned off on that last note, but I still don’t have rests. I’m seriously thinking Dorico misunderstood some XML translation stuff. I’m also getting weird results at some places with condensing, text blocks were messed up, etc.
Unfortunately the file is too big. The system here won’t accept it. (It’s a 9 minute orchestra piece that’s almost 6 MB.) I’m also a little uncomfortable making an unpremiered piece (that’s not yet in ideal notation form) publicly available. But I’ll give you a link where you can download the file. After you download it, please let me know and I’ll take the piece out of my Google Dive.
Thanks!
You can also share cut-down projects: ie a duplicate file, that only contains just enough players and bars to demonstrate the issue.
Eg if the problem is in the percussion only, and only within a 20-bar range, then in a duplicate copy of your project, delete all the other players that aren’t percussion, and all the bars except for the offending excerpt.
Then your original file is safe, and you’re only sharing a snippet - with the bonus of that snippet being smaller to send and easier for people at the other end to “get to the point”, as they don’t have to wade through hundreds of other bars.
So here’s a version with only timpani and percussion. I was going to send a version starting at m. 178, but when I cut all the preceding measures out of the score, the rests showed up normally. So I thought something I did before that stretch messed up the score. So then I put the preceding measures back and deleted all the measures after problematic part. Again, the problem was remedied. So it seems if I erase big chunks of my music either before or after that place, then that place will appear normal. For this reason, I’m sending a copy of the full percussion (all measures) in case it helps you diagnose the problem. The offending measures are mm. 179 -225. Sorry for sending the entire piece, but at least I did delete most of the instruments.
PS: If it would help for you to see a score with all the instruments, let me know and I’ll redo the Google Drive upload (currently, I deleted the file from that link).
Edit: of course, found it immediately after positing that I couldn’t say exactly where it was
Bar 238, you had forced rests. Delete that bar, and all will be well.
For reference, I found that by: selecting the last note in b178, then doing Edit > Select to End of Flow and lo and behold, the selection jumped to the random rests in b238.
Dorico in general uses the properties Ends voice and Starts voice to suppress rests between two specific notes or rests. So in most cases, finding the last note/rest before missing rests or the first note/rest after and deactivating those properties should be enough.
On a side note:
Here’s how to hide flow headings, rather than deleting the text frame manually – which removes the flow heading from spacing calculations, meaning you don’t have to move staves manually
To change the size of the title/composer fonts etc, edit the corresponding paragraph styles or edit the First page template rather than editing pages directly
If you’re moving text away from its default position (b205 “medium”), deactivate collision avoidance first, so you don’t have to do as much work to accommodate other items nearby or move staves
Thanks for spending so much time on my score, Lillie! Also, thanks for all the tips and suggestions. I quickly tried to duplicate what you describe (Edit>Select to End of Flow), but nothing got selected (?). I also deleted the notes of m. 238, then reentered them manually, but that didn’t solve the problem. Did you mean to completely delete that measure from ALL staves on that system? I haven’t had a chance to try that yet because I’m limited with time at the moment, but I’ll experiment more with it later on.
Thanks again!
Thanks, Janus.
… I did what she did. I selected that last note of m. 178, then did “Select to End of Flow”. It didn’t select anything after the bars without rests. It only selected the change instrument warning at the end of bar 178. Interestingly, though, if I try “Select to Beginning of Flow” it only selects back to m. 152. So maybe there’s a problem at that point in the score too?
The only possible difference is that I’m doing this on the full orchestra score and not the reduced version for only timpani and percussion. Would that make a difference, though?
… so I totally deleted m. 238 from all instruments. You are correct, Lillie. That solved the problem. So I’ll just have to re-enter all the music of that measure. It’s very strange, though, that my select to end of flow didn’t work like yours did. But anyway, I’ve got rests back in those empty measures now. Hopefully they’ll still be there after I re-enter everything in m. 238
Final update:
As you probably expected, after I re-entered all the notes and rhythms, the staff does produce the proper rests.
I don’t know when this happened, though, but as I was re-entering the music of m. 238 I noticed that Viola, Cello and Bass parts had gotten shifted late by 1/2 beat. I don’t know if that happened before or after I deleted that measure. But the fact that it happened at all makes me think there was some strange things happening in that area of the score during XML import (or else me being a novice Dorico user I did something else to make that happen).
Sorry @PSG if my reply wasn’t quite clear enough – I didn’t mean that you had to delete the entire bar for everyone, only the contents of b238 from the glockenspiel.
See here, from your project in galley view (which I forgot to clarify in my previous reply):
For future reference, it’s highly unlikely that the solution to a problem in Dorico will require you to delete bars entirely for all instruments, and reinput notes manually. If it is, that will be heavily signposted!
Oh, now I get it! Yes, I wasn’t in galley view. That must explain why when I originally deleted the notes and re-typed them, the problem still persisted.
Thanks for clarifying.
