"How Do I..." Questions

I’m rewriting some parts originally written by Smetana for trumpet in D, for trumpet in Bb. Setting aside the obvious issue that some of the resulting parts will be unplayable on a Bb trumpet (they’ll probably be covered by soprano sax and clarinets), I have a number of “Don’t know how to…” issues, as follows:

  1. I’ve created 12 bars too many. How do I delete them?

  2. Any chance that the expression “sf” be added to the Force/Intensity of Attack box as a standard option?

  3. How do I edit the rehearsal marks such that I can omit letter J from the sequence? Or for that matter use numerals instead of letters?

  4. Is there a way of changing the octave of a note that isn’t merely repeated hitting of Alt and up/down keys? (I use a Mac.)

  5. In some bars, the original score has minims on the 2nd beat of a 4/4 bar. These are translating as 2 crotchets tied together. Can I alter this?

  6. Some of the default note spellings seem a little strange. If I had the say-so, I would go for:

C# default rather than Db
Eb ditto D#
F# ditto Gb
Ab ditto G#
Bb ditto A#

Generally I am enjoying using Dorico and look forward to the day when I don’t have to worry about glitches like the above, some of which I am sure are actually self-inflicted.

Richard Stamp

Two options that I know of (Dorico may have more):

a) >Write >Trim Flow.… [ I love this one, and have made a custom keyboard shortcut for it… which makes it even better]

b) ‘Shift + B’… to bring up the Bars tool… within the popover box you can type in negative numbers—such as… ‘-12’

[… incidently, you can also type in the ‘+’ key before your number here to ‘add’ in bars to your flow, which is also helpful. ]


‘opt’ + ‘cmd’ + ‘up/down arrow’… jumps by octave.

  1. Answered by Jim

  2. shrug

  3. In the properties panels, if you click on a rehearsal mark it should have an ‘Index’ property. Enable that and start increasing it and you will see the rehearsal letter increase as well, allowing you to skip a letter or even, if you’d like, rearrange them and have for example rehearsal B come before rehearsal A! Just above that property is one labeled ‘Sequence Type’, which will allow you to choose what type of rehearsal mark you’d like it to be. This is independently set for every rehearsal mark.

  4. Command+option+up/down will allow you to shift notes by an octave.

  5. Not sure about this but you could perhaps use slurs as a stand-in, if no other option is currently available?

  6. I’m not sure what you’re actually asking for. Are you inputting with a MIDI keyboard and it’s making those decisions for you? If so, I guess you’d just have to alter them by hand. If you’re entering the notes by hand in the first place, then… just make the right decisions :slight_smile:.

For this one, select the rehearsal mark, and press… ‘cmd’ + ‘8’ [ cmd + * ] to open up the Properties options.

you can easily change the ‘Sequence type’ here to get numbers instead.

… with a little more effort… I would assume, that you could use the ‘index’ options to start a new rehearsal sequence on the letter ‘k’… in place of (and skipping over the ‘J’ you don’t want).


[was writing this while WTFruit posted his remarks, didn’t intend to repeat anything, where I did]

For #5:
Lock durations with the Clamp Tool in Write Mode (Type O --that’s the letter ‘o’ not a zero).

Other forumites appear to have done a great job with your questions (thanks, everybody!) but I don’t think anybody has taken a run at this one:

You can choose whether or not you want sforzando to show as “sf” or “sfz” on the Dynamics page of Engraving Options, and although the panel won’t update right away (it’ll update next time you open your project) the actual dynamics in the score will update right away.

To everybody who replied, a big THANK YOU!

Richard