This sort of thing happens a lot. The client wants to double the note values:
It represents a lot of work that just has to be redone. I’m wondering if I can leave the semantics alone and just change the noteheads. Crazy, I know, but it happens often enough that a simple “substitution” function would be amazing… any possibilities?
There is a function in the Write menu to double all values. Just make sure Insert mode is on when you do. (And remember to turn it off afterwards.)
Would you change the time signature to 4/2 afterwords? A lot of hymnals I have seen hide the time signature. But then, you know all this.
The doubling function turns the score into a royal mess, unfortunately.
You could create a new notehead set which would use the black notehead for eighth notes and shorter durations, the half notehead for quarter notes, the whole notehead for half notes, and so on. The stems on half notes using whole noteheads could be hidden in engrave mode, but since whole noteheads are typically wider than half noteheads, the note spacing might be affected. The time signature in the first bar could be changed to 4/2,2 with a hidden 4/4 time signature in the second bar.
The tricky part is how to get rid of the beams on eighth notes to make them look like quarter notes. You could break the beams and delete the glyphs for eighth note flags in the Edit Music Symbol dialog, but then you could not have any flagged eighth notes elsewhere in the project. Another possibility is to break the beams, execute the command Beam Together separately on each eighth note, and set the Partial beam length to zero in Engraving Options > Beams > Appearance. However, this would prevent you from having a dotted eighth note and a sixteenth note beamed together elsewhere in the project.
Try this.
Duplicate the flow.
In the duplicate:
Select the lyrics
Copy
Delete the lyrics
Turn on Insert mode
Select all the notes and double the duration
Turn off Insert mode
(change the time signature to whatever you want)
Select the first note
Enter Lyrics input (shift-L) - this is the important bit
Invoke Paste - this will give the first syllable/word
If what was just pasted extends over more notes, press Space until the next syllable has been pasted (repeat as needed).
If the pasted syllable/word does not extend to any following notes, invoke Paste again.
To summarize: Paste will paste the next syllable/word, space will extend the current syllable/word over the following note.
For better wording, it is in the manual somewhere under copying and pasting lyrics.
PS This will probably work for only one line (verse) of lyrics at a time.
You would still have problems with your new quarter notes having flags or beams, surely?
I’ve just been doubling some vocal parts today, and the lyrics moved with the notes, although extension lines were sometimes created where not needed, so I had to step through the popover, pressing hyphen or space to reset them.
Here is an example of doubling the note values as described in post #4. I started with the Bravura Larger Noteheads, created a new notehead set called Larger Noteheads Doubled, gave each eighth note a partial beam and set the partial beam length to zero:
Here is the Dorico project containing two flows, one with the original notation and the other with doubled note values:
Noteheads Doubled.dorico (1.5 MB)
Thanks all. I should have clarified: the file had a lot of manual adjustments, both note spacing and lyric offsets. That’s what I was hoping to be able to preserve too. I will try @johnkprice’s suggestion.
I’ve used this tune. Found it in a hymn titled “Watchman, Tell Us Of the Night”
