I wrote a very boring piece for violin. Here it is:
After the rehearsal, I decided I want to make some corrections.
I noticed that my player tends to play louder at bar 20, so I decide I want to add a dynamic marking in bar 20 saying “sempre pp”.
(See red circle):
Alas!
When I press the note at bar 20, the entire tied note gets marked and I am unable to insert my dynamic at that point.
Even worse, when I double click the note where I want to input my dynamic, the caret jumps 20 bars back to the beginning of the tied note.
But fear not! I found two ways to input that new dynamic after all and make my violin piece finally complete!
You either use the scissors to remove all the ties, then press the desired spot for the dynamic marking, enter it, and then re-tie. (because untying and retying is so fun!)
OR
You mark the note and press “Enter”, you then press the right arrow on your keyboard 160 times (until it’s at the correct spot) and then you can input your dynamic.
(Since I am a practiced Dorico user, I know I can also hold down Ctrl, and then I only need to press the right arrow 20 times which is much better than 160!)
My question is:
Is this sisyphic endeavor the intended ideal behavior?
When I go in with my mouse and press a specific point in my score, shouldn’t Dorico assume I am interested in THAT point in the score? Why on earth would it put my caret 20 earlier at where the tied note started?!
I love that Dorico understands that tied notes behave a certain way. And that if I put an accent on a tied note it should only put the accent on the beginning of the note and not on every tied continuance. THAT AMAZING! I LOVE IT! But this wonderful genius understanding of tied notes shouldn’t mean the program is fighting against the user when trying to input changed, and adding “sempre pp” at some point of a tied note is really not such a rare and crazy idea.
With nothing selected, you can click on a marking from the dynamics palette and then click on the note you want it entered on. It’s definitely faster than those other methods. You can also click-drag hairpins over a series of notes.
Reviving this thread, this technique of clicking the dynamic in the panel and selecting the note does not work for me in 3.5.12. The dynamic goes to the head of the tie chain. What am I missing therefore? Or has this functionality changed in the meantime?
That functionality was never part of the software. Dynamics are either created at the position of the caret, or at the position of the start of the selection.
Still on Dorico 3 here, and @Ocme method worked. The trick is to NOT have anything selected (nor the carat activated), therefore when clicking the dynamic, it doesn’t get placed anywhere. You get the symbol by the cursor and it allows you to place it - or with an >, drag it from start to finish where you want it. This is vital to what I’m dealing with right now, which has lots of ><>< over the course of very long held notes. It’s less than ideal in that I’m constantly mousing over to the palette, and as it doesn’t use the carat, I’m unable to apply it to multiple staves simultaneously. Not sure if this situation is improved in newer versions, but I haven’t seen anything in the marketing materials to indicate it has.
I assume the music of the OP is just illustrative, but the point is, and I have raised this before, instruments such as strings and winds can perform dynamic changes over long held notes and Dorico in its enforcement of ‘rules’ prevents you from entering such things, at least in basic use. That seems overly strict, to the point of being wrong. Sure, you can undo the ties and add dynamics at will, but with long runs of ties, and I have a lot of these also, its needlessly time consuming, and seems to run against the grain of Dorico making the work fluent, in general.
And confirming, as @dspreadbury has said, the @Ocme method does not work in Dorico 4.
One does not have to undo ties to add dynamics in the midst of long tied notes. One can position the caret on any beat and start a hairpin from that point and lengthen it with the space bar after entry.
I have tried this just now in Dorico 4 and it works a treat.
The trick is to double-click near the note, making sure the note is not selected, press shift-D, type sempre pp (or whatever dynamic you want), then press Enter.
Selecting the note then using shift-N to activate the caret will place it at the start of the tie chain. Double-clicking will place the caret where you double-click.
When I’m working in a score layout in Galley view (i.e. most of the time) and I need to have the caret somewhere in the middle of a long tied note, I often just look for that rhythmic position (or close enough) in an adjacent stave, then navigate up or down from there.
I’d like to revive this thread as I’ve found the dynamics system still very time consuming and hindering in my workflow.
For example:
This very simple example: a tied note, not written as a dotted half note as to instruct the player how to time the decrescendo.
Somehow, this is a very bothersome process that involves “force duration” on the first note, entering the second (half) note, tying them manually together, cmd+> to start the decresc. input followed by mashing the arrow keys and another press off ‘>’ at the spot I want the decresc. to end. Then I input the f and p markings at the required spots using the caret and arrow keys. Especially the part where I have to manually set the start and end point using the arrow keys for the hairpin takes so long.
What I think would be logical, is when I use “force duration” on the quarter note, when I select the note using my mouse to input a hairpin, not also the following/tied note is selected. Now it is, even though I had to hack my way around this already to even split the tied note properly in two.
To compare, in Sibelius (I know we’re not supposed to talk about that monster here) it’s so much easier and faster, and at least it doesn’t feel like I’m doing something wrong engraving-wise, which it really feels like in Dorico. Please tell me if I actually am, but I don’t see another/better way to notate what I do here.
I use this type of notation very, very often in my workflow and I think it’s very common and usual to do as such. This workflow completely breaks up my creative process because it’s so fiddly for something so simple and standard.
Why is this such a bothersome and long process? Or am I missing something in the settings that could make this process more logical and/or faster?
(although that is not the reason I’m not on there)
