Slur and tie problems

Dorico
#1

I have three problems in this example and hope that someone can help. Many thanks in advance for having a look at this:
Screen Shot 2016-12-17 at 17.07.13.png

  1. The end of the slur at the beginning of bar 32: can I force it to behave like there was no rest in the upper voice? I could start that voice on the second beat with the A, but that wouldn’t be quite right. Is manual fiddling in Engrave Mode the only option to handle this? Could Dorico be even more clever?

  2. Bar 33, lower voice: why does the slur go until the second E? I want it to end on the first E. That’s how I learned it and it feels more right.

  3. How can I force the tied E in the lower voice to be written like in a 3/4 (I want a simple dotted half note)? That would make problem no. 2 obsolete, of course.

Automatic formatting is a good thing, but it can also be a pain. I hope that Dorico provides some easy solutions to these problems.

#2

I believe 1. is a bug and they are working on it. I’m not certain however, so hopefully someone else will chime in.

No. 2: I don’t think there is a way to do this by default. however …

No. 3 is easy to fix with the clamp tool. Select the note at the beginning of the tie, press enter to get the caret, type 7 then . (period) then O (the clamp tool) then enter.

#3

  1. The ‘clamp’ to in the left menu bar is ‘force rhythm’. If you enter a dotted half-note with that enabled it will stay.

  2. Absolutely standard that the slur or phrase mark goes to the end of the note (as would be implied by it going to the dotted half-note).

  3. Without fiddling with it, I don’t know. It can certainly be fixed in Engrave mode.

#4
  1. Why would you want a dotted half, if the time signature is 4+2/4? What Dorico has written looks correct to me.
#5

Ignoring the “modern-looking” 4+2/4 time signature, cross rhythms like 6/4 against 3/2 in two different voices on the same staff are quite common in 16th and 17 century music. (I’m guessing this is a transcription or arrangement of something from that period). Those guys didn’t have people like Gould telling them what they were allowed to write - they just made up the rules as they went along :wink:

#6

Thanks, Claude, Steve, Ian and Rob, for your thought- and helpful answers.

@Claude & Steve: Now I finally got to use "force rhythm“ and understand what it’s all about. Really useful!

I hope you’re right. Seems unnecessary to me that you would have to adjust slurs manually in such a standard case.

Ok, I didn’t know. I will try to unlearn old habits and get used to this, since it seems to be the standard indeed.

@Ian & Rob: Rob is right, I was writing some kind of cross rhythms, 6/4 in the upper voice, 3/4 in the lower voice. That’s why I asked how I could write a normal dotted half note. (On a side note: it’s not 16th century music, but a composition of mine, in 3/4 actually, with the main motif that you saw in the lower voice of my screenshot. In the 6/4 part I combine my theme with a traditional Syrian song in 4+2/4…)