This sounds like a stupid newbie question, and I may have missed something!
Until now, I only changed a notehead on a note when I wanted actually to change the notehead set. And usually this was a noteheadset that I created with only one notehead. But when the selected noteheadSet (factory or user) contains more than one notehead item, it is always the default one which is chosen, without any question. The only place where I remember seeing different notehead items presented is the unpitched percussion kit, but I am now speaking of pitched instruments. How do you select a specfic item from a noteheadSet that contains more than one?
Dorico picks a notehead from the set according to the duration rules set up for each notehead in that set.
So if I take this:
And I change the notehead set to large circled noteheads, I get this:
1 Like
There must be other criteria, given that there is a Pitched NoteheadSet category? But the point here, which indeed answers my question, is that, when I apply a “notehead change” to a note item, any criteria will be automatically applied without me having the opporting to make any selection, which was what I hoped for.
This is fairly logical for “normal” use of notes. But since was introduced the hiding of stems and/or ledge lines on visible notes, this opens the door to non standard use of notes: even if currently any note must have been given a duration and a pitch, hiding a stem makes the duration ambiguous, and hdiing ledger lines can make even the pitch dificult to determine.
One of several examples of such a non standard use is custodes: they still have a pitch but semantically they have no duration even if one has been attributed to them by necessity of note input. I have created a NoteheadSet for that purpose, and it is rather pointless for me to define more than one notehead in it, to be able to select at will one or another for some whimsical reason. If I wanted to do that (not an immmediate need) , I could create several NoteheadSets with only one notehead item each.
So my question is answered, thank you.
Yes, if you create a new set in the Pitched or Scale Degree categories, there are other criteria that you can set in the Edit Notehead Sets dialog.
One other thing to consider is that by using tuplets, you can force any given note to look like it has some other duration. Here, for example, is a 4/4 bar that looks like it’s completely filled by four 16th notes – each one is a 1:4x tuplet.
Since each notehead set allows for 14 different duration criteria, you could fill the set with 14 different noteheads and use tuplets to force the duration for the notehead you want. Though this may be more work than defining multiple sets, each of which has one notehead.