I have just spent some hours trying to fix a corrupted Dorico file. The file has around 300 measures in three staves (violin plus piano left and right hands).
I was making some edits in some early measures of the violin part and then discovered to my horror that Dorico had shifted all of the notes in subsequent measures of the violin part horizontally, so that they were no longer in correct vertical alignment with the piano part. I may have inadvertantly hit the I (insert) key, which I now understand might have caused the corruption.
This functionality seems like a potentially disastrous trap for the unwary. In a score with music in multiple staves that have been carefully created to synchronize vertically (think of a Bach fugue!), why anyone would ever want to shift large amounts of notes of one staff horizontally so as to corrupt the vertical arrangement? In other words, why does Dorico have this danger built into the software? This strikes me as a serious enough risk to consider changing giving up on Dorico. What am I missing here?
Because it is an incredibly useful feature! (Sorry that it has caught you out. I guess you will never do it again!)
It is also very easy to remedy (with insert mode active, just delete the notes/rests that you thought you were overwriting and all the notes will be pulled back into alignment).
Using insert mode doesn’t corrupt your file. If you catch your mistake early enough, you can keep hitting Undo until you’re back where you were. Or, as @janus notes, you can use insert mode again to fix things.
Just about any software provides features which can be disruptive or destructive if they’re not used carefully.
Hi @weigel, sorry for your unpleasant Insert Mode encounter. I think every one of us experienced this, at some point But, as being said, it is a very powerful and helpful functionality for many tasks.
I personally prefer always to activate it by clicking on the icon (and by long clicking choosing one of the three scopes of Insert Mode). And if you want to be sure to not hit “I” inadvertently , just remove the Key Command from Preferences/Key Commands/Toggle Insert
(Another way to recover your file to an earlier state is to look for previous states of the files in the Backup folder, whose position you can set in Preferences/General/Files)
Thank you for the replies. I am a longtime Finale user and new to Dorico, so I appreciate the support. But I am still having trouble imagining any circumstance in which I would want to separate one staff horizontally from the others.
I realize that if I am very cautious, keep track of exactly how many beats I have entered, don’t make any edits in any other staff and–as mentioned above–”catch your mistake early enough”–that the staff separation can be manually undone. But I am very surprised to hear you say it is “incredibly useful,” and “a powerful and helpful funtionality for many tasks.” Can you suggest an example of when I would want to move one staff horizontally?
I can readily imagine, say, wanting to add two new measures to the middle of an existing passage. But that would mean moving all of the staves two measures to the right, not just the one[s] that have the new music. I still can’t imagine why the software would ever permit me to move just one staff.
I quite often enter an entire passage of notes, only to find that I’ve accidentally pressed the wrong note duration for one or more notes in the middle of the passage. I can select those notes, press I and then press the note duration number to correct the mistake.
There are different “modes” of the Insert tool, so you can set it to move all the notes forward in every staff, if you think that would be more useful.
Global Insert Mode allows you to insert notes in one part and move all other parts (to retain your vertical alignment)
(Apologies for suggesting your imagination is limited) In my compositional process I frequently shuffle passages around, inserting/deleting some notes and then changing durations of others so (for example) cadences align. Dorico makes this SO EASY!
A lot of this depends on workflow. @benwiggy gave one example; similarly, I sometimes find that I’ve entered a long passage in one staff but started on the wrong beat, or the wrong part of the beat. Insert mode lets me quickly delete or insert rests and slide the whole passage into place (without touching the other staves).
In general, I don’t think it requires being that cautious. Yes, everyone has some tale of working for a long time with Insert mode on without realizing it, and you’ll see feature requests for big blinking red letters saying INSERT MODE ON (in addition to the blue toolbar button, and the insert caret). But personally, I find that I usually pick up on my mistake fairly quickly, and I can use other Insert mode operations to fix it.
Hi @weigel, here a demonstration on how useful Insert Mode can be in the composing process. I use the first scope of Insert Mode, which moves only a voice (You have 4 different scopes, and all useful for different scenarios).
Basically my demonstration lets you go from the “first version” to the “second version” without the need of deleting or copy/pasting any note:
Thank you all for your responses. I am new to Dorico, and I am impressed by helpful the community is.
As to my question, I had not been familiar with the global insert option, which I can use to address my most serious concerns. And I see that the single voice insert mode can be useful, especially for initial input when there is no multi-staff music to the right. I continue to believe, however, that this mode should be disabled when there is already multi-staff music to the right. To put it another way, the software should never disrupt pre-existing vertical alignment beyond the immediate passage that you are working on.
But, as being said, it is a very powerful and helpful functionality for many tasks.
