Half / Double note durations

I just got bitten by this when I doubled the note lengths… :open_mouth:
I thought chord symbols were attached to a note with the same rhythmic position… - seems logical to me. I guess there’s a reason for this not being so?
Luckily I saved under another name or I would have wasted a lot of time…
Mads

Chord symbols are attached to rhythmic positions, e.g.
A7 on bar 1 1st beat
Dm9 bar 1 3rd beat

The A7 chord symbol doesn’t last for a minim/half note; it is unaware of the presence of the Dm9 chord symbol two beats later. All that it knows is its start position. This is why double/halve note values doesn’t work here - Chord Symbols don’t have a note value.

I understand, but I don’t get the logic behind this design.
Why can’t chord symbols have a start position and a value that lasts until the next chord symbol comes along… ? - this should make them move when using the double/half note feature.

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The official line (from John Barron on Facebook) is “Maybe one day - at the moment it is just for notes.”
Do remember that it isn’t just chord symbols that don’t (yet) halve/double; if your music contained any text/dynamics, they wouldn’t halve/double either.

As far, as I know, Dorico still can’t double/halve the notes duration without moving further material, am I right?
See the example.


I would like to transform four 16th as it is in second staff, but when I’am doing it with „inserte mode”, Dorico is behaving likie in third staff. When I swith off „insert mode”, the result is even worse.
It would be very handy to have possibility to transform selected material without moving further material. Especially in a middle of a big, orchestral score.

There are definitely ways round this. For example:

  1. Select the material to transform.
  2. Change Voice > New Voice (Upstem or Downstem; doesn’t matter)
  3. Turn on Insert mode.
  4. Halve or Double Duration.
  5. Turn off Insert mode.
  6. Change Voice > whatever Voice was originally used.

I am currently using Dorico Elements 2.2. I am trying to double the duration of notes for an entire piece, to change from cut common time to 4/2 (a choir part to match renaissance diminutions written out in greater lengths). I thought this would be easy - just double the note values and change the tiem signatures to match - but when I double the values it overwrites every second note rather than the whole line lengthening.

Is that the intended behaviour? Am I doing something wrong? Does it behave differently in the pro version? I am currently using the trial version and am enjoying it, but it’s hard to know how much of a difference the features in the pro version will make for me when I can’t try them out …

Thank you, pianoleo, it’s for sure kind of workaround, but it will definitely help me a lot.

Turn on insert mode first! The letter I.

+1

Although, I suppose for the moment, if one would want to transform a larger portion of music than just a few notes, one workaround could be to have an extra flow, into which a section from the score could be copied, then halved/doubled, and then copied back in to the score…?

Just wanted to express that I was disapointed not to find this really needed and useful feature in dorico 3 - to be able to select a few notes / bars and being able to Half duration without leaving all the rests in between (when using “shift+i” - I have big troubles of other note’s of other part of the songs getting out of sequence). This is something very common in the day to day activity - to decide to change the duration of a phrase or parts and it is really doing a lot of struggles moving parts via other flows. Hope you will consider it for the next updates, and maybe some other composition arangment tools like Rotate Pitch / Rotate Rhythms, Retrograde, etc. (but at least the half/double duration which is the most common useful feature).
Thanks!

I thought about this again and now also think: The current (and technically logical) behaviour of half/double note value combined with insert mode is probably seldomly what you want it to do, if a selection only covers some parts of a score and is not at its end. I think it would be much easier to use if half/double note durations reacted intelligently to the selection when used in insert mode:

  • some parts, half note durations: just insert rests to fill the second half of the selection (if you really want to have the rest of the selected parts follow, it’s easy to just change the selection and cut or delete while still in insert mode).
  • some parts, double note durations: If only rests are in the double selection range, just overwrite these. If further notes are in the double range of the selection, I suggest to pop up a window asking if these should be overwritten or moved independently from the not selected parts (current behaviour).
  • all parts selected: the current behaviour is just fine.

What do you think?

How are you defining a “part”? How do you account for multiple voices on one stave, where some of them are present in the selection and others only appear before/after the selection?
I’m not really following.

It’s simple in this case, because the only thing that should react as now in my idea is if you select everything vertically, so the whole score can shrink/expand to take/make room for the half/doubled note values of the selected passage.
Everything else is „some parts“ because in these cases, following music will lose its alignment (parts to each other timewise) with the current behaviour, which is what I want to prevent to happen by accident.

I have written an arrangement for Moves like Jagger. I transcribed it in the original tempo - let’s say 120 bmp in 4/4 - hook is in eighths.
Now I want to change the feel to a double time feel - then 240 bpm 4/4 - hook in quarter notes.

The durations of all notes should double and 4 eighths filling half a bar before now should fill one bar in quarter notes.

I found out how to double the duration (activate insert mode and double note duration), however like somebody already mentioned, the chord symbol positions do not change accordingly nor do the repeat-signs etc.

I need the entire song structure to just double. Double duration, double bar numbers etc.

Is there a way in Dorico?

The only way to move the Chord Symbols is manually. Likewise the repeat barlines.

I would hope so as it’s something I use all the time and Sibelius plug-in solution of creating a new score is pretty half baked.

Dear dko,
My answer is like over two years old… and I think it is perfectly possible to use the double/half note duration edit function. There are tips right above our posts (#26 from Leo is perfectly valid)

Ok, thanks – I’ll see where we’re at when the Dorico3 demo is available

AFAIK this does not change in version 3