Moving Notes Up and Down

Dorico
1

I get that using Command-Alt with the Up/down arrows moves selected notes up or down an octave, and that using Alt-Shift moves them up or down a semitone. Both these functions retain any accidentals (flats or sharps) and the correct relationship between adjacent notes when they are transposed up or down.

But when you use the simple Alt + Up or Down arrow both an F# and an F natural become G natural (up) or E natural (down). I’m struggling to think why you would want that. I can see that if you are operating on a single note then that may make some sense in certain circumstances as there is no relationship between adjacent notes - but if you are moving a phrase up or down then that will distort the relationship.

So currently you are restricted to semitone or octave transpositions which is not a big deal - but I have been caught out with the above on a few occasions.

2

You can think of Alt+up/down arrow as transposing by staff position, i.e. it will go to the next staff position in either direction, and without an accidental, so that it will inherit whatever accidental may be in force for the new staff position in the current key signature. I think this is in general very useful and is, to my knowledge, more or less the standard way that editing the pitches of notes works in most scoring programs, Dorico included.