Hello, just a little question about the inputting of figured bass.
Is it possible to input these extension lines by just using the keys?
You can either specify the duration of figures as part of the entry (see entries for “duration” in the table here), or use the standard key commands for lengthening/shortening after inputting them - that’s Shift-Alt/Opt-Right arrow to lengthen, and Shift-Alt/Opt-Left arrow to shorten.
Thank you Lillie,
that’s a whole toolbox: I will print it out and study 
So now this:
has turned into this:
It looks a bit different, more elegant and more precise.
I am not a Cembalo player, nor an expert in Figured Bass (rather the opposite), but there is of course a more general question about how one approaches the Figured Bass.
In 17th and 18th century practise, players of the organ, harpsichord or lute would have a bass part with Figured Bass Numbers, to be able to play the right accompaniment. It was in a way substituting for a score, something every keyboard player would use nowadays. At the same time, a musician of that time would probably be a composer himself, so the Figured Bass Numbers were a sort of communication path between the original composer and player. Only a few numbers were put down, meaning “you know, what I mean, I won’t bore you with being too specific, you are a professional yourself”.
It is important to understand this, a big part of playing Figured Bass is improvising.
Modern editions want to put everything down as exact as possible (Dorico is helping here).
Comparing with riding a bike, at some point one has to take off the stabilisers.
I was away from my desktop computer for a week and had my laptop with a Dorico Elements Installation, when someone asked me to please copy 15 baroque songs with Figured Bass (to later make transpositions). I noticed that Elements has different Figured Bass Preferences set (there are no Notation Options!).
Luckily I had a DoricoPro file accessible where I had set the Figured Bass Notation options to follow input literally, so I could use it as a template. Big relief…
Next time I might try to start each popover with an ! to get the right display.
I would like to mention: it is a big advantage to work with the popovers rather than with the panels, as this way one can expand the abilities of Dorico Elements quite a lot.
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I am studying the duration and suspension possibilities of Figured Bass numbering, but I would need a helping hand please with this simple task:
5 -
4 3
The 5 ist held for 2 beats and the 4 is suspended and turns into the third on beat two.
I did quite a lot of try and error but wasn’t successful so far.
Thank you for a little help.
Try “5,4->3d2r1” in the figured bass popover.
That means: a figure comprising a 5 and a 4-3 suspension/resolution (“5,4->3”), overall duration 2 beats (“d2”), resolution after 1 beat (“r1”). Once input, take a look in the Properties panel for how this sets the Duration and Resolution pos. properties, as you can use those to tweak figures after inputting them too.
Adding an example or two for slightly more involved figures like this is already on my wish-list backlog for the manual.
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Thank you Lillie, I think I now have got a little idea of how to combine duration and suspension.
My popover would be “5, 4->3, d=3, r=2” (or simpler „5, 4->3d3r2”) - as I prefer the duration line to only reach the next beat:
It would be nice to be able to enter a short extension line. Now you get these long lines starting directly after the previous figure. Of course in engraving mode you can shorten them but that is a lot of work and difficult to get a uniform result.