If I select both left and right hand of a piano part and then input 4 crotchets in succession using N/M (altN altM) to switch up and down why does Dorico not add any rests? What magic should I have used? How do I easily add rests?
Also why does Dorico use two colourations for these notes when all notes are up tail voice one? That will be immensely confusing if moving notes from one staff to another.
Impossible to answer questions about color in this situation unless you show the colors in the diagrams so we donât have to guess.
One of the reasons for cross staff notes is to avoid rests. If one wants rests, use separate notes assigned to the two staves.
N/M and Alt+N/Alt+M do different things. With the Alt key (Opt on Mac), youâre moving a note to the previous or next staff. Without that key, youâre doing cross staff beaming; itâs usual not to have the notation filled in with rests in that case, because youâre basically treating the two staves as one.
I donât think these are both upstem voice 1 â aside from them being in different colors, the notes in the first measure all have down stems.
thanks: yes makes complete sense. Had I used quavers then the tails would have been obvious. I do have to wonder about cross staff beaming when there are no beams but Gould (p305) shows an example so it must be ok .
My voice colors mimic Finale. I expect all the notes to be black. What donât I understand?
Though the numbers of voices in Dorico are specific to the staff, the colours are shared across the whole instrument. There are circumstances in which itâs important to know which staff a voice belongs to, and unique colours makes it easier to keep track.
I can understand this design decision : but when I select and copy a group of notes in one color (only) then its surprising to find it obliterating notes of another color on another staff.
Can this not be made configurable?
In Finale a âgreenâ voice was a âgreenâ voice, and a blue voice was blue etc everwhere. One could set visibilty to one color only and copy confident that nothing could be obliterated.
Even though both staves are using Up-stem Voice 1, itâs important to remember that they are not the same voice - one is attached to the bass staff and one to the treble staff - and therefore, they need to be different colours for the reasons Leo mentioned.
However, you are still copy/pasting from an Up-stem Voice 1 into another Up-stem Voice 1.
And so, music pasted will completely replace what was already in the target Up-stem Voice 1 and become its colour, so that you know which Up-stem Voice 1 the notes are in; the treble or the bass.
This behaviour is not configurable to the best of my knowledge.
You can guarantee not losing material by using paste special>paste into new voiceâŚ. Though you will probably have to spend some time later rationalising your voices.
In a SATB choir piece, or a string quartet all notes will often be in upstem voice 1 and they will be the same color in all parts. âColours are shared across the whole instrumentâ is only for instruments reading from multiple staves. That was I was hoping could be turned off.
Yes. Thanks. That is a good solution given that Dorico allows a very large number of voices. Iâll set a short cut for it.
Is there a command for " paste special>paste into new voice ? I can only find a generic âpaste into voiceâ.
Sorry, itâs another level down paste special>paste into voice>paste into new up-stem voice etc.
If you want to use Paste Into Voice, you just need to make sure the caret is active with the target voice.
[EDIT: Sorry, I read too quickly, I thought you were trying to create a shortcut!]
This has been my very first question in the forum 
And the answer was:
