How to know on which voice is a note?

I am learning to work in Dorico and there are many beautiful things. However, I had some bugs where notes began to add up to infinity. I had to turn off my computer to stop the case. I do not like some automation too restrictive. We should be able to write more freely if necessary (because we compose!). But overall, the base is good, serious. Reading with Halion (at this point: we will see with Vienna and others) is excellent.

Question in writing: in the case of multiple voices, how to know on which voice is a note? I do not find. You should immediately know through a window in the bottom table, right?

View > Note and Rest Colors > Voice Colors.

Thanks !

Ok, but that does not indicate which voice. For example, I want a note to be linked to a voice (which is blue). I choose: change of voice. But for which? I have two up, two down. No color indication in this list. I have to search, try to see. This is not effective. It is imperative to know, when one is on a note, to which voice it belongs, and if one changes the voice, what are the others exactly.

I have the same problem. It would be very handy to have voices colores description in the „voice” property.

Exactly. Or in the bottom window. Daniel ?

The easiest way to discover what voice a note is in is to select it, then hit Shift+N or Return to start note input: the voice indication at the bottom left of the caret will show you both the direction and the index of the voice. A common mistake made by people coming to Dorico for the first time is to use Shift+V whenever you need to switch between voices: don’t do this! Use Shift+V only when you need to first create a new voice. After that, use V to cycle between the voices that already exist. It’s rare to need more than three voices on a staff, and even two is unusual unless you are writing for keyboard or percussion, so if you are having problems with voices, it is very likely because you have created more than you need.

I presume it’s intentional that Purple is used for the same voice as Blue when it’s in the left hand of a grand stave?


Screen Shot 13.png

It absolutely is. I’m kind of planning to do a voice identification chart for this thread but haven’t got to it yet. The biggest complication is that grand staff instruments have multiple sets of colours - three stave instruments (such as Organ) complicate this further.

As you can see from your screenshot, it would potentially be confusing if both staves used blue for upstem 1 and red for downstem 1, because it’d be impossible to see which stave a cross-staffed note originated on.

I write for keyboard in this case. I need 4 voices. In contemporary music, it can be more. Then, beyond Shift + N, it would be necessary, as soon as a note is selected (simply), to know its voice by a display. If we follow the request of others on this thread, it goes in the same direction.

I also talked about a bug (if it is) because the notes are added to infinity without activity on the keyboard or the mouse. I add frequent blockages on the Breve. As it happens, it undoes all the contents of the litters. No Escape works in this case, or there is always a return on this Breve. I have to close Dorico and reopen it.

Sorry, can you explain what you mean by “the notes are added to infinity”?

As if I added a note with keyboard or mouse without ever stopping. Like a key blocked, but without key actually blocked. No stops possible except close the computer. Note that my keyboard, my mouse, my controller work well with Pro tools, Cubase, Siblelius. This is not a basic hardware problem.

The problem of insistent Breve, which constantly returns, is more annoying because of the frequency. I try to check my mishandling, if that’s it, and I do not see it. I understand that Dorico has automatisms that must be known and controlled, but I think it’s a bug.

I’ve been reading pretty much every thread on this forum for over a year, and I’ve never seen this particular problem before. A cursory search indicates that someone had a similar problem in Cubase while using Kontakt instruments ("Infinite Notes" in Cubase 7 w/Kontakt and PLAY - Cubase - Steinberg Forums). Are you using Kontakt?

No, it’s with Dorico. I will try to analyze better, but it is not easy.

I’ve done a little experiment, with the power of Dorico and the dropper tool in Microsoft Paint (seriously!) . My results are below, and there’s a clearer PDF attached for reference.

The top staff shows 24 voices, ordered Upstem 1, Downstem 1, Upstem 2, Downstem 2 etc. It’s an example of the palette that Dorico uses. I’ve numbered the colours, not the voices. The PDF probably does a better job of showing that the 24 colours are unique.

The 2 staff instrument is quite easy to understand. If you were to create an empty Piano instrument, Dorico would always give you a blue bar rest on the top staff (colour 1) and a red bar rest on the bottom staff (colour 2). Thus when you create additional voices on the top staff, colour 2 (red) is skipped.

The 3-staff instrument uses exactly the same colours but in a completely different order. I’ve gone on numbering in order that one can refer back to the top staff palette, but I can’t infer why Dorico would behave the way that it does here.

I generally work with voice colours switched on, and I engraved a piece for six pianos a little while ago, so I can confirm that for single stave and grand staff instruments Dorico’s consistent in its voice colouring. For three stave instruments I really haven’t any clue!
voice colours Full score 2018-07-02-155231.zip (20.7 KB)

There’s nothing particularly magical about the colour sequence - it’s just walking around the colour wheel. The order of colours will depend on when the voices were created, so it won’t always be the same if you have more than 2 staves.

Or a hover-over tooltip – or anything. It is incomprehensible as it is.

Paul is of course correct. Voices are coloured in the order they’re created, according to the colour wheel demonstrated in the top stave of my demo. As such it won’t even be consistent with a two-stave instrument, unless you always input the top stave’s music first (and then the colours of the bottom stave will still depend on how many voices exist in the top stave).

I found that setting Dorico keyboard shortcuts to view show voice colors (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+c) of no colors (Ctrl+Shift+Alt+k) helps considerably.
I’ve also used this AutoHotKey script to “peek” at the voice colors. They are visible as long as the ScrollLock key is held down. This should work if you have a Windows PC, have installed AutoHotKey and have set the Dorico shortcuts as above.

;To get this to work set the following Dorico shorcuts.
;Ctrl+Shift+Alt+c = Note and Rest Colors>Voice Colors
;Ctrl+Shift+Alt+k = Note and Rest Colors>None


#NoEnv  ; Recommended for performance and compatibility with future AutoHotkey releases.
; #Warn  ; Enable warnings to assist with detecting common errors.
SendMode Input  ; Recommended for new scripts due to its superior speed and reliability.
SetWorkingDir %A_ScriptDir%  ; Ensures a consistent starting directory.

;#IfWinActive, Dorico
;ahk_class Qt5QWindow

#IfWinActive, ahk_class Qt5QWindowIcon

{

ScrollLock::
send ^+!c
KeyWait, ScrollLock
send ^+!k

return
}

To use it: download and install AutoHotKey, copy the code into an empty text file, change the file type to .ahk and double click on it.