Half note on second beat breaks into two tied quarters even when it is configured not to

[csbubbles]

I have Dorico configured to not split half notes on the second beat into two beamed quarter notes, but to keep it as a half note:

However, that setting doesn’t seem to work:

PS I can explicitly use “force duration”, of course, but how come the default setting doesn’t work?

[tom_ginsberg]

hi @csbubbles Welcome to the Forum

EDIT: sorry - misread what you were asking
check the syncopation settings

[Martin90]

Hi csbubbles,
additional to Tom’s suggestion, this issue could also be related to the one linked below. Does the note grouping change if you double click on the time signature and press Return to close the popover again? If not, is there a double or other non-default barline somewhere before the affected bars?

Dotted quarter issue

Hi! I can’t get this to work. I want dotted quarter-note on m7 beat 1 and 3. How do I get this right? [bilde] [bilde]

[csbubbles]

Thanks for the suggestion, but there seems to be a couple issues there.

1. I would like to have half notes on the second beat to be written as half notes. If I configure this:

quarter notes would go through the imaginary line, which I don’t want.

2. Even with that setting, it appears to behave inconsistently. If it’s a quarter note after the half note, it looks fine, but as long as it’s two eight notes on the last beat, the half note gets split again:

[csbubbles]

Oh, funny. It looks you are right, it’s probably some similar issue. And syncopation has nothing to do with it, in fact. I reverted the setting to not break the imaginary line as I needed, and it’s not an issue if I add the time signature to that bar.

Here is what I get when I enter the notes:

Then, if I go add 4/4 to that bar explicitly, I get what I expect:

If I remove the time signature, it gets reverted to the wrong state again:

Is this a known bug in Dorico?

PS If I just click the time signature and close the popover, as you suggested, it doesn’t change anything in my case, though.

[Martin90]

@csbubbles

Is this a known bug in Dorico?

Yes, I think so.

@csbubbles

If I just click the time signature and close the popover, as you suggested, it doesn’t change anything in my case, though.

There might be another (hidden) time signature after a non-default (e.g. double) barline involved. Could you post a reduced version of your file so that we can have a look at what’s going on there?

[csbubbles]

Sure, attached:

E minor.dorico (553.9 KB)

Thanks for trying to help with this stuff, by the way, much appreciated!

It looks like it might have something to do with some barlines:

[Martin90]

Thanks for posting the file.
If you select the first repeat barline and disable “Hide time signature” in the property panel at the bottom, the corresponding time signature is shown. You can double-click on it to open the popover and confirm it by pressing Return. Now the note grouping should be corrected. Afterwards, just hide the time signature again.
Deleting and re-adding the repeat barline should work as well.

[csbubbles]

@Martin90

Cool, it worked! Thanks a lot!

Is it sufficient to just have the issue reported here, and hopefully someone from Steinberg’s development team is going to notice and fix it eventually, or should I report it somehow differently? (sorry, I am quite new to Dorico, so don’t know yet what the proper protocol is)

[Martin90]

Great. You’re welcome.
As far as I can tell, the Dorico team reads almost all posts in this forum and takes notes about all the issues reported. This one is probably already on the list because it seems to be similar to this one.

[Mark_Johnson]

This is not a bug, but part of the design. It’s all illustrated in your 2nd screenshot in the first post. That short-long-short setting does not apply when there are shorter notes on the first and/or last beat.

[Martin90]

Could you elaborate this? Why is it not a bug when the note grouping changes depending on how the same time signature is added? The setting does affect the grouping in this example but it’s not applied consistently. Maybe I’m missing something here.

[csbubbles]

+1 to @Martin90. It is clearly a bug, at least because it’s simply inconsistent. You remove a bar line and add it back, and the notation changes, while effectively nothing changed.

[Mark_Johnson]

Sorry for not testing thoroughly. I am missing something too. I cannot reproduce this behavior in a fresh file, but inserting a new 4/4 (or even C) at bar 2 of “E minor.dorico” above does change the notation of the half note, and I have no idea why.

Perhaps @dspreadbury could weigh in here.

[csbubbles]

Please also refer to what I mentioned earlier regarding the general expectations. Half notes started on the beat 2 are typically allowed to cross the imaginary line when they take complete beats (e.g., half or dotted half), while quarter notes are not supposed to cross the imaginary line ever (at least most of the time).

PS Regardless of what is going on on the first or fourth beats.

[sbloch1964]

In The dotted notes don't display that way, go to tied notes instead - #17 by sbloch1964 , I concluded that the rule for notes that cross a beat of their own value is “if the previous note is one note value smaller, notate as one note; if it’s two note values smaller, notate with a tie.” Which sounds pretty bizarre to me.