Hello everyone! I am on my 10th attempt at learning how to input notes into Dorico (coming from nearly 20 years of using Sibelius…) and finally managed to wrap my head around some basic concepts.
For practice, I am entering a piece I own, but I struggle with entering ties for the first note in a Coda. Since I can’t figure out how to make that (or fake it, like in Sibelius) I am asking for your help.
To avoid possible copyright infringement, I found a similar piece of music and made a screenshot with nearly everything edited out. The yellow arrows show what I CAN do: Assign jump points and Dorico follows them without a hitch.
The red arrows show what I can not do: make those little “fake ties” for a chord that began 2 pages ago in the bar with the jump point to the Coda.
How can I make those?
I’ve no doubt that the Dorico team will eventually come up with an elegant fix for this. Until then, here’s a relatively quick workaround that I use.
Take a look at the attached file. You create it like this:
in Write mode, enter all the notes as quarter-notes (using Default Stems Up) and NO TIES.
Select all the notes (right- and left-hand) in bar 2 and change their voice to New Upstem Voice.
Select the right-hand chord at the end of bar 1 and press T (which will tie the chord to the beginning of the coda. In this way, the leading-ties in the right-hand are created.
Tie the last bass note in bar 1 to the coda in the same way.
Switch to Engrave mode (Graphic Editing) and drag the right-hand end of all the long ties so that they meet the notes in bar 2 in the right place. (The success or otherwise of this move is down to you! I find it helps to zoom in close and keep the dotted guidelines horizontal. Also, mock-up a copy of the passage with real ties so you can compare exactly how shallow their curves should be.)
Alan, I can’t work out how to replicate your method in such a way that there are ties to both the first beat of bar 2 and the first chord of bar 3.
Respectfully, steps 3 and 4 could be reduced to “select the chords in both staves at the end of bar 1 and press T”, thus saving a step.
Thank you, Leo. I agree that steps 3 and 4 could be combined but I think my method is OK. Are you happy with the attached picture? If you are, then my method works. (It is possible that I haven’t described it accurately — it is very late here!).
Remember to drag the right-hand end of the long ties BACK to the end of bar 1 (not vice-versa).
Also, be careful in Step 1 to enter only quarter-notes! Those ties into bar 2 don’t exist until Step 3.
Are you trying to say that bar 1 is tied to the start of bar 2, and the first chord of bar 2 is tied to the start of bar 3? If so, that’s not what you’ve written.
No, I am not saying that. The last (crotchet) chord of bar 1 is tied to the start of bar 3. (The ties seem to extend past bar 2 because the notes are in a different voice.)
Ah, I see. I’m in London - it was too late for me, too!
As you’ve said, it’s dependent on the ties being split across systems. I guess it would also be extremely laborious if the music to the right of the “to Coda” sign spanned multiple systems (or even pages). Nice method for exactly your example, though.
Doh! I have only just noticed all the positional controls in the Ties group in the Properties Panel when in Engrave mode. (On my screen, the Ties group was hidden, off to the right.) They provide a far more accurate way of moving the start and end of ties.
Thank you to everyone for your helpful and quick replies! I am SO happy to see that the spirit of Sibelius still lives on. With your suggestions, I managed to fake the ties more or less convincingly. Good enough for me.
Sorry, for not checking in earlier. I have been steinberged a few times before and was a bit afraid what the response to my question would be.
