I’m engraving this historical manuscript here (meter is 4/4)
I successfully used lock duration to get the two notes input (i.e. defeating Dorico trying to turn them into a dotted quarter), however, no matter what I try, I can’t get the tenuto marking on the second note of the tied note. Dorico doesn’t seem to want to let me do it. Is there a way?
(m305 for my reference)
Perfect solution, thank you. I wouldn’t have even realized that the option might appear in the properties panel. (Until now, I didn’t know the properties panel added additional properties when you add things like tenuto to a chained note.)
That’s the essence of Dorico. Different types of things have different properties (in both Write and Engrave modes), which you can alter individually in the panel, or set in Engraving Options as defaults.
@benwiggy Understood. What I meant was that I didn’t think that adding a tenuto to the first note of a tied note would now reveal a previously unexpected additional property that would then let me move it to the second note.
This is the essence of some of my Dorico frustrations. IMHO the most intuitive approach would be to let the user click on the second note, click tenuto, and the tenuto appears on the second note. Easy, simple, done, no trip to the forum or documentation required. Instead, the Dorico approach is that you insert tenuto on the first note (which is NOT the intended note), then open the properties panel, and find the newly-added property to allow you to move it to the second note, then enable that. I hope you can understand why I believe the latter approach is less intuitive than the first.
How would a user ever predict that that previously-invisible option would magically appear after inserting tenuto on the wrong note? (Without reading thousands of pages of documentation to find this arcane case.)
Don’t get me wrong; I’m glad it’s there. I’m just a fan of more direct, intuitive design.
That’s tied into another key concept: that tied notes are one note. (Or rather, that the duration is one thing, which may be tied, or not, depending on its context.) It is perhaps a little quirky here, but it is useful more of the time than thinking of a tied note as a bunch of separate things.
Whether the tenuto appears on the first or last note of a tie is set in Engraving Options. So, it’s only when you’re doing something different from usual that you should have to use the Properties panel.
The point is that a tied note in Dorico technically is a single object, that may or may not be notated as tied notes according to context (intervening barlines, half-bars etc.). It’s one of the (fairly brilliant) core ideas of how Dorico works, and you can see the strength of this concept as soon aa you try to shift notes around rhythmically. Admittedly, before you have this knowledge, it may appear strange and counter-intuitive.
Who knows, maybe the developers will eventually come up with a more relaxed interface for this kind of notation.
[edit] Ben was faster, never mind
I do understand what you’re saying (about a tied note being a single object). I will say, after more than a year of using Dorico, my brain STILL hasn’t adapted to this methodology. It frustrates and slows me down more than it helps me. I wish Dorico would be a little more lenient in allowing operations to the second note of a tied note, instead of rigidly insisting on its philosophy. WYSIWYG is always a benefit to the user: click the second note of a tied note, hit delete, and it should delete, instead of insisting the user click on the first note and shortening it (which is further complicated by needing to check the current grid resolution to see if shortening it will give you the result you want).
I do understand the strength of the concept, and @PjotrB you mention “as soon as you shift notes around rhythmically” - you are correct. However, in my experience that’s not an everyday need. I’m not regularly re-barring music from 2/4 to 3/4 to 4/4. Maybe some modernist composers do. Dealing with a tied note IS an everyday need for 99% of the people engraving music.
Back to the original issue: I think this is where the “tied note is technically a single object” runs into problems, because if two notes are tied together but there’s an articulation on the second note, it’s more intuitive to add the articulation to the second note, rather than apply it to the first note (where it doesn’t belong) then discover a heretofore unavailable (invisible) option to move it to the second.
Dorico users come from all over the world. Therefore, “intuitive” does not exist.
Dorico provides you a way to do what you wish, even if it takes one extra click from what you desire. For many of use, the benefit of conceiving tied notes as a single note has advantages; but then, each of us probably has some other tasks that take more clicks or keypresses than we would like. By all means express your desires, but taken as a whole, Dorico is worth a few extra clicks.
Why don’t you just select the new duration? No need to use shift-alt-left.
