It’s rare, but sometimes I need to move a nested rest horizontally (in complex piano music). Is it possible to do this? I haven’t found how!
Thanks!
You can use this method to move notes horizontally without affecting everything else at their rhythmic position, I can’t remember off the top of my head whether you can use this for rests too but worth a try 
1 Like
Hi Lillie,
Thanks for that. It seems not to work in my case. I have 3 voices present on the downbeat (notes in 2 voices and one voice with a rest). It seems to move all 3 voices at the equally. I would need to move just one voice.
Did you select and move the small circular handle rather than the square handle?
1 Like
The missing step (not mentioned in that entry in the manual) is probably to ensure that the notes are on separate voice columns…
2 Likes
Why is it that rests can’t be manipulated with Alt/Alt Shift the same way that notes are?
1 Like
Rests are always Voice Column 0. You can put all the notes in surrounding voices in Voice Column 1 (>1), then pull them over to the left of the rests, if need be.
Implicit rests can’t be moved (or put in a different voice column) because they don’t really exist. I suspect that the main reason that explicit rests can’t be moved is that it’s never been a high enough priority for development time to be spent on it. I may be wrong; I’m not privy to all the inner workings of the Dorico development team.
4 Likes
Thanks Leo. I see that Explicit rest can be modified the same as notes; I was trying to do it with Implicit rests.
I was struggling to even enter Explicit rests; the documentation is not quite right. Without Force Duration on, no rest appears.
1 Like
Are you definitely using the latest manual? Here’s the most recent version of the steps for inputting rests - it’s been improved at various stages.
1 Like
Hi Lillie, yes that’s what I used. At the end it says “If Force Duration is not activated, Dorico Pro automatically combines adjacent rests as appropriate for their position in relation to notes and according to the current meter.”, so I would expect rests to show up in the measure in that fashion, but nothing show up.
1 Like
If you’re inputting rests in an empty bar without Force Duration activated, they get consolidated into a whole bar rest, so nothing changes.
2 Likes
Ahhhhhh, now I see
2 Likes
Awesome info here. Lovely conversation, a real pleasure. Thanks to all…
1 Like
This was something I addressed with Daniel in 2018 for the same reason (keyboard music). He made it clear at that time that they would not be adding the ability to nudge rests. To this day I still don’t understand (or agree) with that decision, but it is what it is.
3 Likes
As mentioned above the necessity of moving rests horizontally in polyphonic piano music is not uncommon. Here’s an example from the Henle edition of Bach’s “Kleine Präludien und Fughetten”, BWV 900, fugue, bars 99 & 100
Specially in the second bar it’s practically impossible to put the rest in the correct metrical place. In D4 the rests can be faked with Insert Music Text
but a native solution would be clearly preferable. I wonder what might have been the reason of @dspreadbury‘s rejection of this feature request.
1 Like
Hi! I don’t think this is not doable using the manual note spacing tools. Granted, you cannot move the rests. But you can move all the notes around the rest.
Yes, Marc, this possibility has been mentioned above. Maybe this is a little more “elegant” than faking the rests, but you probably agree, moving the rests would be by far the easiest and fastest solution.
2 Likes
Of course I agree! It will probably be implemented in due course — when more urgent things that we really cannot do will have been implemented. It’s the kind of things like my request to be able to make two notes tremolos without resorting to force duration that cannot be high in the priority list, as it is already doable, although not in the easiest manner.
1 Like
It is always difficult to assess how complex it is to implement a desired feature. Maybe things have to be taken into account that cannot be recognized by the user. It seems that all objects can be moved horizontally, just not rests. There must be a reason. Is it only to allow no exceptions to the fixing of the metric position, or are there other reasons?