is it possible to break a tie in Dorico?

New to Dorico here. First let me say, cleaning up a MIDI piano part is a thing of beauty in Dorico. With Shift/Opt/ R and L arrows to change durations, Opt N and Opt M to move selected music between staves, and custom key commands for voice assignments I’m flying through this part in record time.

One thing I’m finding as I work is that sometimes I’d like to remove a single tie from a long tie chain. I know I can shift+option+arrow individual durations up and down, and that’s great, but sometimes, what I want is already on the page, and a simple ‘delete of a tie’ will make it so. My gut is saying this isn’t possible in Dorico because I’ve tried in all the usual ways, but still, I thought I’d check here and see if there is some secret method to accomplish this.

Can one simply select a tie and delete it in Dorico? If so, how? Thanks in advance.

Hit U.

More specifically:

If you have a note selected that contains multiple ties, U will untie them all.

If you want to untie at a specific point, invoke the caret, get it exactly where you want to cut the tie, ensure that the right voice is selected (using V to toggle round voices) and then hit U. The note will be split accordingly.

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Excellent! So happy to hear this. Cutting a single specific tie is the one I most often need. Thanks a million.

Finally, I got the solution, Thanks a lot.

U does more than just break ties. If you invoke the caret, move it half way through a half note and press U, it will split the note into two quarter notes.

It’s a neat way of inputting some complex rhythms on a single note. See the attached example where I entered two whole notes, selected 16th notes on the rhythm grid, and stepped the caret from left to right pressing U at the appropriate moment.

Using U to input rhythms.PNG

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Wow! The “U” tool is the missing link. Really valuable intel. Thanks Chris.

What does invoke the caret mean?

Shift-N to turn on Note Input mode, which will display the orange caret.

Invoke Caret

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The little orange line that pops up to indicate where you are inputting notes or other bits and bobs.

I am newbie also. When I try to enter a quarter note at a 1/8 note position in the caret, I get two 1/8 notes tied. This is very frustrating. How can I simply get a quarter note. Many thanks,
Brian

There are actually different answers possible to that simple question. It depends on your time signature, on what Notation options you’ve chosen (cmd/ctrl-shift-N>Note grouping), or simply if you press o (force duration) before entering the note… Please be aware that using force duration obliterates any “clever move” from Dorico. It might seem a good idea, especially at the beginning, but I would advise against this. There are very good reason for the team to provide us with a tool that can group notes according to common rules that depend on how a bar is divided in certain time signatures. Hope it helps !

Many thanks. I need to get back to the manual and study note grouping ! I am in 4/4 time and writing very brief simple stuff to learn how to use Dorico. I was using shift-N to enter notes using my mouse. Looks like I have some work to do to understand all this !!

If you’re writing quarter notes off the beat, keep an eye out for the option(s) relating to syncopation in Write > Notation Options > Note Grouping.