Inconsistent behaviour of slide-ins for guitar

[Armin_der_Zweite]

Quite often Dorico behaves inconsistently when I enter slide‑ins for guitar:

n this case, the direction of the slide should be ascending, in line with the melodic contour, as in the previous bars.

Here is an example using thirds, where the slide on the 1st finger is correct but the one on the 3rd finger is not.

When switching to Engrave mode and using “Join”, the result is correct, but only if the long line is desired; alternatively it can be adjusted graphically, but my expectation would be that Dorico handles this automatically.

Does anyone have a better solution for this?

[Richard_Lanyon]

The direction of the slide indicates whether the shift is to a higher or lower fret, not whether it is to a higher or lower pitch. You may need to set the “String” property for the note to make Dorico aware of where you want the note to be played—it won’t assume that two notes played by the same finger are necessarily on the same string, and it will typically allocate each note to the lowest fret (and thus highest string) that it can.

(It can sometimes be useful to show the tablature for a guitar part, just to see what Dorico’s string allocation is doing. You can create a separate layout for this if you don’t want to interfere with the layout you’re going to print.)

[Armin_der_Zweite]

Thank you, Richard. How do I Set the Property for the note. Up to now I have only discovered how to make a appear the string name.

Showing the tablature in the guitar part does indeed show the correct string positions but I see no logic connection between notation and tabs.

[Richard_Lanyon]

The “String” property is in the “Notes and Rests” section:

If you have a note selected on a tablature staff, you can use the “n” and “m” shortcuts to move notes up/down a string.

[Armin_der_Zweite]

Ah, ok, thanks again – that solves it for me.​

However, I still do not quite understand why, for example, the e in bar 26 can be approached from above if it is interpreted as being on the 1st string. Technically it is possible, but it is not very common to slide onto an open string. In this situation Dorico should, in my opinion, recognise that there is already a note written on the e string, and if the slide is entered later or at the same time, it could adjust its “opinion” accordingly.

[Tomas_E]

@Richard_Lanyon

The direction of the slide indicates whether the shift is to a higher or lower fret, not whether it is to a higher or lower pitch.

That makes no sense to me since you cannot slide downwards and get a higher pitch. Nor can you slide from one string to another.

So why this behavior then, is it a programming thing or maybe something you discovered later on and couldn’t fix easily? Otherwise I don’t get it.

[Richard_Lanyon]

@Tomas_E

That makes no sense to me since you cannot slide downwards and get a higher pitch. Nor can you slide from one string to another.

The direction of the fingering slide indicates which direction your hand/finger is moving, not which direction the pitch is moving.

[Tomas_E]

Inconsistent behaviour of slide-ins for guitar

The direction of the fingering slide indicates which direction your hand/finger is moving, not which direction the pitch is moving.

The pitch direction is essential in this case, as the OP also describes in his first post. I’ve been playing classical guitar for about 45 years and I’ve never come across this kind of thinking before. It doesn’t make sense.

Is it not ‘down’ to a lower fret and ‘up’ to a higher fret, i. e. down referring going from let’s say fret 3 to 1, that is from a higher numbered fret to a lower one?

Isn’t 12 higher than 1?

Is it ‘down’ to a higher fret since you usually hold the guitar with the head above the body? So if you put your hand at the seventh fret it becomes lower in altitude compared to if you put your hand at the first fret?

What if you sit with the guitar in your lap crossing your legs? Then the tilt could very much be the opposite, the head slightly below the body.

Please create a movie to illustrate what you mean.

[Richard_Lanyon]

If a finger changes string(s) then the pitch direction and the fret number can change in opposite directions.