Pedal Line and Retakes Do Not Adjust When Inserting Measures

I have a piece with a piano part in it, and I need to insert a measure in the middle where I have already entered the piano pedal line and the accompanying retakes. All of the music for all of the instruments shifts over one measure to make room for the new measure, but not the dynamics, slurs, piano pedal markings, etc. (see examples below)



Is there a setting that will change this behavior or is it something that will be changed in the future?

Thanks.

1 Like

Well, the reason the dynamic isn’t moving is that the forte is attached to the downbeat after the inserted measure. Inserting a measure won’t change the rhythmic position of the anchor point for that dynamic.

Same thing with the slur. Its endpoint is that same downbeat. And same thing with the pedal retakes. Inserting a measure doesn’t change the anchor points for those items.

For the dynamic, before inserting a measure, click on the forte and move it to the previous beat using the Alt key plus left arrow.

But the note is on the downbeat of the measure, and it moves when a new measure is inserted, so shouldn’t everything else move as well? That would seem to be the intuitive way for it to work. I can’t think of a situation where the current way would be helpful.

Quite simply, anything that’s attached to a specific voice moves if you insert a bar. Anything that isn’t attached to a specific voice is locked to a rhythmic position, and won’t be moved if you insert a bar. Anything that’s grouped won’t move if you insert a bar: that’s all pedal lines and retakes, and grouped dynamics. If you ungroup the dynamics, they’ll move accordingly (though hairpins won’t extend automatically).

This is an expected limitation, regardless of whether it’s intuitive or not.

Thanks for the clarification everyone. I guess I just don’t understand why this is a good thing. When I chose a note and then apply a pedal retake, it is for that note and should stay with it. If I’m missing the logic behind the current methodology, my apologies.

I do see your point about pedal retakes, but I don’t have a good answer. The slurs and dynamics’ behavior certainly makes sense to me.

I don’t think anyone is claiming it’s a good or bad thing, just explaining what Dorico does.

The bottom line seems to be, if an object (line, slur, hairpin, etc) has a length, and you insert or delete time from the score in the middle of it, its length doesn’t change.

Dynamic items that are grouped together behave like a single “line”.

Any objects that start after the time you insert do move with the notes.

I guess the possibilities are (1) the developers never thought about that interaction between two features in the program (2) they did think about it and decided it should be the way it is, and (3) they don’t think it should be the way it is, but there are higher priority things to do and it’s still in the backlog.

Unless somebody from the development team tell us which (if any) is correct, the only thing we can say is “it does what it does.”

pedal retakes seem like articulations to me.
if I had a note with a staccato dot on it, and I moved the note over, I wouldn’t expect the dot to stay put.

1 Like

I can’t agree with this, unless you can tell me categorically which note the pedal retake is attached to :wink:

Along the same lines, note that with Insert mode it’s entirely possible to shuffle a single voice left or right, leaving the others intact. Would you want the pedal lines/retakes to move with that single voice? I’m guessing yes, in some circumstances, and no in others. There’s more to this topic than meets the eye.

I would think that a usable rule of thumb would be that inserting a measure moves everything including the non-pitch objects. Moving a single voice would not. This should account for 99% of the situations, which is what any software should try to do. If everyone disagrees with regards to the slurs, hairpins, etc. it should at least apply to the pedal retakes. The retake should be attached to whichever rhythmic position it is in before the insertion. In the above example, the pedal retake occurs at the beginning of the measure and should be in the same place after inserting a measure. The real problem for me is that I have a fairly long pedal line with many retakes, and by inserting a measure, all of these are now misplaced. I just can’t see any situation where this would be the desired result.

1 Like

like the OP, I recently had a situation where I inserted some music into an area with alot of retakes ahead of it and would’ve preferred they moved as if they were an articulation on the lower bass voice. Instead I had to redo the retakes.

Of this I am sure and want to see what the developers come up with :sunglasses:

1 Like

Encountered the same problem while deleting measures. In my opinion too the behavior should be changed.
Both when deleting and inserting measures.

Before deleting measures, use the Split Pedal command at the points at the start and end of the passage you’re about to delete. Having deleted the measures, use the Merge Pedal command to attach the remaining pedal marks back together.

As a workaround, sure. I recently discovered the Split Pedal option and it is indeed very useful.

Not a workaround. Rather a different workflow. As you get more familiar with Dorico it will become obvious to you.

Well I don’t agree, I agree with @shr23 that what OP suggests should be the standard behavior. It’s a lot of steps against a single obvious one.

I think you would benefit from reading…

(And would it be churlish of me to point out that Sibelius handles pedal lines the same as Dorico does when bars are inserted? Perhaps you would be happier if you reverted [pun intended]?)

I don’t actually use Sibelius, I come from MuseScore, the nickname is just for fun based on the history of Dorico. The fact that Sibelius also does that doesn’t make it right though.
I like the overall concept of Dorico, for example I like that you can move notes horizontally. I just don’t agree with this specific behavior this thread is about.
Whatever though, it’s not a big deal, just a few more clicks.