Ideas & problems with cues

Dorico
1

Hi everyone!
I love to work with cues, especially the way Dorico handles them, but I think there are still a lot of improvements to make.

First of all, we need to talk about the use of cues.
While in concert band music, usualy cues are used to play notes of a missing instrument (so the conductor should see the cues, to know which instrument is gonna play a passage), in symphonic scores, cues help to find your entry in the music, which is something the conductor does not need to see.

So while you want to see the cues for substitues (or at least the text saying “cues Oboe 2” and therefor set the option for cues in the score to being visible, you still want your cues for the entries of the musicians, which you then have to hide manually. For a little piece of 10 minutes this already takes forever, especially with Dorico having huge lag spikes when editing cues.
What could help?
For example a little option, to decide if the cue is gonna be hidden already when creating it, for example by opening the cue window with a second shortcut like “Shift+Alt+U”

Basically you could create a second form of cues like this, which can be customized individually.
This would als help to solve another problem:
While cues for entries don’t need to be in the right oktave and changing it is often helpfull to be more readable, in the case of instrument substitutes it’s a problem. (and normally, as they are chosen bei the composer, the fit into the range of the instrument, so clef-changes or octave shifts are always wrong.)

What I would consider a bug, are bass clef cues in treble clef parts with ninth-transposition (Tenor Saxophone, Euphonium, Bass Clarinet). Dorico in this case always choses the write the cue 8vb, so sometimes it is not readable at all.

(and yes, I am aware of the possibility to change all this manually throughout the score)


Last thing is a performance problem happening with larger scores:
2. When I want to change the length of a cue, I can grab the end of the line and pull it across the staff. But as Dorico immedeatly tries to update, even on my fast machine adding more then one note to the cue at once is sometimes not possible, as you have to wait 3 seconds after each bit.
You might consider to update the part only after the user let’s got the “line”, or even update the cue itself only after. (Although this should be an option, as seeing the cue while altering it is great!)


If you have questions on details or need examples, feel free to ask for it. :slight_smile:
Best regards,
MusiChronos

2

Thanks for your feedback. Regarding the choice of clef, an option is provided on the Cues page of Engraving Options for whether to use the clef of the source or destination instrument by default. Dorico’s current behaviour with regard to clefs isn’t buggy (the definition of a bug is something that doesn’t behave the way the designers intended, not something that doesn’t behave the way you think it should behave!) but it is deliberately simple, so that the result will be predictable.

3

Thanks for your reply!

I think you missread that. I don’t consider the choice of clef a bug, but rather the poor choice of 8vas. I thought Dorico applies them with a certain strategy, but if I understood right, it just ads the 8va, because of the target instruments transposition itself? In this case, of course this is not to be considered a bug, sorry. (as I statet, I was not sure about it)

But still, I then would suggest to alter this in the future. :slight_smile:
(I added a Screenshot of one of the results that bothered me, as I only saw them after print)

Is it possible to hide the cue in the score, but still add the text about there being a cue? This would also be a nice feature!

Thanks and best regards!

Screenshot_2019-09-15-20-50-31-898_com.adobe.reader.png
Screenshot_2019-09-15-20-50-31-898_com.adobe.reader.png1920Ă—1080 45.5 KB

4

You can show signposts for cues from View > Signposts > Cues.

5

Thank you, I am aware of signposts, but I am talking about printed scores for the conductor. :slight_smile:

6

Just realised, that Dorico makes the same mistake in the other direction. So far, 5th and 6th transpositions work fine, it only messes up 9th & 13th transposition while key-switching. And when an 8va would actually help, (Double Bass), it does not add it. I really think it’s a little mistake in this special cases and far away from intended behavior.
It is predictable, as you said, so why don’t change it to the better?
(this is not intended to offend you, I am fine with your priorities, but that sounded a little like: “yeah, that’s very ugly, but we intended it, so we won’t change it” which made me a little nervous :slight_smile: )

Btw: when you fix the transposition in the score, it won’t be fixed in the part. Is there a shortcut to change both?
Because the only solution I found is to open the part, and fix it there, too. But as Dorico slows down with every open part, this becomes annoying quite fast.
Maybe the best solution would be to test, if the notes leave a certain range (e.g 2 lines below staff) and based on the result alters the octave shift? This would pretty much guarantee good results, or am I wrong there?

ninth-transposition.jpg
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7

Sorry - misread the OP. Irrelevant post deleted.

8

Hmm, I don’t think this would affect the Cues at all, because cues are not intended to send any signal to the VST-Plugin, or do they?

9

MusiChronos I was thinking about two (or maybe more) things at once, and you are quite right, my previous post had no relevance to your idea.

10

You’re looking for Edit > Propagate Properties. You can assign a keyboard shortcut to that function.

11

Indeed! Great, thanks!

There is also a function called “Hide/Show Item” in the key-commands menu, but it does not work on cues. Is this also intended?

12

Yes, it only works on items that have an explicit property for hiding: playing techniques and chord symbols.

13

But cues also have got a property for hiding, so maybe it would be possible to add that functionality later on. :slight_smile:

14

It would be great default workings, if for example a cue for clarinet in the tenor saxophone part would not add a 8vb by default (both instruments operate in the same range, so this puts the cue out of range and usually adds unnecessary lines for the tenor saxophone).

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