Hi,
I found an issue on piano Bass Clef First up-stem voice (color RED on the attachment screen capture).
On bars 2,4,10 the first up-stem voice doesn’t start on the first beat of the bar. (it starts with 2nd down-stem voice).
So when I mark the first time the red note appears → Properties panel → “Starts voice” button doesn’t do anything.
I want to clear all the red rests apprearing before the first red note in the bar but it doesn’t work.
the only workaround for this problem is by the other method of removing rests (as I found in the user guide) - is by selecting the rests → Edit → “Remove Rests”.
I’m attaching screen capture file (somehow it doesn’t let me to send the dorico file, if needed please send me Email address - where to send it)
You have to set Ends Voice for the last red note in bar 1, and the last red note in bar 3, in addition to setting Starts Voice for the first red notes of bar 2 and bar 4. Using Edit > Remove Rests automates all of these steps, and is quicker and easier.
You need to end the voice on the previous bar to be able to start voice where you need it
You can post a Dorico project on the forum, zip it first. And make sure the playback template is set to silence, so that it’s a diet-file!
Edit : as usual, Leo is accurate (and faster than me)
Thanks for your help!
I think Dorico should have been more user friendly by applying this rule:
If I press “Starts voice” in the middle of a Bar (as I did on measure 2,4 in the exmple attached) - It should have treat this bar as if this is the first note of the voice (exactly as I expected it to be “starts voice”.
So it is a redundant action by the user to go the the previous bar and mention also Ends voice on the previous voice’s note of previous bar.
the functionality of the “Ends voice” feature is to allow removing rests from the rest of the bar (in case only the first notes of the bar in this voice exists).
I’m afraid I don’t agree with your assessment of how Dorico “should” work in this circumstance. As Leo has already pointed out, the Edit > Remove Rests feature is provided for precisely this kind of situation. I suggest you assign a key command to it if you are going to be reproducing this kind of notation a great deal.
I share similar thinking with JeromeF as I once struggled with entering multi voices in Dorico (a long time ago). The best practice is offered by both pianoleo and MarcLarcher, i.e. need to “End voice” first, then “Start voice”. As it is quite cumbersome to use mouse to click the Properties panel to change these two voice attributes, I tried to assign key command to do it (“Starts voice”, “Ends voice”), but I can’t find any. (I know there is a key command for “Remove Rests”, but that is not what I want.). Will there be short-cut keys or key commands for “Starts voice”, “Ends voice” in future?
Every person I encounter that tries Dorico for a longer period of time has stumbled upon this problem, including me. It would be beneficial to think about a way to communicate the intent of the function so that the learning curve is a little bit more forgiving.
It is not apparent that you have to first end a voice to start one. This set of features seems to belong to the Engraving mode, but is shown in the Write mode, where Dorico teaches us to get instant feedback.
Moreover Remove Rests is not present in the right-click menu, where most of the rest of the commands are duplicated. This creates a learning problem, because people assume that fast changes to the appropriate musical material that is not present in the lower bar is present in the contextual menu. So they never actually remember that there is such a command until they specifically learn about it from a book, video or a tutor. If they don’t — they have this kind of experience I am describing — getting stuck.
I know why this feature is placed where it is, and why the system works as designed. It would be great to incorporate a clever solution to the UX case, either by a message to the user when the voice is already started (not ideal solution), by incorporating Remove Rests in the contextual menu (better), hiding specific start/end voice commands to the more specialised Engrave mode (hampers productivity for pros), adding Remove Rests to the bottom bar (not consistent) etc.
I think I agree with Remove Rests appearing on the contextual menu. I can’t get my head around why it should be in Engrave mode, though, because Dorico treats the acts of starting and ending voices as an internal musical thing, not a visual choice.
I can maybe see a preference being offered to allow the starting of new voices to prefill the bar (current functionality) or to start at current rhythmic location (no prefill), being a nice compromise. Personally, I like the way it works now. If you do counterpoint, all beats need to be accounted for within a measure, and the current functionality is perfect.
Remove rests basically turns on the proper “ends voice” and “starts voice” properties. Find the last note of the voice in which the rest should be, and turn off the “ends voice” property.
