Using Dorico Pro 3.5, in a few projects I have double instruments that I’m running on the same stave and instrument (as far as setup/layouts are concerned). For example, for my bass part I have 3 up-stem voices, one for bass guitar, one for acoustic bass and one for arco double bass.
This has been going fine, except suddenly the arco bass voice just stopped playing back altogether. Now the bass guitar voice (which is up-stem voice 1, the only voice I’m using since abandoning the multi-voice approach in light of the aforementioned issues) has also suddenly stopped playing back upon opening the project today. I can confirm everything was fine before I saved and closed last time.
Perhaps relatedly, I have also had issues when pasting material. Now and then Dorico will paste into a down-stem voice for seemingly no reason. Sometimes I’ve copied from a left-hand piano stave, but one that appears to only be using its up-stem voice, and with no cross-stave beaming or anything like that.
Lastly, once when erasing the pasted material mentioned above in order to paste-special into up-stem voice 1, I was left with totally empty bars, no rests. I am not even able to click on the measures to input notes behind the empty bars, like with a slash region. This was resolved via some Undo-ing and didn’t always happen, but I actually have some measures constantly in this state in other projects and am not sure what’s going on.
Apologies if this is a bit all over the place! Any help appreciated, cheers.
I can’t diagnose your first problem (paragraph 2) without seeing a project, I’m afraid.
Your second problem (paragraph 3) is probably something to do with what voice the source material is in. Typically Dorico will keep the stem directions of the voices whose material you copy and paste (or alt-click) - if it starts off as a down-stem voice then when you paste it will remain a down-stem voice. You can of course bypass this by using the functionality at Edit > Paste Special > Paste Into Voice. The thing to remember is that when there’s only one voice on a staff the stem direction in the voice name (Up-stem Voice x or Down-stem Voice x) is irrelevant - the stems will point up if the pitch is below the middle staff line, and the stems will point down if the pitch is above the middle staff line. It’s only when you introduce a second voice that the named stem directions matter. Again, easier to explain with an example project.
Your last problem is down to the use of Edit > Remove Rests (or translation from MusicXML or MIDI of the same sort of thing). When you use Edit > Remove Rests, Dorico turns on the “Ends Voice” property for the last visible note or rest before the selected passage. It also sets the “Starts Voice” property" for the first visible note or rest following the selected passage. If you copy and paste a passage that contains one of these, you’ll find that rests disappear. The solution is to select the last visible note or rest (in the relevant voice) before the empty bars and turn off its “Ends Voice” property. If that doesn’t work, select the first visible note or rest (in that voice) following the empty bars and turn off its “Starts Voice” property. If neither of those seem to work, double-click on the first empty bar in order to invoke the caret there, then type Shift-B rest Enter. This tells Dorico to explicitly start a voice there.
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Will keep an eye on problem 1, will get back to you with a project sample if it persists, might just need to tidy things up in Play mode perhaps.
Same for problem 2, will keep an eye on things in light of your advice, thanks.
Problem 3, you’re right, this is mostly the result of importing an xml of an original Finale document using quite a bit of cross-staff beaming. I unfortunately wasn’t able to make your suggestions work, as there was no measure throughout the entire piece in the left hand, once I undid all the cross staff beaming, just empty measures, so couldn’t deal with properties and double clicking made the caret appear in the stave above. Also couldn’t navigate to this stave from within note input from the above or below stave, or move or duplicate material into it from above or below, so seemingly totally stuck.
I’ve now just created a new piano player and pasted the old material in, and the left hand stave has rests, so all well that ends well. Presumably just an unfortunate side effect from xml importing. Thank you for your help!