I am using Dorico to export some music which is working great, mostly. Maybe I am misunderstanding something with the pedal lines, because they seem to release too early, or at least earlier than I am expecting.
In bar 1 I want to release the pedal as I play the last note in the bar, but it releases the pedal before that leaving a brief pause between the D and G. If pull the pedal line all the way to the next G (bar 2) it works as I would expect, but this not possible in all circumstances.
The issue also occurs in bar 5. But in bar 6 where I’ve ended the pedal line at the next snapping point it blurs between the chords, which is equally undesirable.
It seems to me that rather than release the pedal momentarily after the note the pedal line is snapped to, it is lifted when the previous note ends.
In these situations it’s not possible to use the retake option because I do want to the pedal to stop, just in the right place.
Please tell me I am doing something wrong and there is a way to make this work as I would expect.
you can drag the end of the Ped. line so that it begins at the beginning of the next bar (and shows its length till the end of the last note of the previous bar)
there are also nice Playback options for the length of the Release (and other options) in Playback Options/Pedal Lines. Set it to 0 and it will be no gap between the two Pedals (default is 1/2) .
The part from bar 17 doesn’t seem right. The chords just blur, which is the problem I described in my original post. The first chord should be held (with the pedal) up until the next chord sounds so that there is no gap and no crossover. But then the pedal should not be depressed again so that anything else that is played at that point is not sustained.
I also notice that now the file has about 10x as many subdivisions making it much more awkward to navigate about.
I’ve further isolated the issue. I notice that Dorico is pretty clever and will hold a key as long as an actual player would making it nice and legato. The issue I’m facing mainly occurs when keys need to be repressed. In this example, I only want the pedal down from the first chord to the second so that it is a seamless transition. But I don’t want it held during the second chord while other notes are playing which shouldn’t be sustained.
Where the chords share notes, there is a noticeable gap between them (as you would expect), but I would not expect this when playing with the pedal. The pedal should be released as I play the next chord, not when I lift from the first. Which what I can hear happening. The alternative seems to be to drag the pedal line to the next note, in which case the chords blur and sound nasty.
I don’t understand exactly what you are looking for.
A pianist would hold the lower G. little longer with the finger and change the pedal after the G is played, and during the note be hold, so the pedal cleans up the previous harmony. This is because an immediate retake is impossible in real life. And even if the pedal line ends on the previous bar, to leave a gap between the pedal symbols could sound horrible and like hiccup (depending of course of the intended result).
In MIDI this change (release/retake) can be immediate (the release setting I mentioned set to 0) without needing the G to be held. Or you can fine tune the desired gap in the mentioned Playback options.
@dorico-user-77
So, here a new version of your file (I added some passing notes to demonstrate that the pedal is not influencing them). The retake Playback option is set to 0. If you want a little gap, you can increase the Release length value, or experiment with the other nearby options.
If you want the value of the notes without pedal to be shorter, you can adjust this in the Playback options durations, or in the Key editor in Played duration view:
Changing the release to length to 0 does resolve the issue, but this feels like wrong to me. Does this suggest that the release ends where the pedal lines end. I would expect the release of the pedal to start where the pedal line ends so that we can ensure gaps like this don’t occur. Then the release length would dictate how much crossover there is. I’m not sure I can think of a good reason for it to be the other way around.
If that is the case I think it would be good to have an option similar to the pedal depress settings. This would make it clear what is happening.
(default is 1/2) .
