I must first clarify that I am aware that a tie chain is a single note in Dorico. I like the concept and find it more natural and flexible than the bar-oriented logic in my previous notation app.
That said, I still find this behaviour of selection illogical and keep running into it often- a picture says more:
What I did here is:
click on the note in bar 1 on stave 1 and then
shift-click on the note that ends the tie chain in bar 3 in stave 2 (yes I know, it is the same note in all three bars of stave 2)
This is a standard diagonal shift-clicking that one could expect to select everything in between those two clicks.
But as seen on the image: on stave 1 only bar 1 stays selected.
I think that the desired behaviour would be that when the bar 1 stave 1 is selected then clicking the note with tie chain (stave 2) on bar 2 or 3 would also extend the selection in stave 1 accordingly. Currently it does not.
And, if you Shift-click in the staff 1 from the A to the F, what happen ?
Did you try too the mouse selection (rectangle) through these three bars ? (and not only using the keyboard keys).
I know a few methods how to get stuff selected, incl. the ones you described. The issue is not that I am stuck and cannot select things.
The issue is strictly about the behaviour with diagonal shift-clicking and selecting everything in between.
I also made a very simple example to display here.
I often encounter this behaviour with 30+ stave orchestral score where for example CB part can have long pedal notes. I can assure that things can get more complicated.
And it is funny that even this example I made shows my old Finale habits. See the D-natural in stave 2. The natural is displayed there because num. keypad ZERO shortcut was to exit speedy entry frame Takes some time for old habits to die.
As opposed to Finale?
Dorico (or Finale) is logical within its own sphere and not obliged to twist itself into knots to satisfy othersâ concepts of logic.
There is a tension between Doricoâs paradigm of treating notes as continuous lumps of sound (CLOSTM) and the fact that written music exists on the page as distinct written notes within bars.
As a newbie I have read the manual more recently so I will post a copied section:
Select everything on multiple adjacent staves
Select one whole staff at the top/bottom of the range of staves you want to select and Shift-click the staff at the other end of the range of staves you want to select.
This does not apply if a tie chain happens to be at the other end of the range.
The fact that I am a former Finale user does not mean neccesarily that I am hallucinating.
But Dorico isnât a DAW. Obviously the MIDI representation of tied notes is a single midi note, but in a music typsetting app the tied notes are separate entities and should (IMHO) be selectable and editable, beam-able, articulable, etc in Write mode, not just in Engrave mode.
Youâre entitled to your opinion, of course, but the developers of Dorico (most of whom previously worked for many years at Sibelius) thought long and hard about how to improve things, and they decided that treating one attack as one entity would be a useful improvement over previous programs.
Grumbling about it eight years after Dorico first launched isnât going to change their minds.
As I read it, the OP was focused on selecting notes rather than the âbiggerâ conceptual issue of notes-as-things.
@pianoleo rightly pointed out that selecting ranges of measures is easily accomplished by shift-clicking âanywhereâ in the measures. System-track selection also works well for certain tasks, and thereâs always marquee selection for the mousers in the house. And of course, had @composerkaumann selected the F4 in the upper staff in m. 3 then shift-clicked the lower-staff D4 (the âopposite diagonalâ), all four notes would have been selected. Finally, thereâs also @ObiwanKenobiâs suggested technique of Shift + â + â.
As for the conceptual question of the nature of notesâŚ
Your use of the phrase âtypesetting appâ moves us towards something significant.
The danger in notating music is that, especially given the perceptual priority given to vision in the human brain, we can forget that all of those blobs of ink, toner, or pixels are just âghosts.â They merely represent potential sounds.
Notate something in Dorico without a meter and those symbols get closer to reflecting a DAWâs piano roll, but theyâll still be chunked up by the limits of our power-of-two durational value scheme. Framing it within meter(s) only adds further chunking up. But all of those component symbols brought into existence by the note-symbol and metrical schemes are merely secondary visual artifacts.
A single long note is exactly that: one sonic entity. Dorico is obviously founded around the sonic as the primary level of meaning, with the visual as secondary. Expecting that to change seems quixotic.
Yes I have and i wholeheartedly suggest that you do the same.
That is why I changed the tag âfeature requestâ to âissueâ.
Although I stated that I know D-s concept and even like it, there is also a reply already that Doricos concept with tie chains is differentâŚ
This is NOT the issue. When the other corner where one needs to shift-click is a part of tie-chain then clicking on staff just deselects all. When there is a implicit rest or note that starts in that bar then diagonal selection works as supposed and described in manual.
Youâre absolutely right: in order to select everything on multiple adjacent staves, you have to select the whole passage on the top staff first, which involves clicking the beginning and then Shift-clicking the end of the top staff, before Shift-clicking the bottom staff - as the manual specifies - and then, if the only thing on the bottom staff is a tied note, you need to click at the start, not the end.
Maybe the manual (Steinberg) should specify that âselect one whole staffâ means âcomplete all the instructions immediately above before proceeding to the ones belowâ.
Thanks for this. I really tried to find the logic.
There it is!
Not 2 clicks but 3!
In this case- the one click does not kill us but makes us stronger.
I will mark the issue solved.
e.g. Say I have a quarter note tied to a sixteenth. In write mode I can add a playing technique to the quarter note and drag it to the tied sixteenth and Dorico doesnât complain. I havenât changed the duration of the note, havenât messed with itâs concept of the âsonicâ - at most Iâve added some MIDI c.c. info where the sixteenth note starts.
The fact that I canât simply select the tied sixteenth and add the same playing technique is maddening. Itâs been complained about for 8 years and Iâm glad that fixing this in on the devsâ radar.
I think I would find it maddening if, when I selected any note in the tie-chain, that the whole duration wouldnât be selected. So if it is on the devs radar, I sincerely hope the default behavior remains and your requested behavior is an option.
Takes some time for old habits to die.
