I’ve got a bit of a tricky one here. I’ve searched the forum, but haven’t found quite the exact scenario I’m looking at here. This is a snippet from Edward MacDowell’s Sonata Tragica:
I’m trying to find the best way to elide the end of the grace note run into the eighth note Gs as it was engraved. While this isn’t typical engraving, I like how it’s done because it mirrors the previous grace note run.
Any ideas how I can elide the grace notes with the final eighth note?
As usual with Dorico, when dealing with a rhythmic problem… I would use hidden tuplets!
The grace notes implemented in Dorico are perfect for 99% oc ghe cases, but here you’re in the remaining 1% 
You could nest a 17:4y (17 32nd notes in the time of 4, which is an 8th) into a 2:1 e (so that the grace notes+the last 8th occupy one 8th in that bar) on the last 8th of that second bar. Or use a 9:8e on the whole bar, if you want to dilute the time a little bit more. The beauty of nested tuplets is that they are mathematically perfect, they work for every difficult situation!
5 Likes
Hi Marc,
Thanks for the suggestion. The only issue is that there are two voices in the example. So would the solution then be to have two nested tuplets in both voices so they’ll align correctly?
I’ve tried some other solutions, like just having the one voice, but I really like the beaming the way it is (including the smaller grace note-sized beams which I’m not sure how I can manipulate quite as easily as it is to make the note heads “grace note” size).
Any other ideas?
Absolutely.
Changing size is extremely easy, in the properties panel you can change anything to grace note size changing one property!
OK I think I’m 95% of the way there. I didn’t realize the beaming would change with the property as I had only tried that property option when I was still thinking about it in one voice.
However, the “Remove Rests” feature doesn’t work on the rests in the tuplet (makes sense) but I need to find a way to suppress them. It doesn’t seem like the starts voice/ends voice works here too.
Any thoughts on this?
Thanks again for your help!
Remove rests should work…
The result is very good, isn’t it?
In any case, you could select the dotted quarter chord, enable the property Ends voice, and on the last 8th, enable Starts voice. Which is what Remove Rests does automatically. Maybe enable voice colours so that you see clearly what you are doing.
1 Like
It removed the rests in the lower stemmed voice in beats 1 - 2.5 just fine! But the rests inside the tuplet remain (and you have to duplicate the tuplet in both voices because otherwise the eighth note won’t line up).
I understand the logic of what the Dorico team is thinking. I just need to subvert their logic 
EDIT: The dotted quarter won’t take the “ends voice” toggle. It automatically turns off when I try to toggle it on.
Here’s the image with the voice colors (somehow I couldn’t find this feature before but I’m glad it’s in Dorico!)
Figured it out. I only need the 2:1e tuplet in the other voice (DUH!) and once I removed the 17:4 tuplet, remove rests worked. 
Thanks Marc!
1 Like