slash notehead bug with transposing instruments

I’ve been using (and loving) Dorico 2 but have come across what seems to be a bug when using slash noteheads on transposing instruments.

When I use a slash note head on a transposing instrument and write the note on the middle of the staff.


Then save the project, close and re-open the project, then the note are transposed again.
see “after_open.PNG” attachment

Attached is the example project with this issue.

edit update:
This issue only occurs when the noteheads are changed from normal to slash while in the “transposed pitch” mode.
Everything works as expected when working in “concert pitch” mode.
slash_bug.zip (1.54 MB)

Can you try adding those attachments again, please? I’m seeing the “before” picture but that’s all…

I discovered a workaround and have updated the original post.
This is only an issue when working in “transposed pitch”

Changing noteheads is just a simple, non-semantic way of changing the actual notehead - it doesn’t affect how the notes behave in different transpositions (as you may be used to from Sibelius).

What you’re looking for is called Slash voices - which will do exactly what you want, plus a few other cool things. You can read about it in the version history document.


Edit: sorry, I may have read your post too quickly. If anything changes when you save and reopen a project, that sounds like a bug. Still, I think using a slash voice is the way to go.

Thanks andgle for the tip about slash voices, yes this is really what I needed and this is working fine.

However, I would still expect opening a document should not change the pitches from when they were last saved.
When using the slash notehead in Transposing pitch, then re-opening the project changes the pitches.

To re-create this issue:

  1. enter a pitch in “Transposing pitch” mode on a transposing instrument
    eg. Written B on a Trumpet instrument.
  2. change the notehead to a slash.
  3. save and close project
  4. re-open… and the pitch is now Written A

I’m experiencing something similar and it’s very frustrating. I have a score I made in 1.2 which included slashed noteheads in a sax part (transposing of course). Opening in 2.0 and all the slashed notes appear as low Es (E3: out of range) instead of middle Cs :confused: If I try to move the note up, it will only jump octaves, if I re-enter the note, change the head to a slash again, then do a few more following notes, the previous notes change back to low E. So I just can’t win / can’t get the score back to its previous state.

The 2 workarounds for this are:

  1. re-write the rhythms as “slash voices” (see andgle post for more details)
  2. switch to “concert pitch” set the noteheads back to normal, more the notes to the desired pitches, then change the notehead back to slash.
    If you always edit slash note in “concert pitch” it seemed to work for me.

You don’t need to re-write - select the music and use Edit > Voices > Change voice > New slashed up-stem voice

thanks for the suggestions comrades. changing between transposing and concert pitch didn’t help me here i’m afraid. also, these are slash noteheads, not slashed noteheads. best, michael

fyi, as my solution the only thing that worked was to change notation, exchanging slash heads for round white with dot. for some reason this didn’t exhibit the weird behaviour described.