Go To a specific measure in Write mode

I’m using Dorico Pro 5. When I am in Write mode, I would like to start editing or writing at a specific point/measure. When I do Cmd-G, I get the pop up that asks what measure I would like to go to, and when I type it in, nothing happens. The only place I can go is back to the beginning by hitting the return to the beginning icon. When I am in Play mode, it works correctly. Am I doing something wrong or is there some glitch?

If any part of the target bar is already visible, Dorico won’t move the view.

If that’s not the case, we’ll need more details to understand what’s happening.

Not sure I understand so will try to explain the issue. When I am in Write mode, I sometimes would like to review what I’ve written without going into play mode, but cannot back up to a particular bar, even by using Cmd-G. The only thing I can do is press the rewind to beginning button (which is not what I want to do) or go into Play mode and move the cursor using either the mouse or Cmd-G. So what I would like to be able to do is go back to a chosen bar to hear what I’ve just written without going into Play mode. Does that make sense?

If you use Cmd+G (or jump bar) to go to a specific bar while in Galley view, it will always be the first full bar on the left hand side of the screen unless it was already visible. If you want to play from a certain bar, just click the first note in the bar and hit P.

Thanks! That worked. And it was so simple. I didn’t need to do Cmd-G!

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In case you hadn’t discovered this trick yet, you can also drag select only a few staves, then when you hit P it will only play back the selected staves. That’s useful if you only want to hear the brass, or strings, etc., without having to mute other staves in the mixer.

There is no need to go to Play mode at all. In Write, you just need to click on an object (eg. a note or a barline), then hit P and playback will start from that point. (The space bar will toggle pause and continue).

A (useful) caveat is if you select multiple things from a single instrument, then only that one instrument will play. This is extremely useful, but also a little annoying if you forget!

And it’s really useful to hit Shift-Space Bar to start playing from the same place again.

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Really?.. (for me that’s just yet another thing to remember. Hitting P again works just fine for me)

I’m test-driving Dorico for the first time today and I was surprised the go-to bar function does not select the first note in the bar or move the playhead there. Is this intended?

This is a popular workflow in DAWs and would be a convenient feature for power users, in that it avoids the need to reach for the mouse as described here.

Thoughts?

Welcome to the forum, @jack.kinsella. In a piece with multiple instruments, where would you expect it to make a selection? It might not always be ideal to select something in e.g. the top staff in the system.

My intuition from other software is that it would use a simple algorithm to determine what’s best - e.g. either go the desired bar in the currently selected staff and voice or – if none are selected – it would choose the first voice in the first staff.

Another idea is for there to be two commands – the current one which does not move caret for mouse-users … and then a power tool that does move caret for people who are looking for mouse-free power editing.

The reason I’m trying Dorico out is that I can see it does way better than MuseScore in this department. This one thing is the main missing bit of functionality for mouse-free. I saw other threads with people asking about this.