I’m notating some Gregorian chant accompaniments. Chant melodies have open meters, with the sense of the pulse constantly varying irregularly between groups of 2 or 3 eighth notes. I’m having two problems: first, beaming. Is there an easier way in Dorico to split or unite beams than the cumbersome Edit - Notation - Beaming - split beams for every single grouping? In Finale you could just press the letter B and the beam would toggle between split and united. With a lot of them to group, is there a quick way to do this in Dorico? I’ll save my second for a separate post.
You can assign your own key command for these menu options in Preferences > Key Commands.
Alternatively, you can add barlines as needed. You can’t hide barlines, but you could for example input dashed barlines, and change the settings such that no dashes appear.
We just had a lengthy thread about this here:
Thanks for the speedy replies! I think the key commands will probably be the way to go, although I might try the dashed barlines and hide dashes. Finale had a possibility of invisible barlines and I initially thought that might be my solution, but it seems that’s not an option in Dorico. (Maybe for the future? We have a lot of files to import with invisible barlines…)
The thread about grouping was not actually helpful for this problem, because they were just looking at the melody line. Using quarter notes with no stems for the melody would really confuse things in the accompaniment, which needs to use true times - so the software needs to read the melody notes as eighths.
When I’m just notating Gregorian melodies, I use the Meinrad fonts which do a wonderful job with Gregorian chant notation.
I don’t think you would need invisible barlines, just writing in open meter is very adequate in such cases. Finale HAS to think in bars and barlines, because the underlying data structure was built on this paradigm, which brings it own problems with it (think for examples beams and tuplets across barlines, which are not problem whatsoever in Dorico).
I guess one could just import an XML and change the imported meter to “open”.
BTW: of course you can also write stemless eighth notes, the beams and flags will just disappear with their stems when hidden:
Creating a key command for Split Beam (very useful):
Wow! Thanks for the tip on stemless eighths. That should help when we finally start the export/import process. So far I’m just using Dorico for new things, to get acquainted. Still making discoveries! Really like the software so far, and that open meter will be a super help.
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