Open hi-hat playing technique displays “o sim.”

Strange thing going on with my playing technique for an open hi-hat: whenever I select a note of the hi-hat and add the “o” symbol either using the popover or the playing techniques panel on the right side it adds “o sim.” (i. e. an unnecessary “sim.”) to the note. Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong?

I certainly can’t reproduce this. Does it happen in every project, or only in your current one? Have you edited the appearance in Engrave > Playing Techniques somehow? What settings do you have in the Editing section of the General page of Preferences?

Ah, interesting. In “Engrave > Playing Techniques” under “Continuation” I had set continuation for symbols to “simile”. But as far as I understand that should only occur if a symbol is applied to multiple consecutive notes, or am I misinterpreting that? In my case I just had a single “open” symbol above one note.

I suspect that somehow you had made a selection of multiple notes: when you do that, you get a single playing technique with a duration of the selected range, rather than several separate playing techniques. Dorico has a limited palette of ways to display a playing technique with a duration, and will either show the same symbol repeated over successive notes in the range or the word “sim.”. In future it will also be able to show arrows and brackets.

Well, I think this is a genuine bug. I’ve attached a simple example that should illustrate it. I don’t know if the settings are exported with the files but if not then set your continuation for symbols to “simile” as explained in my last post.
simile_test.dorico.zip (349 KB)

I have also experienced simile with only one articulation mark. Changing the preference to omit sim. circumvents the issue

The issue here is that the open playing technique is created with a duration of a quarter note by default, and when the duration of the playing technique exceeds that of the note, the “sim.” marking will be shown if the engraving option is set that way.

I don’t quite understand.

  1. Why does a playing technique have a specific duration? To my understanding, it should either apply to a single entry (i. e. a note, no matter its length) or act as a “signpost” that applies to all following notes until it’s canceled by some other playing technique.
  2. In the example file I posted above there are just quarter notes with a playing technique applied; and even if I increase the length of the notes the simile marking stays. So, what’s the matter there?

I can attest to this “bug”.

I have a hi-hat only instrument. I input 4/4 meter, and then add about 10 bars. I add quarter notes in the bars. I highlight several bars, apply the ‘o’ for open hi-hat and I get the ‘o’ over many notes (good, and is expected). Erase all of the ‘o’ as I don’t want to see them, yet.

I go to Engraving options a change the way that playing techniques are displayed. And choose the “sim.” suggestion, as opposed to over every note. I click on several bars, add the ‘o’, and I see ‘o sim.’ (Still good so far).

I erase the playing technique, select a single quarter note. Hit ‘o’ to add the open hi-hat to 1 note only. It displays as ‘o sim.’

Robby