Moving one note makes piano disappear in playback

Dorico
1

Hi, I’m writing a leadsheet for a song, instead of relying on the chord playback which can be a bit “stupid”, I’m writing out voicings and bassnotes on a piano so that I can hear the intended voicings, i.e. if I think of C11, I think Bb/C, but the pianist i’m playing with should be given the possibility of playing something else so I don’t want to write Bb/C.

If I write Bb/C, it sounds right because there’s no E, if I write C11 it sounds wrong because there is an E.

I don’t know how things are elsewhere but where I’m from, major 11 = no third, minor 11 = no ninth, generally speaking.

EIther way, I’m writing out piano voicings instead so I don’t have to hear every note ever be played when I write out large chords. I have a piano and a lead instrument, bass in piano’s bass clef and chords in piano’s treble clef, melody in the lead instrument.

I drop the bass down an octave, the playback is fine, I move the melody an 8th note to the right, the melody is there but the piano is gone.

I move the melody back, the piano is still gone. I move the bass up an octave, the piano comes back.

I move the melody an eighth to the right again without moving the bass, the piano disappears. I move the melody back, the piano is still gone. I move the bass, the piano comes back.

This is dumb, I shouldn’t have to move the bass every time I change the melody slightly.

How do I fix this?

2

Perhaps we need to see a sample of the Dorico file to see what you are up against.

3

I’ve never heard of an 11 chord having no third. How can you tell whether it’s major or minor? I was always taught that the root and the 3rd were the two notes you should never leave out of any chord, no matter how complex.

4

I’ve received a private message from another member of the forum that in actual practice (as opposed to what I learned in Theory class) the third of a dominant eleven chord is omitted because it clashes with the eleventh tone which is only a minor second away. I stand corrected. (I thought complex chords were sort of about clashes, but oh well.)

2 Likes
5

In theory, an 11th chord is considered to always have the third included, because of how tertiary harmony works etc., and i think that might be more the case when we’re talking classical music.

I play more ECM-style jazz, and you can have these huuuuge chords in theory, but in practice there’s a lot of minimalism.

So if you’re thinking C13b9 you can think of it as C E G Bb Db F A, or you can think of it as a diminished dominant chord, so C Db Eb E F# G A Bb.

But why would you play that many notes? It’ll all become a muddle. ’

C13b9, you want the third there, you want the sixth there and you want the flat ninth there, play the rootnote C in the left hand and play an A major chord in the right hand, add a Bb with your left hand’s thumb and you’ve got every important note in that particular dominant chord sorted.

LH: C Bb

RH: A C# E

And in the case of C11, it’s easier to think Bb in the right hand and C as a bassnote in the left hand, Cm11 you think Bbsus4 in the right hand instead. And there are other ways to approach it as well.

I think C11 = Always 7 9 and 11, no 3, Cm11 = Always 7 b3 and 11, no 9.

And complex chords can be about clashes, but I’m writing for a tiny ensemble, so it’s about the right clashes.

I have a D13b9 in my song, that’s because the previous chord leads nicely to a B, then I picked out a different bassnote to give it a harmonic context that suits the melody.

6

You really don’t, this is also a project I can’t really share due to it being used in applications and stuff.

There are two voices, three if you count the piano’s left and right hands as two separate voices. The piano’s playback disappears when I change something in the melody, I change a note in the piano back and forth to make it reappear in the playback. I think it could be something with the dynamics that does it.

7

It is hard to visualise, and reproduce what you are writing, to check what is happening and eventually offer the Team a Dorico project with a reproducible possible issue.

You could cut-down your un-shareable project to the essentials passage to make a deeper diagnose possible.

1 Like
8

Help me.dorico (1018.2 KB)

I’ve butchered it deliberately, I still get the same problem where I just change one note in the melody and the piano disappears on playback on this file so you should be able to replicate it.

9

Sorry, I am not have any note of piano disappearing in playback, after “changing one note in the melody”.
Not sure at all what you are referring to, or what the issue is, since I cannot reproduce it. Maybe you could tell explicitly which steps are needed to reproduce the issue, and which notes are disappearing in the playback, or make a short screen video (with audio) to show what is happening on your system.

10

I open the project, I play it, the piano and melody are audible.

I add a note, remove a note, change the pitch of a note, change the placement of a note or whatever, the piano disappears in the playback, the melody is still there.

I do the same thing in one of the piano voices, the piano reappears.

So, at the moment, any time I make a change in the melody, I have to go to the piano voice and just switch a note up and down in order to ensure that I can hear the piano in the playback.

11

Sorry, I tried various things accordingly to what you describe, and I don’t hear anything unexpected in your file: the piano plays as expected, no matter what I change in the melody (melody=jazz guitar, right?) (Dorico Pro 6.1.10)

@Hukumdarim
Edit: are you sure you are not selecting more then one note in the guitar, when starting playback? This will solo the playback of the guitar.

12

Well, I have Dorico 5, but maybe if I just copy paste everything into a new project it could solve it.

I tried making a video but the file size is too big for the forum and I’m not about to upload it to YouTube. Either way, I change anything in the melody, jazz guitar, and I only hear melody, I change something in the piano, I hear melody and piano.

13

“Wetransfer” is a very easy way to share temporarily large files (you can just paste the link here)

14

I am very sure i’m not making the mistake you pointed out, as showcased in this clip. Thank you for showing me wetransfer.

15

When this happens (piano disapears), can you screenshot both tabs in Play mode (track inspector and VST/MIDI)? A screen shot of the notation at the same time would help as well.

16

Indeed very strange.
Could you make another screen recording including the mixer in the visualisation?

CleanShot 2026-01-04 at 19.50.37@2x
CleanShot 2026-01-04 at 19.50.37@2x3582×2066 600 KB

17

There’s both the notation, mixer and the play view.

18

Thank for the second video, too. I am out of ideas.

Probably posting the Diagnostic Report (that you can generate from menu Help), would help the Team to see what is going on.

Do as following:
reproduce the issue (as you showed in the videos), and immediately after, generate the Diagnostic Report, and attach the resulting ZIP file here.

19

Dorico Diagnostics.zip (1.1 MB)

Thanks for trying to help out anyway. If all else fails, I’ll just make a new project and transfer it and hope it works out that way, but i don’t know. could be an outdated Dorico version too, and I’m using Dorico 5, but it shouldn’t be a problem.

20

No it shouldn’t be the problem. The reason I asked for the Track Inspector was to see if the piano routing somehow gets disengaged. I can’t see that from the videos. The only way the piano wouldn’t provide audio is if it were muted or it wasn’t routed to a VST.