I like "Shorten to next note" after midi recording + enhancement + suggested feature to "split voices" automatically

Dorico
1

Hi,
3 Notes about the new feature:

  1. I really really like the new feature of Dorico 3.1 to Shorten to next note.
    I simply play on the piano keyboard a real time input and when everything looks messy - Dorico is doing a very nice job cleaning it after playing with the Requantize + the new Edit duration → “Shorten to next note”!!!
    I just love it - Thanks a lot! :smiley:
    Note that I found out in piano pieces - it works much better after doing some manual adjustments of the split location between F/G Clef using Alt+n or Alt+m in order to have the correct positions (see other thread with my suggestion for improvement of being able to change re-split position in different places of the compositions because it is not always fixed place throughout all the composition).

  2. I think there is a bug in this new feature or a let’s call it a suggestion for improvement of this feature:
    There are cases that it is obvious a case of a “glitch” in time where collapsing notes are playing due to human is playing and not machine.
    This cases are for 2 adjasting notes collapsing. For these kind of situation - the new feature works like a charm!!!
    But there are few examples that it is really clear that the held note is done intentially (in purpose) - and you can tell it really simply by looking at the duration of the held note - you can see it is last longer (more than 2 contiguity notes!).
    In that case I would expect the feature to leave the held note as it is without doing any modification of the note.
    Remember that I wanted just to clean the score from my human errors not removing all intentionally long notes!
    Example:
    See the Original note entry after playing in real time input, (1st picture attached)
    Dorico_Original1.png
    then look at the same bar after performing: Edit Duration → Shorted to next note (see picture 2)
    Dorico_Shorten.png
    I would expect this bar to leave it as it is - since there is no real collision of notes - the held note is pressed all over 4 different notes so it is obviously done in purpose!

  3. Also I have a suggestion related feature: in cases like that I would like to see in the future an option to “automatic split voices” - each time there is a held note- If the held note is above other notes, the shorter notes will move to a new down voice, if the held note is lower than the shorter notes, so the held note will move to down voice - so it will look like the 3rd piacture :smiley:
    Dorico_Split_Voices.png
    Thanks!
    Jerome

2

Jerome, the feature is working as designed: it shortens each note such that it ends at the start position of the next note. Don’t use this feature on bars like you show in your #2.

As for #3, while that would be possible in simple cases, it’s not at all obvious how that should be done in arbitrarily complex cases. While I agree automatic voice separation would be an extremely useful feature, it’s not something we are likely to implement off the back of this feature – it would be tackled as part of the core live MIDI recording feature.

3

Hi Daniel - Thanks for your reply.
Regarding #2 - The idea in my suggestion is that if you implement this feature of “ignore held notes lasting more than 2 contiguity notes” - it would be very simple to just run the “shorten to next note” feature over all the score at once (CTRL+A) - where I can feel confident enough that the only thing it does is just make everything easier to read by fixing the problematic human playing that cause this congestion between 2 adjusting notes :slight_smile:
According to how it works currently (without implementing my suggestion) - the user will have to fix specific bars each time instead of running it once for all.
Anyway - it is just a suggestion to add on top of this feature, not instead of how it is currently implemented. Just wanted to give another perspective that can be useful.
All the best - and keep up the amazing work of making everything much easier and faster.