Curious as to why Dorico’s gradual tempo indications, like rit., need their duration specified? I my experience, such markings are understood to continue until they are countered by the next tempo indication.
Perhaps because the playback engine would need to know?
Since the tempo increases by a percent in an accel., knowing the length before the tempo next becomes fixed would be important for playback calculations right from the start.
Thanks, Janus and Derrek. That could well be.
So dynamics don’t have the same requirement?
A dynamic like p is similar to an immediate tempo – it takes effect right away and doesn’t need to specify duration. A gradual tempo is like a gradual dynamic: It changes over time and so needs a duration.
I hadn’t realized that gradual dynamics like cresc. also needed to be exactly defined in Dorico. Is that correct? Just getting started with playback.
Yes, if you want gradual dynamics and gradual tempos to correctly affect playback, then they need to be defined with a duration. (Hairpins, of course, already have a visible duration.)
Thank you all for explaining that. I was accustomed to Finale playback where, as far as I can remember, this was not a requirement.
I could be wrong, but I think that Finale’s Human Playback essentially pre-processed the score for playback, interpreting gradual dynamics and tempi relative to the position of other markings. Dorico expects you (allows you) to specify exactly what you want.