Suggestion for Force Duration

Hi, I have a suggestion for Force Duration.
I does not seem to work now if you wan’t to change a note value, only if
you enter a new note. Also when adding a tie from a previous note the force duration
sometimes gets lost, also sometimes when changing the style of the tie.
Afaik there is no way to see if a note has the “force duration flag” on or off.
There must be some internal representation though.
Couldn’t you have a checkbox in the properties pane that shows the force duration status, on/off?
Then you could also select a bunch of notes and change the status to force/unforce
in the properties pane in one go. Like changing a bunch of 8-notes tied to a 16-note to 4-notes.


Jesper

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I agree that we need a better way to see whether or not a note has had its duration forced. A property is not really the appropriate way to do it, however. What I intend us to do at some point, hopefully soon, is to have a new option in the View > Note Colors menu that will show notes with a forced duration in a different colour.

Ok, but how about force duration on existing notes then, should that work with the button because it doesn’t now.
It would be much easier to just skip the constant going in and out of force duration when you input notes and just do them all in one stroke afterwards.

Jesper

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I agree that it would also be ideal to have a way to edit the way an existing note is notated without having to delete it and reinput it, but again, properties are not the best way to do this: we need some new editing functionality, which we haven’t yet decided exactly how it should work.

Ok Daniel, waiting with exitement, but I guess it’s a bug that it now sometimes loose the force status when adding a tie (mostly when adding a tie from a previous note) or changing the tie to a dashed or dotted one.

Jesper

Yes, adding a tie will cause the note to be renotated as a single event under the hood, and although the Force Duration properties should be retained, sometimes they’re not. If you have a specific reproducible case, please post it here so we can be sure to take care of it.

Ok, here’s some Ligeti I’m trying to notate.
Bar 2 flute quintuplet should be a dotted 8-note but when changing the tie to dashed…
Bar 4 horn and bar 5 flute should be a 4-note in the beginning of the quintuplet.
Bar 6 and 10 bassoon same thing etc…

I could fake it with slurs though, but it’s just an exercise to learn Dorico and finding out it’s limits and benefits.

Jesper

p.s. Doricos beaming of tuplets are a bit strange here, would love to have the same options as in measures
so for a quintuplet you could enter [4+1]:5 for some of the above examples or [2+3]:5
Ligeti_text.dorico.zip (764 KB)

I have a related suggestion. Not sure if it’s best to post it here since the last reply was last year. but didn’t feel it’s worth posting a new topic. I hope someone is checking and will tell the team.

Similar to adding a menu that colors notes with forced duration, I’d like an option to see notes with irregular beaming colored as well.
I had a hard time editing a file that was MusicXML, which had a combination of non-forced-duration notes, forced-duration notes, beaming that follow the rules, and irregular beaming (that don’t follow the rule) unknowingly.

Yes, I agree that it would be helpful to be able to see which notes have been input with Force Duration. This is on our list for the future.

and irregular beaming, too?

Could we have an option under Preferences to have Force Duration activated at start-up?

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For me, it’s easy enough just to hit the letter O if I need to turn on Force Duration, and the prominent visual feedback on the left panel helps as well.

I agree. Force Duration should be the exception, not the norm. It’s already quite easy to access.

Hi Dan, hi Steven. The chances are that I don’t understand it, then or, more likely, I’m not following what should be optimal notation. For a while now, I’ve made a habit of turning it on a the start of every new project and leaving it on - which is why I made the request. I appreciate that that leaves me open to potential problems when changing signatures etc. but as yet I haven’t encountered any such issues.

Whenever I’ve reached for it in the past it’s invariably been connected with changing how Dorico deals with tied notes. Example: I’m not a fan of double-dotted notes, I prefer to see ties and single dots.

I have no problem with Force Duration being the exception. My request was simply for those who might want to make it their norm.

To zap double-dotted notes, go to the Write menu, Notation Options, Note Grouping category, “Rhythm dots”.

Thanks Rob. I’ll change the default there, turn off Force Duration and try that for a while …

I’m not following what should be optimal notation.

David, I did the same when I first used Dorico. The thing you miss with force duration on is a hundred cute ways to input durations, for example, quaver before the bar tied to dotted quaver can be input as a minim. There are loads of these which speed up input considerably.

Hi Steve and thanks. I know what you mean - I found myself doing that occasionally a while back just to see if it worked (which it did). I haven’t done it since locking in Forced Duration but I can see that doing that would present problems.

I’m going to try Rob’s approach and see how much of a need for Forced Duration remains if I change the Notation Options. I suspect not a lot…

It took me a while, but I almost never use it now.

Same here. Dorico has actually corrected some of my misunderstandings regarding notating certain rhythms.