I have noticed the same phenomenon and find it off-putting. But it’s quite understandable given human nature, the enthusiasm of the Dorico users, and the difficulties of what the designers of Dorico are trying to do. One hopes, however, that it will not stand in the way of Dorico’s progress.
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Well said, John. As an enthusiastic Dorico user myself, and one who believes that Dorico is already becoming the best music notation program available, I find it strange that when someone points to certain practices which are found in reputable editions but which are not emulated by Dorico, the reactions can occasionally be ones which merely explain and defend Dorico’s behaviour but don’t actually address the issue. This is all I meant when I used the term ‘irrelevant’ and I was by no means intending to come across as sounding acerbic. Thanks to both Jeremy and tbabcock123 for rewording my remark more diplomatically!
Thanks also to Ben for finding settings which help this particular issue, although I still need to experiment with their effects in other situations.
Janus is correct in that Dorico uses an averaging algorithm to determine stem length, but the general consensus here seems to be that it doesn’t work in these particular instances, and this is supported by the above examples from printed editions.
An example of a related problem which is also created by Dorico’s taking the majority of notes into account, and one which I remarked about several years ago, has to do with the stem direction of groups of notes, the majority of which are on the middle staff line. The ‘Use default direction’ setting, which is pretty much the de facto standard in music publishing, occasionally yields strange results in Dorico. If one enters three eighth notes, two of which are on the middle line, the remaining note has to be a sixth lower than the other two notes before the stems flip upwards. In other words, if one enters b’-e’-b’ eighths in the treble clef, the stems will still point downwards. I’ve seldom if ever seen this in traditional publishing and it just looks wrong. I posted this example and basically got two responses. One was that if I chose the Dorico default, which is ‘Determine by context’, I wouldn’t have this problem. Not only is this not what one usually sees in standard publishing, but it occasionally yields strange results, like two middle line quarter-notes which are close to each other but have different stem directions. The other was the explanation that Dorico is simply taking the majority of notes into account. Most of them are on the middle line, therefore the stems should point downwards. The fact that one seldom if ever sees this in standard publishing was basically ignored.
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Thanks, Vaughan. The rules governing Finale’s beam direction produce what I am accustomed to seeing in well-engraved music and would certainly be worth investigating. Here is the example you mentioned combined with the OP situation done in an untouched Finale default file:
Anyone who has access to Finale might play around with groups of beamed notes to see how it works. The rules have less to do with the number of notes on either side of the middle line, as E. Gould and T. Ross present it in their books, and more to do with the note that is farthest from the middle line. It gets more complicated if there are more than one far note equally distant from and on both sides of the middle line. I am going to try to present the system over at Notat.io if I can get it unraveled.
Certainly this behavior is strange. Whatever the engraving options, I think the stem direction should go up as soon as the center note goes down from the middle line in these situations. This is because when the stem-direction is up, there will be no stem in wrong direction, but when the stem-direction is down, there will be always one stem in wrong direction at the center note.
It is strange that the one which has the wrong stem is prioritized.
wrong stem directions.dorico (365.2 KB)
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The next major version of Dorico will include the following new option on the Notes page of Engraving Options:
which will produce the following result for your example project:
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That’s good news, Daniel!
Does that new setting solve all stem direction issues with beamed groups in Dorico?
Thank you for the information on the nice new option! The result of my example have changed as I wanted.
Is Dorico’s algorithm for these horizontal 8th beam position really so? Is it written in the manual or somewhere in the forum by Dorico Team?
And even if Dorico adopts this algorithm, it behaves inconsistently with the algorithm in the situation below.
When the beam option is set to ‘Use natural stem lengths’, the latter beam position is farther from the notes.
averaging algorithm contradiction.dorico (366.7 KB)
IIRC there was a thread on this a year or so ago.
To be honest (and I know I will be censured for this), I’m beginning to find your obsessive need to find fault a tad wearisome. Daniel has indicated changes are on the way.
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While I understand that a small number of users would find a comprehensive explanation of Dorico’s beam snapping and stem length calculations helpful, I’m afraid we’re not going to be in a position to provide one: it’s both commercially-sensitive and also, perhaps more significantly, very complex.
Dorico applies different rules in different situations, and in particular beams with repeated notes, and beams with concave shapes are handled differently, which accounts for the difference in the above beams.
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Thank you for the explanation ,@dspreadbury. I understand that you can’t disclose all the information to us, and also that it could be too complex to explain.
I see. It seems that multiple factors(beam snapping, stem length, repeated notes, concave beams,etc.) are intricately related in the examples raised in this thread.
Anyway, I hope the problems discussed in this thread will be improved and future Dorico will progress to more useful music engraving software.
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The LH fingering for the Simrock 1928 Edition is painful!
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That’s good news.
However, unless the first bar was located on the previous system, I would also engrave the first bar with up stems. To my eye, context overrides strict rules.
And in such cases Dorico lets you override the default manually.
I just want to say that I value what you, @Vaughan_Schlepp, and others have contributed in this thread. It’s slightly disturbing that it hasn’t been considered more respectfully.
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