Rhythm changing haphazardly

Here’s a snippet of a piano part in Dorico, with each voice shown in a different color, if it helps you understand how it works. This was done as I described in my earlier post.

I’ve finally come up with what I hope is a cogent explanation of my expectations for Dorico or any notation application.

"Step input” is a concept that’s been embraced by applications in the musical domain literally since the late 1980s. As such, it’s a common expectation. Input steps forward by the rhythmic value of the last note entered. Dorico goes against this expectation when dealing with mouse input.

As an aside, it appears that when using the keyboard for input the input grid changes dynamically to reflect the value of the selected rhythmic value. I’m still struggling to understand why the same doesn’t seem to happen with mouse input

The rhythmic grid doesn’t change when you change the value on the Notes panel: it only changes when you explicitly change it, either via the Write menu, or via the pop-up at the bottom left-hand corner of the window, or via the shortcuts Alt+[ and Alt+].

That’s true, but if you wanted to click a single note into bar 1 and another note into bar 10 with the mouse, how would that work if input steps forward as you described? You can’t “move the cursor forward”, because when you input with the mouse, there is no cursor to move.

When you move the mouse around the score before clicking in a note, you see the grid marked with equal-spaced rhythmic divisions, and a shadow note to show where the note will go when you click. If you move the mouse slowly, you will see the shadow note “jumping” from one grid mark to the next.

No, the input grid always shows the same rhythmic divisions (8th-notes, by default), but the spacing of the grid marks changes, depending on whether you are entering long or short note values. Dorico re-spaces the music correctly on the screen after you enter each individual note. Try entering some short notes (16ths or 32nds) and you should see how it works - the grid marks will spread further apart to make room for all the notes.

My mistake. I was confused based on the nature of what’s displayed coupled with behavior.I must say, though, that this makes the whole question of where notes fall on input dodgier.

If the grid is the same for keyboard and mouse entry, then the next step in keyboard entry should be an eighth note after the initial value just as it would be with mouse input. Keyboard entry should also be expected to truncate the previous note just as it does with mouse entry.

Here’s the window with the grid after keyboard input.


Here’s the window with the grid after mouse input.

These are clearly showing the same grid. Why doesn’t the next quarter note entered from the keyboard fall on the half beat and truncate the first note to an eighth note just as entering the next note with the mouse does? This seems to be an inconsistency in operation.

Believe it or not, I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just trying to understand how and why things work as they do so that I can use the product to get real work done. Better yet, I’m hoping to convince you that the input device should be irrelevant to how “step input” behaves.

When you enter a note from the keyboard, the cursor moves the duration of the note. If you enter a 16th note for example, the cursor will be half way between two grid lines. If you enter another note from the keyboard (without moving the cursor yourself) it will align exactly after the previous note.

But when you enter notes with the mouse, two things are different. First, you can only enter notes at the grid line positions, not in between them, and second, you position each note completely independently of anything else in the score.

Sometimes that mouse input behaviour is useful, and sometimes it isn’t. If you want to enter a string of notes end-to-end, in the long run it is better to learn the keyboard method. Despite all the progress in graphical interfaces in the last 30 years or so, the quickest and most error-free way to operate any computer software is still by touch-typing on a full size keyboard, not by mouse-clicking, hand-gesturing, or whatever else has been invented!

Mouse input works best when you have a bit of room to work in. If you don’t want to use a time signature, then choosing e.g. 8 on the keyboard to choose a whole note/semibreve and hitting Space a few times to give yourself some extra rhythmic duration to click into, but obviously if you’re intending to use a time signature, even temporarily, then putting in a regular meter like 4/4 and typing Shift+B then +24 (or whatever) to add some empty bars will also make mouse input go a lot more smoothly.

The StaffPad guys would heartily disagree…

And that would be acknowledging the differences between writing music and text, being that prose at least doesn’t have a rigid grid to fall into. Same phenomenon as sight-reading music btw., according to research the brain used a completely different strategy for that as compared to reading text.
But that aside, your method is precisely what I’ve always used in Sibelius…

All the best and thanks!
Benji

When I see a demo of somebody consistently entering around 100 notes per minute into StaffPad, I might change my mind. That’s sort of speed is no big deal, for a good touch typist entering fairly simple music. Using a MIDI keyboard can be even faster.

Of course there are situations where other input methods are more convenient, but they aren’t as quick.

Indeed- I own Staffpad, entry speed is not what is interesting or good about it, to me it’s the mimicry of manuscript paper- my brain is fooled into thinking I’m writing on paper, and this influences me, sort of makes the process feel more organic, so I find it nice for being creative or for transcribing music.

But speed is not its forte, compared to kind of keyboard entry. To quickly write out something I already know or copy something, anything is faster. Now that I’m acquainted with Dorico I might be using it less. Being able to write notes without meter, (add it later) pop over boxes to issue commands to insert stuff, delete bars, etc., this is going to make for some extremely fast note entry. Staffpad also has only extremely rudimentary editing abilities which pretty much limit its usefulness to entry only.

So, I am a new user, and am less confused about the input behaviour of Dorico after reading this post, than I have been. I can enter a stream of notes with a mouse; I see that if I enter new notes during the duration of an existing note, that the existing note will be cut off; and I have tried Insert mode, which allows me to insert an additional note in the stream pushing the notes to the right of the insert note further to the right.

My next challenge is to enter a stream of crotchets and then try and change one of them to a minim, without changing any of the surrounding notes.

Hmm? It is a bit more of a challenge than I was expecting.

If you have insert mode on (by clicking the icon in the left panel or by typing I) Dorico will create space for the minim automatically, pushing each of the following crotchets a crotchet to the right.