DO you need to respecify the original tempo at the end of a rit. or accel. or does it automatically revert to the previous tempo?
It doesn’t revert, it stays at whatever the end tempo of the gradual tempo was, unless you input a fresh immediate tempo.
Could that go in the manual?
I can make a note but it won’t be a top priority, given how common it is to see e.g. “rit… a tempo” in printed music. This is also something that’s relatively easy to check for yourself e.g. by looking at what happens in the Time/Tempo track in Play mode after inputting tempo marks.
The existing documentation for gradual tempo changes also states that they have different metronome marks at their start and end.
Isn’t this a generally understood musical practice rather than something a notation program needs to document unless it goes against the practice?
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Sure, I always put in the a tempo, but I had some notion that since it’s a computer, it knows the previous tempo, and could revert to that. But I was wrong.
I think the computer reverts to the last immediate tempo value when you input “a tempo” marking after a gradual tempo. This is my understanding of Dorico’s behavior.
Ah now! I never saw the a tempo way down the end of the panel. Hence the source of my confusion. I’m glad I asked about this - that’s exactly the answer, and of course Dorico provides this - I should have guessed!
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Among the long list of things the Dorico team has on it’s docket I imagine this is not the highest priority, but it sure would be nice if we could set the final tempo of a gradual change to a specific value rather than having to pull up my calculator to come up with an approximate percentage.
In fact, it would be most straightforward to insert tempos at the appropriate positions for beginning and end , select both, then add the gradual change between them, like we can for gradual dynamics changes.
I’m sure there’s technical reasons for the current requirement for a percentage, but here’s hoping this can change in the future.
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If you use the tempo editor (either in Play mode or the lower zone in Write mode) you can specify the final tempo value more easily.
Thanks, Daniel.