Help with changing notes duration by selecting them all

Hello all,

I’m fairly new to music writing and certainly new to Dorico. I’m trying to write simple songs so that I can understand how to work with Dorico and I ran in an issue that I cant figure out. I basically wrote 16 quarter notes without a time signature assigned to them. They sounded as I expected them to. I then assigned the time signature 4/4 which meant 4 measures for all 16 notes which makes sense. I then selected all the notes and changed their duration on the duration panel to 16ths. I was expecting all the notes to fit into a single measure but instead what I got was 16th notes with rests between the notes and now it sounded staccato and still only four notes per measure. I got rid of the rests and I still get four 16th notes per measure and still sounding staccato. What am I missing? I attached some images of what I’m talking about.


This is the original quarter notes
16ths_wRest.JPG
this is right after changing the duration
16ths_noRest.JPG
and this is after getting rid of the rests.

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer.

Welcome to the forum, dineroking. When you change note durations and want to squeeze them all up or push them all apart together, use Insert mode: hit I to engage insert mode.

“Remove rests” just removes the graphical representation. Turn your notes back into quarter notes, then turn on Insert mode (hit I), then turn the notes back into 16ths. “Insert mode” is designed for this purpose.