Hello,
Is there any way to attach dynamics to grace notes? They seem not to accept either dynamics or hairpins.
Thanks,
David Froom
It works OK for me: select the grace note, type Shift-D for the dynamics popover, then type e.g. “mf” or whatever, and hit Return. Hairpins can also start on grace notes, though they cannot end within the same group of grace notes: they have to occupy some real rhythmic space and cannot exist entirely within a single run of grace notes.
Daniel, you are right (of course). I think what through me off was that I couldn’t get a cresc hairpin in one of the grace note sets (still can’t), but only in one. The dynamics DO indeed work in all cases, and the hairpins, beginning on the grace note and ending on the first “real” note all work, with only one exception. In that case, I just put the hairpin in elsewhere and dragged it to where I wanted it.
Thanks
David Froom
Dear Daniel,
I just happened to stumble upon this problem : there’s a run of four 16th grace notes that lead to a fz quarter note. The grace notes are supposed to be crescendo, which makes totally sense to me. Just wondering how I could notate it, since Dorico doesn’t allow it.
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Not sure if this is a hack or a proper solution, but you can actually have the hairpin extend past the principal note, and place the dynamic on the principal note, before the end of the hairpin…
Looks like this is intended: Gradual dynamics truncated by immediate dynamics
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Thanks Jester! I’ll do it this way 
[Edit] I tried, and failed. Actually, whenever I try to input a crescendo starting on the grace notes run, it simply won’t be displayed. It doesn’t matter if I select the whole bar. I don’t know how you managed to do it in your example.
OK. So that’s something new : I’ve just tried to input my hairpin over the grace notes in a new file, with one oboe, and it works. Why wouldn’t it work on my large file? Is it because some of it is XML imported ?
[…]
Dorico does allow hairpins over grace notes. The limitation of the OP is over (I don’t know when that limitation was corrected). But hairpins need space, and Dorico would simply not draw it if there’s not enough space. I changed a setting in Engraving options (picture below) and made sure that there was enough horizontal space for the hairpin to be drawn.
Hopefully this will be useful for my fellow Doricians who have the same problem.
To get the hairpin on the grace notes, I added the hairpin starting on the principal note, and just dragged the starting handle backward onto the grace notes.
Ok. But actually this is not necessary.
Here’s the clean result once I made sure there was enough room for the hairpin and after changing the minimum length for hairpins to 1 space (default is 3, I think, which is too large for these markings).
Thanks again for your help, you have made me dive a little bit deeper into this 
[Edit] Afterthought for the team: I am genuinely wondering whether this behavior is acceptable… What’s the point in not displaying anything when I try to input a hairpin and there’s not enough space? What’s the point in having a minimal length for hairpins? If it’s there and it’s ugly, the user can correct it. But if it’s not there and the user does not notice it, the musical content is modified, and I don’t think it’s acceptable. There might be some kind of alert when this kind of problem arises. Now that I know that the hairpin is there, I am extremely careful. But it’s important to say that, even though it shows in page view (providing I put system breaks wisely), it still does not in galley view.
Thanks for listening!
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This issue has been discussed at length before. It is indeed incorrect that Dorico should fail to show a hairpin altogether if you have explicitly created one, and that’s something that we know needs to be addressed in a future version.
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Sorry, Daniel, I must have forgotten those discussions (or I thought they were not grace notes-related… But indeed I was wrong at the start, thinking this was about grace notes)
Thanks again for listening, I am looking forward for your next update/surprise/whatever you’re working on!