I’m transcribing a big band chart and I started the piece with a tempo marking of q=176. In bar 9 I inserted a marking “Halftime feel” without any implication of a tempo change. When I play it back Dorico slows it down to a dirge tempo. The same thing happened when I inserted “Swing” 8 bars later. I don’t want the tempo to change. Just the feel. What am I missing? Thanks for your guidance.
Try to select Halftime feel and to activate “Suppress playback > Always” in the Properties Panel.
As for Swing, I don’t know well this feature, but I believe you could select it and set its tempo to q=176.
If this was a tempo mark, then Dorico will have given it the default tempo of 72, in the absence of other instructions.
If you really don’t want to change the Tempo, then just use System Text.
or put a tempo (the same as the rest of the piece) with the performance text and hide the metronome mark so you only see your text. 