There is documentation online (but not in Dorico itself that I’ve found) about a CMD/ALT/Arrow combination for shifting note up or down an octave. Doesn’t seem to be there now?
Dorico guesses octaves reasonably well - unless you are attempting to edit a 5 line drum part with kick, snare and cymbal lets say. The “f” key for the kick gets interpreted as a cymbal on the “f” above. Is there a way to say "I really mean for you to enter the note an octave below where I know you’re going to try and put it? Because It really slows the process down.
My work around is to switch to multi-single line mode for drum entry, then switch back to 5 line which is okay I guess.
That raises my second question… In 5 line mode the staff doesn’t seem to completely honor voices. What I mean is, a snare and a kick seem to go on the same voice no matter how I try to split them. Its entirely possible that I’m missing something, but it seems like it has to be on a higher line like a cymbal before the voice change will “take”. With voice colors turned on its pretty obvious.
The true problem I’m trying to solve is clarity - Where applicable I want the kick to just be simple quarter notes, I don’t want them to become tied eighths and sixteenths or whatever just because of a snare etc. rhythm above them. No luck with using the lock to duration or force duration. If I enter the parts on single lines and them convert to 5 line, it for sure makes a simple pattern much harder to read than necessary.
With octaves, in my experience the best thing to do is to use the arrow keys to take the caret down to the correct line/space, then hit Y.
As to voices, these are determined in the Edit Percussion Kit dialog. If you want the kick and snare in different voices then set it here. If you only want them sometimes to go in different voices, then get the notes in, then select the ones you want in a different voice, right-click and go Percussion > Change Voice > whatever voice.
Thank you! I hadn’t thought about editing the percussion kit at this point, and changing the voices there works great and becomes automatic. I think that Dorico treats those settings as “the law” - that’s my theory anyway as to why the second part of the advice doesn’t seem to work. IE: You can’t select the ones you want in a different voice and change their voice. At least, I couldn’t.
The Dorico percussion abilities are much deeper than I realized and I can get the outcome I need. I still wish there were some kind of indication that percussion is different from the normal change voice behavior though. Maybe grey it out?
I also hadn’t picked up on the fact that the arrow key moved you from line to line in percussion - I just assumed that it was the same behavior as a other clefs, the the arrow took you to a different stave. I just assumed, so that’s on me.
You are absolutely right. I went to voices → change voice instead of percussion → voices → change voice as you quite clearly indicated. I had an expectation that “change voice” would be the same command for all, and the difference in what you wrote didn’t quite get through my mental filters.
