Is a tap tempo function any closer?
It seems such a basic requirement but has never been addressed with any sense of urgency.
No, itās not something that we are working on at present, though it remains something we intend to work on in future.
āUrgencyā with this tiny, trivial thing, which I sure donāt oppose, compared to huge amount of ESSENTIAL features needing improvement or implementation? You must be joking. Funny. 
Itās important not to denigrate othersā feature requests ā itās a matter of personal circumstance and priority whether something is a ābasic requirementā or an unnecessary frippery.
Either way, we have to try to juggle all of the thousands of requests and ideas we have in our backlog to try and come up with a set of features that will be useful to a reasonable cross-section of our users. But please leave that prioritisation to us!
10 Likes
Comprehensive support for all aspects of traditional notation is my personal priority but if there is a single thing that most improves playback, I would suggest that itās the humanization of pulse. The same functions could perhaps be used to fit music recorded without a metronome to bars and beats (in both cases one would be telling the software how time and notation would correspond). I could do this twenty-five years ago with Cakewalkās Fit to Improvisation function and it would be useful to be able to do it in Dorico in 2022. Itās essentially being able to conduct playback. Iād use it in every project where the audio output mattered.
Iām surprised you think itās such a trivial matter (to the extent that youāre prepared to mock). Itās been mentioned regularly in the forum over the years but, as Iāve said, has never been recognized as any more than vaguely desirable.
Well, I hate to be bearer of good news, but Dorico 4 already has Tap Tempo in Write mode.
@wonner thatās not what the OP was referring to. The idea of ātap tempoā is the ability to tap in real-time to record in humanized tempo changes in the score.
I have to agree that a feature like this is not trivial, either in value or (I imagine) in development cost. It will be incredibly valuable for life-like performances whose tempos are constantly in flux.
2 Likes
I should have left my reply on this thread instead of creating a new one yesterdayā¦ But honestly, tap tempo is not a solution to this problem, unless you can change on the fly the rhythmic value youāre tapping (just like a conductor does, to explicit a gradual change). And then it becomes quite complicated!
Well, it works reasonably well in Finale with a constant unit. Itās really quite fascinating to hear the music follow the tapping of the spacebar in real time. The result is very organic.
If I remember correctly, Finale records the time between key presses and interpolates the tempo changes as a straight line. A simple subdivision generally gives you everything you want in a ritard for this function.
Domo arigato
Mr. Rubato 
On this day Mr. Larcher did invent the concept of music software that follows a conductor via camera. Riots ensued.
It is the solution. No one says you would have do the whole piece in one go. Thereās no reason you couldnāt do a bar (or less) at a time (punching in and out might be nice). With Dorico, I could imagine being able to switch rhythmic value on the fly to some degree if necessary.
Another approach would be to prepare a reference track that you would play along with and the computer would create a tempo map from following your playing. In your case, I reckon you could copy and paste to create a track for Vissi dāarte (for example) in no time. I think reference tracks were used for a āVirtual Reality Orchestraā nearly twenty years ago (see also here ā I knew someone involved but didnāt see a performance myself).
Conducting in this way is so effective that I donāt understand why there isnāt a clamour for it. People spend a fortune on sample libraries but neglect something that immediately betrays the performance as synthetic.
One could create the tempo map in other software (I notice Cubase ā which I donāt have installed ā has Merge Tempo from Tapping) but I do think this is something that belongs in Dorico.
1 Like
(I was just kidding Marc, but then I thought about the power if they could actually pull it off)
1 Like
Oh, how I would like it now! There is no beat mapping or drawing feature that can work as well as realtime tapping would work. Anything else would end up in evident faking or jumpy tempo. Old, trusty tapping would make everything alive!
Canāt way to see it, when it is here. (Hopefully, tomorrow!)
Paolo
Whenever it is released, Dorico normally appears on a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.
Oh, so ā still two days!
Dorico 5.1 is not expected before late Decemberā¦ Just sayināā¦
1 Like
Oh. Iāll patiently wait, tapping my fingers!
I see what you did there :). I have a small stash of Christmas candy set aside in my desk already . Whenever 5.1 drops, I intend to take a couple of days off shortly after, make a hot sweet beverageā¦
Speaking of tap tempo: has anybody been able to successfully use the Beat Mapping on MIDI regions, in Logic? Even with fairly simple tempi (an Adagio, with beats tapped at each quarter note), I find that it most of the times canāt understand what Iām doing.
If using adaptive tempo, it usually canāt even understand if Iām using an 8th or 4th denominator. And each time I try to make it decode the tempo from the click track, it screams that this would make the song too long, displaces the protected MIDI track, and writes something mad like q=953bbm, or the like.
The manual suggests to manually enter the first beats. No way I can do it, either with the arrow pointer or the pencil.
Thatās the hell that Iām awaiting Dorico to save me from. Thirty years with Logic. Enough of all that suffering!
Paolo
I doubt, that the update will be released after Christmas or directly before Christmas. Thatās why Iām guessing that the update will be released on December 13 or 14 at the latest.