This is my first post to this forum. By way of background: I’m an old guy, I know music well, I know computers and software well, and I’m new to Dorico. I’m a former Finale user trying to learn Dorico by setting an old (1966) score that is complex but not impossibly. I’ve tried for two hours with LLMs to solve a simple problem and have concluded it’s time to take it up with this forum.
I’m using Dorico 6.1 (Pro) on an up-to-date M4 Mac. The score is for an ad hoc ensemble of nine players that includes harp. I’ve entered everything for the first five measures of the score (of 295 total). That’s as far as I’ve gone.
Here is the problem:
Every note in the harp part with an accidental is colored red on screen.
These notes have not been selected
They play back with no problem.
Every other note in the harp part and all other instruments is black.
The notes in question are NOT out of range.
Of incidental interest but likely irrelevant:
I initially declared the work to be in C major to avoid a key signature because I don’t know how to do otherwise. It is in fact atonal. I later used the key signature popover to change it to say “atonal”. I can’t imagine how that could possibly make a difference. I would expect there to be red notes in other instruments. I changed the marking using the key signature popover (Cmd+K) to atonal and it didn’t object, but it didn’t change anything.
Harp parts cannot use enharmonic spellings. A C# is not played on the same string as a Db. I switched a couple of notes anyhow to be sure this was not the problem. They remained red.
Neither ChatGPT nor Genesis has much of a clue how Dorico works though they do a sometimes convincing job of faking it.
Can someone help? Much appreciated.
Unlike other (chromatic) instruments the harp is tuned diatonically, there are 7 strings per octave. There are also 7 pedals, one for each string (affects all octaves simultaneously). The base key of the harp (all pedals are released) is C♭ major. You can increase every string by two half-tones. The base position is the middle one (C major), If you want to play chromatic notes you have to step on the pedals. As you have only two feet there is a limitation in speed as well as in certain combinations.
Dorico marks all notes as red which don’t match the current pedal state.
For more information to notate the pedal changes please read
I appreciate that invitation. I’ve been a frequent visitor to the Finale Forum in the past, also more recently to the Apple Logic Pro forum, where I always get accurate and generous information.
Turnover time, especially when I’m trying to track things down, is an issue. Since I’d never posted here before, I wanted to spend some time tracking down everything obvious and going down trails I was learning about for the first time. (Like whatever a “Filter” is in Dorico!) At least with an LLM, insofar as it does know something, I can progress rapid fire. It’s like having a tutor over my shoulder. And in that way I can save pestering people who volunteer their precious time to help out guys like me. I spent two hours this morning trying to find out why six notes in my harp part are red. I still don’t know.
Dorico is a remarkable program. I’m looking forward to learning it rapidly from here on out, but this package does have a considerable learning curve to it.
If the info from @arco and @vadian didn’t solve your issue (notes don’t match current pedaling), then can you share your project file here, so someone can take a look at it?
Dorico marks all notes as red which don’t match the current pedal state.
This is probably the key! Something I haven’t bothered to find out yet is if Dorico supports a harp pedals gizmo (for lack of a better term, whatever they’re called). I’ve seen them in other music as straight horizontal lines with seven vertical lines above or straddling or below the line.
It happens that I wrote one other piece previous to the one I’m working on (in 1964) that includes harp where the harp part is considerably more difficult than the one I’m working on now. In that, although I had to carefully check myself throughout to make sure I wasn’t writing impossibilities, I didn’t put any pedal markings in the score, leaving it to the harpist to figure out. (She cursed me out in rehearsals a couple of times.)
In this hand-written score I wrote pedal change notations by just naming the notes. At the beginning it says:
C# D Eb F G A B.
Thereafter I would mark just ones that need to change:
C-natural A#
before they occur.
If someone could kindly tell me where I can learn about how to write harp pedal settings in Dorico, I believe my problem will be solved.
Or I could just leave them so the next harpist will have an opportunity to curse me out.
I haven’t tried to fix this yet, but in view of the knowledge contained in the Dorico Harp pedaling guide and the accompanying video, it has become obvious that this simply must be the reason why my notes are red and that if I specify the harp pedal positions the problem will go away. Consider this problem solved. If I have more questions I’ll be back.
I also learned how much it’s possible to forget in 59 years. Upon reading this I recall that I used to know this stuff. What remains is now mastering it in Dorico.
Dorico has a utility to help set harp pedals for a selection based on the notes included. It can start at a designated point; then, when red notes appear, the user must start the utility from that point to let Dorico choose a new pedal setting.
Layout options determine whether a given layout will show or hide the pedal diagrams in the score.
This morning I used the references passed on to me here to learn how to specify harp pedal markings in Dorico, including partial change markings. My red notes turned black. So I wanted to follow through by assuring the forum that this was indeed the solution to my problem. In the process I learned a useful new skill. I was happy to discover that Dorico can calculate pedal changes for me. That will come in handy.
