4/4 bar, containing two minims (half notes). I have a trill over the second note and want a turn at the very end, consisting of two cue-sized demisemiquavers (32nd notes).
I click on the second note to get the caret; press 4 and click space until I’m on the last semiquaver (16th note) in the bar. Click / 3 (demis / 32nd) but the minim (1/2) is altered to a dotted crotchet (1/4) and quaver (1/8), and the grace note is entered before the last quaver.
How do I get the grace notes to appear as the very last item in the bar, and retain the full length of the trill note?
(I could do it in Sibelius but it was very fiddly, involving two voices, a lot of rests and use of cue-notes. I’m hoping I haven’t got to do the same in Dorico.)
I’ve looked in the manual and the online help; can’t find anything. If I’ve missed it, please tell me where it is!
For grace notes, use the /. Notes entered this way aren’t part of metrical “counting.” You can make them eighths or 16ths as you desire, based on appearance of the beams.
You can then select the grace notes and remove the slash using the Properties panel below.
Edit: Arg. Sorry piano888, I read your post too quickly. The point regarding grace notes not counting towards a metrical value is still valid. And Marc’s right of course.
Oh but I did use /. I clicked / 3, starting on the final semiquaver. It converted the minim I had into a dotted crotchet and quaver and put the grace notes before the quaver. What I want is to retain the minim and put the grace notes after it.
The grace note is attached to the note right after it. Cut the grace note, select the quaver and paste. In the properties panel, enable Grace note before barline option This should do the job.
Ah - attaching to the note following, not the note it belongs to musically, is the trick! Thanks. Sorted. Got my minim back.
Dorico staff: I do hope there will be something in the manual (once it’s updated) to explain this. That is to say, some way of finding it in the manual. I’d never have thought of looking it up under ‘grace note before barline’. I was looking it up under ‘trills’ since that what I was doing.
Well, you’re modifying a grace note, so it makes sense to consider the properties of that grace note, not the trill that precedes it. Though I can see your thought process.
When I’m stymied, I find the two places to look are the Properties panel (both Write AND Engrave mode) and the Edit menu at the top. I’ve found most answers in those two spots.
And yes, we all are looking forward to a comprehensive online manual! In the meantime, this forum is the happenin’ place.
Thanks - I’m beginning to realise those are the go-to places.
As far as ‘modifying’ a grace note is concerned - to be honest, it doesn’t look like that from my point of view. I’m writing a trill with a turn at the end of it; that’s my musical unit, so it takes a bit of a leap of something or other to go from that to the notion that I’m modifying something. Anyway, not to worry. Problem solved (again!). And it’s a significantly easier way of doing it than with Sibelius.
Having got the turn at the end of the trill to appear at the end of the bar (let’s call it bar 1), I now have a side drum flam at the beginning of the next bar (bar 2). Grace notes, according to Dorico, belong with the note they precede. But I can’t find a way to tell Dorico to have the grace notes for the flam after the barline and before the note they belong to (i.e. in bar 2), and at the same time have the grace notes before the note that follows the trill, in the previous bar (i.e. bar 1). I need the turn-at-the-end-of-the-trill in bar 1 because it belongs with the trill; I need the flam notes in bar 2 because they belong with the note they precede.
Can it be done?
I just ran into the same problem. The violins are doing a trill with a turn at the end, so the grace notes for the turn are set to before the barline. In the next measure, though, the flutes start off with a grace note after the barline, but Dorico insists on drawing the grace note before the barline. It appears that once one staff has the “before barline” property set, then all staves inherit that property even if the “before barline” property is not set for a given staff. This is definitely a problem.
Ok, fellow Doricians.
This is not true, at least for pitched instruments. I have not tried the unpitched perc. version.
As you can see in the picture here, I have both the turn of the trill, and an acciaccatura.
How did I do? Well, I simply invoked the caret at the start of the second bar, and input my acciaccatura as if it were alone… and Dorico did input exactly what I asked for. I don’t think you can write both the ending appoggiatura (or end of tr.) and an acciaccatura in one go. You have to re-invoke the caret and that’s it.
That still doesn’t work for me. Re-invoking the caret still causes the grace note to be placed before the barline. This is true of the staff that has the turn, and all other staves as well, even if the “before barline” property for the other staves is turned off.
Grace notes at the same rhythmic position cannot be positioned on different sides of the barline on different staves: all grace notes at the same rhythmic position have to be on the same side of the barline. This is something we may address in future, but it’s not something that will be changing imminently.
That’s a great pity, to put it mildly. As I say, I’ve got most of my orchestra playing a trill, with a turn at the end of the bar, which I’m obliged to link to the following note, in the next bar, rather than to the trill itself; in that following bar, a side drum with a flam. The grace notes really, really need to go in different bars. How can I do this?
I feel like changing the grace note property from “before/after barline” to “before/after note” would fix this problem and several others… and also probably make more sense in general.
Good to know this is on Daniel’s radar, I can live with the workarounds.
I played with Marc’s example a bit, and found:
There’s no need to invoke a new caret for the grace note after the barline. You can simply select some grace notes and set their property to ‘before barline’. Grace notes after the selected ones will stay put in the next bar.
Suppose all grace notes are already before the barline. Then, if you only select the last grace note, and try to set its property back to ‘after barline’, all of them move to the right. For some reason, unchecking ‘before’ removes the property for the whole group. Not a big deal, just an observation.
If I give another instrument some grace notes as well, they will be aligned rhythmically with grace notes elsewhere. In my example, the cello has 3 sixteenth/semiquaver grace notes, two of which are now aligned below the eighth/quaver in the violin, and the first one ends up in the previous bar, under the turn. The ‘before barline’ property is applied as if the grace notes in different parts are rhythmically dependent. Therefore, also the eighth/quaver in the violin takes more space than needed.
So not all grace notes have to be either before or after the barline. There is a rhythmical position within the group where the separation is applied, and, at the moment, it’s applied to all parts at the same time.
I think the grace notes in different parts shouldn’t bother to align with other grace notes, apart from having independent ‘before barline’ settings.
In the meantime, the note spacing tool is our friend.
Additional request: in some music (baroque/classical), grace notes abound, but (almost) never have slashes. I would suggest a notation option to prefer unslashed grace notes during input. It would save time during input and proofreading. I know I can filter them etc., but still…
(… or did I just miss it? It’s happened before )
BTW: I don’t think it should be an Engraving option, as it’s not just a matter of appearance — of taste, so to say —, but a different musical element.
I know, and I’m aware that the non-slashed variety remains active during one stretch of input, but as soon as I exit input mode and then invoke the caret again, slashes are on again.
)