Is it possible to force the note on a line directly above a note on a space space to not 'shift'?

Screen Shot 2021-11-20 at 8.28.00 PM
In the above image, can I force the orange notes to align directly above the note below? Is this

Sure.

  1. Omit the orange notes
  2. Select all the notes there
  3. Copy–Paste Special–Paste into Voice–New Upstem Voice
  4. Bump up the 1st, 2nd, and 6th notes to place them where the orange ones are now
  5. Select all notes and set Voice Column index to 0
  6. Fiddle a little with the beams
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Another, slightly different, way:

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If this is the appearance you want, do the following:

Select the noteheads, and put them into another voice.
In Engrave mode, hide the stem (in Properties panel).
Still in Engrave mode, use the Note Spacing tool 2 to move each notehead to where you want it - select the circular edit handle underneath the square one, and use shift-right arrow (or shift-left arrow) to nudge the notehead into position.
You will probably want to delete the rests which automatically appear by virtue of having more than one voice. In Write mode, select the rests, then Edit > Remove rests

Dan has given you the way to do this. Out of curiosity, could you explain why you want this? Not a challenge - I’ve never encountered this request before.

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I’m curious to know why you want to do this since it’s not good notational practice.

@rpearl & @tbabcock123 - I’m just following the original transcription.

@dan_kreider - I tried that… but there is no option for ‘New Upstream Voice’ when I attempt to paste… could it be because this is a drum kit?

Can you elaborate? I selected noteheads, and from the menu, selected Edit > Voices > Change Voice > Change Voice to Next Voice on Staff… and it seems nothing happened (e.g., View > Note and Rest Colors > Voice Colors, all elements are still the same color).

Well yes! A drum kit on a 5-line staff is actually a kind of condensed view — imagine the one-line per instrument as the developed view. You cannot handle voices as if it were a “normal” instrument staff.
Dan’s instructions certainly stand with a normal staff. And I certainly agree the practice you’re trying to copy is not conventional.

Understood… I was a bit surprised to see it myself… I also noticed in other parts of the original score that they do it the conventional way… so inconsistent.

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What I did was: in Write mode, select the three noteheads and go to Edit > Voices > Change Voice > New Up-stem Voice. Then, in Engrave mode while the noteheads are still selected, open the Properties panel and use Notes and Rests > Hide stem. This was followed by the Note Spacing.

I took this approach beacuse there was nothing in your original post to indicate that the music shown was for drum kit so I assumed that it was standard notation (ie non-drum kit). As Marc has pointed out, there are differences in how to do things and what can or can’t be done when compared with non-drum kit notation. Every Dorico user discovers this sooner or later when they start writing music for drum kit. When investigating a notational “situation” such as your example, knowing that those constraints exist will assist when trying to find a solution.