Termination notes of trills vs. grace notes

[gizn]

I am so grateful that in Dorico I can place the small after-notes of a trill as grace notes before a barline or a rest without spacing-workarounds as it still must be done in Sibelius.

But still it is wrong in terms of thinking in musical categories!

In German we have the word „Trillernachschlag“ for the small after-notes in contrast to „Vorschlag“ for grace notes. The terminology itself makes it clear: „Nachschlag“ refers in every respect (tempo, dynamic) to the note before whereas „Vorschlag“ refers to the next note. Anyway, a trill is an ornament including the Nachschlag (which is not a grace note), and on the other hand I never have seen a Vorschlag before a barline.
Furthermore, since Vienna Classic grace notes generally are slurred to the next note but Trillernachschläge are not. And in musical practice Nachschläge are played less out of tempo than a Vorschlag that mostly is played just very fast.
So, Dorico’s notation solution for the Nachschlag is a perfect and easy workaround but it is not the musical truth because it works only for notation purpose but not when it comes to playback.

Please have a look to the note example. It was easy to split the 5 grace notes into 2 before the barline and leave 3 for the second bar. The notation with the slurs is perfect but the Vorschlag-Notes should be played at least 20 times as fast and 10 times louder than the Trillernachschlag because the rit. and dim. go until the barline.
Dorico instead plays all 5 grace notes in the same fast tempo and in forte. Even without the Vorschlag-Notes there would be no way to play in Dorico the Nachschlag in the correct musical context.

So the best solution to my mind would be to have the option of editable termination notes in the properties of the trills. Then there would be no need anymore for the option „before barline“ in the properties of grace notes.

Since grace notes are notated rather static (in baroque without slur, later mostly with slur and today single grace notes are mostly slashed whereas a group of grace notes is not slashed) it would be a big help if one could choose in the notation options (new category: Grace Notes) between several possibilities. Thus for example, after hitting the grace note tool a single grace note would be always notated slashed, a group of grace notes would be always notated not slashed and they all would be slurred to the next main note. The user just inputs the grace notes with the given duration with no need of any other shortcut.

P.S.: Please add “sempre” to dynamics and tempos. sempre p and sempre ritardando can be found rather often in music.

[dspreadbury]

I agree that we should have a dedicated feature for termination notes for trills, and I hope that in the future we will be able to add this. In the medium-term, you will be able to adjust the played dynamic of the grace notes used in the current, imperfect solution just as you can already adjust their played position and duration in Play mode.

[mavros]

Hi Daniel, firstly I want to thank for the great developments in 4.0. I would like to revive the old conversation. This trill issue brought forward in 2017 still seems to be there. I looked under ornaments in Engraving options but could not find how to represent this property

What I get is this

You can of course write out the 1/32 notes at the end of the bar as work around. It is interesting that using the new function of changing normal notes to grace notes you get exactly the result as shown in the second screenshot. I am still experimenting a bit but sound wise the Nachschlag seems to be reproduced correctly in Play using BBCSO.

[jesele]

Grace note before barline in properties panel perhaps.

Jesper

[mavros]

Many thanks that is the solution. It took me a minute to figure out how to do this as the option button keeps flipping back when the grace notes are still in the bar with the trill. You first have to shift them forward as Vorschlag, appoggiatura in “good” English I think, to the A and then click the Grace note before the barline to shift the two notes backwards. It makes sense as the notes are in fact combined with the trill a long Vorschlag to the A.