What is the correct procedure to create the following?
a whole note (occupying measure 1) tied to a dotted half note (in measure 2)
I see I can do it either by entering a double-dotted whole note (clever, but not obvious) or by entering a whole note, then a dotted half note, and adding a slur from the whole note to the dotted half (looks fine, but using a slur to mean tie seems wrong).
What does NOT work is entering a whole note with a tie, then a half note, and the attempting to add a dot to the half note. I feel this would be the most intuitive (and similar to other programs), but it doesnāt work.
Create the whole note, engage the tie, then add a dotted half note (7+.)
If youāve already entered a whole note tied to a half note and want to add the dot, select the note, and press alt(cmd) + shift then arrow key (right) to lengthen the note.
It can also save you (and others) time if you search the forum. Questions very similar to this were asked and discussed 10 days ago, 4 days ago, and again 2 days ago.
Why do you think this would be the most intuitive?
It is essential that you learn that, in Dorico, a tied note is a single object. It only appears with a tie because of the notation options (letās call them conventions) you have (perhaps implicitly) chosen to apply.
Soā¦
Actually it is obvious. The note is a double dotted semibreve. Trying to stitch together notes of different lengths is not obvious unless that was way you always had to do it in other programs.
One of the things thatās confusing here is that Dorico behaves differently with dots specified before a note versus after. With dots specified before, itās easy to enter whole note, tie, dotted half note ā but this doesnāt work with dots specified after. I think this is poor design, insofar as itās reasonable to expect to be able to get comparable results with different input options. I also think it contradicts the explicit help text (āWith āafter inputting noteā chosen ā¦ rhythm dots will affect the last input note.ā).
As someone new to Dorico, Iāve found that I get more predictable results by specifying duration before pitch and accidentals/dots/articulations before duration. Thatās not how I would prefer to enter things, but Iāve been forcing myself to learn.
As someone who has posted a similar topic in the past, I completely agree. The fact that similar questions keep coming up could be proof that the current version of Dorico has not yet implemented a design that meets natural human expectations.
You either have to leave Note Entry and go back to the whole note and press T (possibly a bit annoying, but gets it done);
or increase the noteās duration with the arrow keys, rather than working with actual notes (reasonably quick, once you remember it);
or work out the duration of the entire note and enter it as one (easiest, but requires thought).
There may be other methods too.
Iāll grant that this particular instance might not be the best showcase for the behaviour: but the trade-off is that it provides greater benefits in 90% of other situations.
A whole note tied to a dotted half note is basically a double-dotted whole note. If it was single-dotted, you simply pressed [.] to enter such; with double- and triple-dotted notes, however, you need to hold [Alt] (Windows) and then cycle through the types of dots with [.]. There is no need to enter two notes and tie them, except if the total length does not fit single-, double- and triple-dotted durations.
By ā7+ā do you mean press 7 and then the NUM pad + key? The NUM pad + does nothing at all. Neither does the above-the-letters + sign.
The ALT-shift-right is a nonstarter as it requires taking BOTH hands off the note entry positions (MIDI and NUM pad). Also, it does not add a dot (which I need for the meter I am in) but instead adds a tie and a quarter, even if lock duration is on.
I am so sick of people taking this arrogant, dismissive tone when people bring up these problems with Dorico. Doricoās way of managing dotted notes with ties is not intuitive at all. The reason it is not intuitive has nothing to do with people being used to other programs. It has to do with the way music notation works, and has always worked since the beginning of notated music. When I write music by hand on paper I wrote a whole note, then a barline, then a half note, then a dot after the half note, then a tie linking the two notes together. I do not write a 7 beat note and then watch by paper and pencil magically transform it into a whole note tied to a dotted half. Doricoās way of doing this is not obvious at all. I have been very patiently trying to get a hang this program and this is one of those issues that consistently drives me crazy and I keep having to look up the logic behind it on forums and I keep running into these people who arrogantly dismiss peopleās frustration with these relativistic claims about what is intuitive not intuitive. The fact that so many people find this unintuitive is validation that I am not crazy. It is not obvious to many people! So keep your snark to yourself.
I agree that this aspect of Dorico can be confusing. When I switched from Finale last year, I started with pitch before duration, because thatās what I was used to. But I soon found that Doricoās handling of the dot-and-tie situation (among a few other things) made this untenable for me. I retrained myself to use duration before pitch, and now I donāt think twice about it. For my money, it gives much more predictable results during note entry.
Edit: You talk about writing music by hand, and indeed thatās why I always preferred pitch before duration. When I made the transition to duration before pitch, it helped for me to change my paradigm to something more like music engraving: pick up the appropriate punch, and then use it at the desired pitch. (Itās true that in engraving, youād still add the dot after the note rather than before, but I found this mental image helpful.)
In a future version of Dorico, we plan to make it possible to select individual noteheads within a tied note in Write mode, so that you can do things like add another notation at that rhythmic position without the use of the caret, etc. As and when we do this, I think it would also make sense to then consider the operation of adding a rhythm dot in the light of that selected notehead, at least optionally.
Weāve not done this yet because we have to rework the way selections work in Write mode to enable it. (Under the hood there are significant differences between selections in Write and Engrave modes, and we need to bring them closer together to enable this kind of operation in Write mode.)
I donāt understand why pitch before duration matters. I havenāt tried the duration before pitchā¦ but I canāt imagine doing any thing this way. Sometimes I need to play the pitches on the keyboard to think about what I want to write. How do you do that with duration before pitch? And how does that solve this issue with adding dotes to tied notes.
Thanks. Honestly I donāt understand anything that you have said. But if you have a way of addressing this in an update that would be great. I donāt see why adding a dot to a note should be different than adding a dot to a tied note. Itās the same thing.
I canāt speak to that ā my work is primarily engraving and arranging, not composing. Maybe someone else has some insight.
Sorry, I havenāt revisited this in a while, and I gave an incomplete explanation above. This also relates to the setting for inputting accidentals and rhythm dots after the note rather than before, because if you add the dot after then Dorico tries to add half the value of the whole tie chain rather than the previous individual note. I donāt want to rehash the whole thing right now, but for my money Dorico gives the most predictable results with duration and dots/accidentals both before pitch.
When I want to play some notes on my Midi Keyboard without writing them down and without switching off the caret, I press K (which is the toogle Key for after/before duration), then K again when Iām ready!