Hi, I’m new to Dorico. I’d like to put notes like the picture above, but I can’t find the way to put 8th notes with a 32nd rest. Is there any way to put in this kind of notation?
Welcome to the forum.
Oof, this is quite the challenge, but yes, it’s possible via hidden tuplets.
What you’re eventually aiming at is this:
or with the tuplets hidden and the first 32nd rest removed, this:
The downstem voice - in my example Fs and Abs - is just a bunch of 6:4 32nd note tuplets. Hopefully you’ve already got that far.
The upstem voice is obviously tricker, though it may be that someone brighter than me has a better solution.
The challenges are:
- The first upstem eighth must start a sextuplet 32nd note after the downbeat. This means each eighth must be housed within a tuplet (because you need a tuplet for the hidden rest).
- All of the eighths must be notated as single eighths, not as something tied to something else. This means each eighth must be housed within one tuplet.
- The final eighth takes up less real time than the other eighths. This means it has to be housed in a separate tuplet to the other eighths. If you sort of average out the numbers and make all the eighths the same length, a) they won’t line up with the other voice and b) playback will be wrong.
Start by putting the caret in Upstem Voice 1, then type ; 9:6e Enter. This tells Dorico to create a tuplet that has nine eighths in the time of six eighths, and this is necessary in order to be able to nudge the caret along a single tuplet 32nd to the right.
Type 3 Space. This nudges the caret along by a single tuplet 32nd.
Type ; 4:6e Enter. This is effectively counteracting the 9:6 tuplet you already have, in that it’s returning what would be dotted eighths to their real eighth note values.
Type your first four pitches.
With me so far?
Type ; 2:3x Enter
For various purposes, q = quarter, e=eighth, h=half etc. x=16th, y=32nd, z=64th. So here, this is telling Dorico to give you a tuplet that slots two 16ths (or an eighth) into three of the existing tuplet 16ths as defined by the overarching 9:6e tuplet from a few steps back.
Type one more pitch.
As you can hopefully see, there’s still a single 32nd rest and an eighth rest left in the measure, and you have to do a little more arithmetic. The lowest common denominator is 32nds, so:
Type ; 4:5y Enter, then 5 for eighths (if it’s not still highlighted in the left panel) followed by your final pitch.
The next job is to beam all of the Upstem notes together.
Select any of them, then type Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-A to Select More, then right-click > Beaming > Beam Together.
Then select any of the tuplet brackets or numbers, type Cmd/Ctrl-Shift-A to Select More, then set the Bracket and Number properties in such a way that they’re hidden.
Select the first rest and go Edit > Remove Rests.
You should now find (I prepared my downstem notes in a different bar, then copied them across) that you have something that looks roughly like this:
Then there’s a little more tidying up to do with the beaming in the downstem voice, courtesy of the right-click/Edit > Beaming menu.
And with View > Signposts switched off, you should have something that looks like this:
I’m away from my MIDI keyboard so I’m not going to bother to repitch those downstem notes, but L (lock to duration) is very handy for that.
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Thank you so much!
Bravo, @pianoleo, for both ingenuity and generosity! I saw this query about an hour ago, and thought to myself “Why, that shouldn’t be too hard, really,” and then when I tried to duplicate it myself found that it was, in fact, a real monster. I could imagine easily enough what needed to be done, but I couldn’t get the cursor (or the written note durations) to cooperate.
Then I started seeing messages that “@pianoleo is typing,” and knew that there was no need for me to continue to batter away at it, when you were sure to come up with an elegant solution.
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Yeah, that first offset 32nd rather cobbles things up - it’s a pig!
I’ve been recording all day so I’m a bit addled, but there’s something therapeutic about math(s), isn’t there?
edit: come to think of it, you could save a step by combining my 4:6e tuplet and my 2:3x tuplet: a single 10:15e tuplet will achieve the same result.
Clearly we think alike about that. I was happy to dive into the problem – I just couldn’t solve it!
I’ll have to do another run at it using your second thought.
In the future, when there are semester-long courses in Advanced Dorico, this would be an excellent challenge to put on the final exam.
All in 6:4 tuplets of 32nd notes.
Cross staff notes and beaming applied before finally hiding the rests, when everything falls into place.
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That’s perfect notation, but the playback will be slightly different.
I was thinking to set up a 36:24 tuplet in 32nds, then notating nested 2:3’s for the quavers.
Edit: and use 4:5 for the last one, of course…
Not sure how different playback will be in a live performance, considering those top notes are continuously restruck by the bottom voice. Now if this were two different instruments, your point would be completely correct. The point of this notation (originally), I suspect was to add an additional emphasis as a player struck the pitches doubled from above.
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@pianoleo , I just worked through your admirable instructions, and they all worked wonderfully, except that I think at these two points I think you have Cmd and Ctrl in the wrong order (and used a hyphen instead of a slash in the second instance). As I was familiar with Select More, it didn’t throw me off, but it might do that to a newcomer. But otherwise, this worked great. Thank you for the fun I had trying it out myself!
It’s Cmd on Mac OR Ctrl on Windows, not both.
Edited! To be fair, I did give the correct keystrokes for Select More in the previous paragraph, so hopefully my slip was forgivable.
“Forgiveness” doesn’t come into it – your post was awe-inspiring in its comprehension, as well as correct and helpful. As such, it is likely to remain permanently useful for similar conundrums, and it’s only for that reason that I spoke up, so that that tiny detail won’t confuse a future user.
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