Organ Pedal Playing Techniques

Since organ is my main instrument, but an edge-case for composition, I was pleasantly surprised to see pedal playing techniques. According to the Dorico manual, playing techniques are automatically placed above of below the staff based on stem direction.

Unfortunately, Dorico appears not to support the convention for organ pedal heel/toe playing technique, which is that the right foot is above the staff, the left foot below. This makes the playing technique with its automatic placement useless 50% of the time.

Is there a way to override the automatic placement? If not, is there a workaround?

Thank you!
Mark

Flipping a playing technique to the other side of the staff is as easy as hitting the Placement button in the Properties panel. Once you have right-foot heel & toe markings in the pedal line, you can then copy them elsewhere with Alt-click – easier than entering and flipping new ones.

Or you could duplicate the heel & toe markings and change the duplicates to above-staff by default. But I think the copying method is easier and less confusing, and lets you change your mind about whether a note is left or right foot.

Playing techniques follow the direction of the voice they belong to when 2+ voices are active simultaneously, or the default placement set for that playing technique in general.

You can of course flip them above/below individually as Mark suggests – the equivalent key command is F (for Flip).

(Also welcome to the forum!)

1 Like

It’s even easier than that: just press ‘f’ and it will flip to the other side.

1 Like

Thanks for the replies. Dorico has been pretty easy to use so far, but sometimes I don’t quite know what to search for in the docs. The ‘f’ works fine. Thanks!

1 Like

Hi Mark, if you’re ever struggling to find something in the manual, please feel free to either post here or message me directly - I’m always interested in the phrasings people use to look for things, and whether or not that currently matches up with where that information exists.