Hello!
I was wondering: Will Dorico provide a fast and efficient way to Select and Delete Out-of-Range Notes? By this I mean, the ability to select all of the out of range notes in a work, click OK and have them all disappear without having to review each one or wait an inordinate amount of time for the plugin.
Thanks,
John
It wonât in its first release, John. Dorico does have a notion of instrument ranges (itâs part of the data it stores about instruments) but as yet it doesnât have a way of displaying notes out of range in a different colour and otherwise selecting or editing them en masse. This is certainly something we can add in (the relatively near) future.
Scoring with a sledgehammer, eh?
What in the world would you replace all these out of range notes with? Rests presumable since they canât just âdisappearâ. Then what? Go back and rework each place the melody or harmony no longer works? If there are lots of them then something was wrong in the first place. Wrong instrument chosen. Wrong key.
Or am I missing the point? Perfectly possible.
This sort of topic gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I first started exploring notation applications, way before either Finale or Sibelius was thought of, I had a program on an old Apple IIgs, I think it was from Pyware, that would not allow me to enter a note that was out of an instrumentâs supposed range. Whoever had set up the offending parameters had never heard of a flute that could go down to B or a Clarinet that could go below a written F#. Etc. This drove me nuts, as I often wrote for instruments that could exceed any sort of âofficialâ range.
I know thatâs not whatâs being asked here, but the whole idea of there being some sort of inviolable range which a given instrument cannot exceed makes my skin crawl. I cannot imagine wanting to invoke the sort of action that the person who opened this topic wishes to perform. I will decide when a note is not appropriate for an instrument, thanks.
Thank you, Daniel for your lightning-fast reply!
That sounds reasonable. I have a few ideas about the various options for selection and removal of notes which Iâll post on this thread soon.
John
notesetter: I prefer to think of it more as a chisel than a sledgehammer. Like chipping away to ârevealâ the sculpture inside a block of marble.
Robert Enns: I think you may be starting from a few pre-conceived notions that Iâm not. Melody and harmony are just mental constructions. Pitches or rests expressed as durations are just math to the program that keeps track of them, which apparently, Doric will do even better than the others.
L3B: Not sure why youâre getting so exercised. Both Sibelius and Finale give you the option to change the range for any instrument to whatever range you want in a not-very-hidden dialogue window as, I imagine, will Dorico.
I have no problem with writing âimpossible-to-playâ notes for instruments and, in fact, do it all the time.
That said, engraving programs arenât just made for weirdos like me and heroic, tell-it-like-it-is geniuses, like yourself. Which is why some have preset range options for beginner-professional players - to avoid musical accidents.
Does an author take issue with the find-and-replace and spellcheck in a word processor?
Glad you found, in my innocent question, an opportunity for self-aggrandizement. The magic of the arts!
Iâd welcome some sort of indication of note ranges as well, please.
Whilst agreeing that it would be wrong to prevent a user from over-riding such feedback, a change of colour to show, for instance, that the lowest note of a hastily-Repeated chord wasnât considered conventionally playable is quite in order, IMHO.
I can even think of a point to replacing such notes (although itâs a bit far-fetched): once theyâve all been found, replace them with a note thatâs not-to-be-found in a given key signature so that you can go back and correct them one at a time, having them jump out at you during playback rather than simply be mute.
Definitely on my highly desired list. While itâs all fine and well to think I have my ranges memorized by now, having the machine provide some assistance here when orchestrating/arranging would be most helpful. I really miss this going from Sibelius to Dorico (although some of my friends consider it a nuisance, so it should be user configurable.)
Itâd truly be in the spirit of Dorico to have a preference to turn it off, ignore it or at least configure such ranges.
We will certainly add this at some point, itâs just a matter of priority.
ups, started to score in dorico instead of the âSâ program. Man, I miss the coloured ranges.
Not that Iâve really used this feature in Finale (or in general), but while this has been dug up already: please include the option to choose your own out-of-range note color (and/or opacity) â unless you come up with a completely different way of showing this; in that case, surprise us. 
As a workaround, you can slowly move an instrumentâs pitch up and down (alt + up/down arrow) until it stops sounding.
So, Select Notes-Out-of-Range or Select Notes of a certain Colour [and thusly, be able to select Notes Out of Range].
Is this still a non-starter?
Weâve still not added this feature yet, but I agree it would be useful!
Hi Daniel,
Thanks again for the lightning fast response and for not brushing off the question as not part of the âdesign ethosâ - ha ha.
I guess maybe I am really wondering whether or not there might be in the future -like one of the former mainstay programs- some type of macro creation that allows one to âget under the hood (bonnet?)â and resolve these things vs. feature-requesting?
Yes, Dorico has a built-in Lua interpreter and we do have ambitions to build up a proper scripting API to allow you to do useful things with the software. Unfortunately to date it has not had a sufficiently high priority for us to really make progress on it, but itâs definitely something we want to build in future.