Sliding lower voice over to avoid clash?

[michaelstarobin]

I have a passage of divisi violas. In the first bars Dorico has properly moved the two voices so the common tone is clear. But in the second bar the divisi has NOT been properly spaced, so the shared note is unclear.

I tried adjusting the spacing in the second bar by filtering for stems down voice only and increasing the spacing.

The first option listed has no effect. The second option listed above moved BOTH voices, even though I did not select the up stem notes:

Also, the very first option in the lower zone “Offset” also had no effect.

Any thoughts?

[Christian_R]

Hi @michaelstarobin, I don’t know if there are other (better) methods, but selecting the lower notes (in Engrave mode), and setting the Voice Column Index to 1, seems to give the desired result. (And now that you have different/separate voice column indexes, you can adjust your mentioned settings if necessary):

[michaelstarobin]

Thanks Christian, but as I said above I’ve done exactly what you’ve described with no movement of just the down-stem voice (even though I’ve only selected the down-stem notes). BOTH voices move when I change the column offset.

I could swear I’ve done it before with no issue. Is this a recent bug in the latest version?

Also (off topic) - why does my score jump to the first bar when I open my left-side zone to grab a line?

thanks -

Michael Starobin

[asherber]

Would it be possible for you to save a copy of your project, delete everything except those couple of bars, and the upload it here so that someone can take a look?

[michaelstarobin]

Here’s the file. I kept about 8 bars of material from just before the problem with the violas in measure 144. After deleting the material (but not the measures themselves) I tried again - same results:

Selecting just the down-stem notes I tried using using the “Voice column spacing offset” option and increased to 1. No change.

I tried using the “Voice column X offset” option and increased it to 1. Both voices moved.

Problem w violas in bar 144.dorico (2.6 MB)

[jesele]

Voice column index is the one you want. (as @Christian_R said)

Jesper

[michaelstarobin]

Thanks you for the correction. I had missed that button when searching for how to do it.

But that leads me to then ask a UI question -

If this is what I should have been using:

then what is this for:

and why didn’t this work:

[asherber]

Start with two notes which are in different voice columns. Here the top note is in voice column 0, and the bottom is in voice column 1.

Applying “Voice column spacing offset” to the lower note will increase the distance between the two voice columns in a way which affects the spacing of the measure (later notes are moved proportionately).

It’s the same as going into Note Spacing mode and moving the box which corresponds to the voice column.

Applying “Voice column X offset” to the lower note will increase the distance without affecting measure spacing.

It’s the same as using the circles in Note Spacing mode to move a note.

These properties didn’t work for you because all of your notes were in the same voice column (0).

The Offset property under Common doesn’t seem to affect notes.

[michaelstarobin]

Thanks Aaron for such a clear explanation. I happened upon the less general adjustment tool first alas.

(The following is a bunch of ruminations - skip if not interested)

My experience with notation programs is that there has to be a balance between clarity and complexity in the UI based on the most common forms of notations. As a Finale user since 2005, I relished its ability to do unusual notations. But for many it had too many possibilities.

After switching to Sibelius in 2023 I appreciated the speed of not having to go into the different tools that Finale asked for. But I missed Finale’s flexibility - and I REALLY hated Sibelius’ refusal to use the MacOS menus - this disallowed any macro program (Keyboard Maestro) to use menus for longer macro sequences. While I could program a keystroke to open the more powerful custom filter tool, there was no way to setup a keystroke to open the general list of existing filters.

Coming to Dorico this January I appreciated its ability to be agile like Finale (in a different method though that is taking longer to master.) But the splitting up of most of my work between Write and Engrave windows felt like stepping backwards to Finale’s use of tools. I so wish that Dorico would let me ‘unfreeze’ a dynamic or text marking in the Write window so I could move it slightly off the grid without going to the Engrave window.

But I have been able to bring back putting in Frame and System breaks using Keyboard Maestro macros to flip back and forth between Write and Engrave and enter the proper keystrokes.

And as an orchestrator in NY working in the theater I know I will be continuing with all three notation programs for a few years to come. A great deal of refining keystrokes to be similar across the three apps helps this. Though every time I return to Dorico I question the use of the grid for entering rests as opposed to typing them in as I did elsewhere for 20 years and for 25 years before that when I scored with a pencil.

I know I can enter rests in Dorico but it’s kludgy compared to elsewhere. My forward motion of writing a line music is delayed by extra keystrokes to enter rests. So I use the grid. Sigh.

Though while we’re on the grid – is anyone out there using a grid of dotted 8’s (quavers) or dotted 16ths (semi-quavers)? I’d love to get them out of the list of grid possibilities as I always forget to skip over them when changing my grid.

Strong recommendation for newbs who also use Keyboard Maestro - every macro I assign in KM I assign to its individual keystroke and to F1. So when I type F1 my list of macros comes up to remind me what the keystroke is. I also put do this for keystrokes I programmed in Dorico itself to remind me what they are. This is a great learning tool and a way to remind you of that command you only use occasionally. Most of these are now memorized. But it’s good to have a reminder if I just spent a few weeks in Sibelius. I list the keystrokes as part of title to help me learn - but I can also just click on the item in the list. Looks like this:

[asherber]

@michaelstarobin

But I have been able to bring back putting in Frame and System breaks using Keyboard Maestro macros to flip back and forth between Write and Engrave and enter the proper keystrokes.

You can actually do this without switching modes, if you’re comfortable editing your key commands JSON file. You just need to add a shortcut in the kWriteMode section for Edit.CreateSystemBreak and Edit.CreateFrameBreak.

@michaelstarobin

Though every time I return to Dorico I question the use of the grid for entering rests as opposed to typing them in as I did elsewhere for 20 years and for 25 years before that when I scored with a pencil.

While the arrow keys advance the caret by the rhythmic grid value, the space bar will advance the caret by the currently selected input duration. To me, that’s just like entering a rest of the duration I want. Some users have also mapped a key like NumPad 0 to this function.

(BTW, I’m a big fan of your work!)

[michaelstarobin]

@asherber

While the arrow keys advance the caret by the rhythmic grid value, the space bar will advance the caret by the currently selected input duration. To me, that’s just like entering a rest of the duration I want. Some users have also mapped a key like NumPad 0 to this function.

Yes, I was unhappy to discover that the space bar did NOT stay consistent and suddenly advanced me by a whole note in the next bar because I had previously entered a whole note. Is there a way to turn off that change and have my space bar always advance me by a single beat? (And have that ‘beat’ be a dotted quarter in 12/8 or 6/8, though that may be asking too much.)

You can actually do this without switching modes, if you’re comfortable editing your key commands JSON file. You just need to add a shortcut in the kWriteMode section for Edit.CreateSystemBreak and Edit.CreateFrameBreak.

Haven’t tried playing with the JSON file. Something to think about …

(BTW, I’m a big fan of your work!)

Thanks you for the kind words!

[asherber]

@michaelstarobin

Is there a way to turn off that change and have my space bar always advance me by a single beat? (And have that ‘beat’ be a dotted quarter in 12/8 or 6/8, though that may be asking too much.)

Hmm. There’s not a built-in way to do this. You could write a user script which changes the input duration, advances the caret, and changes the duration back (or changes the grid duration, advances the care, and changes the grid back), and you could trigger this script via key command or Keyboard Maestro. But you’d have to have a different script for quarter and dotted quarter durations, and the “change back” part wouldn’t be able to change back to what was previously selected – it would have to change back to something constant. So this doesn’t seem particularly useful. Maybe there’s another solution I’m overlooking.