I just ran into an interesting problem with cues and how they affect pre-existing ties. I have a clarinet part with a concurrent oboe cue. I’ve forced all of the clarinet note stems down, and set all of the ties and slurs to be curved down, so that they don’t interfere with the oboe cue notes. When I insert the cue, the stem on the second note of a tied pair changes to up, causing Dorico to have to offset the cued note to the left a little. If I select the tied note and change stem direction, only the stem of the first note of the tied pair flips.
Also, at the end of the cue, the last whole note of the oboe part has a little tie hanging off the end of it because in the oboe part there’s an eighth note tied onto the end of that last whole note. I can’t seem to find a way to remove that little tie in the cue.
What happens if you don’t take the precaution of forcing the clarinet stems down first? I think Dorico can take care of the stem directions for you so you don’t need to do it yourself.
For the wee tie at the end, you can hopefully turn off the l.v. property in the properties panel to get rid of it.
If I don’t force the stems down first, it’s even worse (see attached). There’s nothing in the cue properties panel to get rid of the tie at the end. I think Dorico is including it because that tie exists in the oboe part but the note it’s tied to isn’t included in the cue. I think Dorico should not draw the tie if the second note of the tied pair isn’t included in the cue.
In write mode, you can only change the stem direction of the first notehead of a tied note, but you can switch to engrave mode, where you can select the second notehead and change the stem direction.
There is no way to get rid of the tie at the end of cue (or at the start). It is intentional, it shows to the player that the cued note won’t stop at the end of cue.
Thanks, András. Flipping the stem in Engrave mode worked, and the result is perfect.
One thing that might be nice to add in the future is regarding slurs at the left and right boundaries of the cue. In the attached example, the triplet in the oboe part just before the cue begins is slurred with the first two notes of the cued passage. In the cue itself, though, the first two notes are not drawn with a slur. I think it would be nice to have Dorico add a slur to those first two notes in the cue, since that would more accurately reflect the articulation of those first two notes. The same boundary slur check could also be done at the right-hand boundary of the cue in case there was a slur that extended beyond the end of the cued passage.
Is there a way in Engrave mode to nudge the first cue note in my original example (the first unison E) to the right a little so that the stem of the cue note isn’t coming out of the middle of the larger note head?
We do have plans to include partially overlapping slurs in cues, but I can’t tell when it will be implemented.
As for nudging the note, there is no simple solution (or at least I am not aware of it), but it’s possible. Select only the cued notehead (which is somewhat tricky) in engrave mode, change the voice column index property to 1 (so it will be in a different column than the normal notehead), and then change the voice column x offset property to something like -1.
Thanks for the reply, András. I tried changing the voice column index to 1, and it actually looks pretty good like that. It does have the side effect, though, that the same cue applied to a different player (in the full score) will also have its voice column offset by 1, rather than just affecting the cue in the player you’re working on. Also, changing the x offset property changes the offset not only in the cue, but also in the source of the cue. Because of this, I think in this case it’s better to just change the voice column of the cue note and not try to alter its x offset after that.
It’s encouraging to know that you have plans for further enhancements to the cue code. It’s been real exciting to watch Dorico mature and I’m constantly amazed at how well thought-out everything is. I look forward to seeing what you and the rest of the team unveil in the next release.
