The Proper Procedure?

After messing around with the program for two days I am still lost on a few things and I think it comes down to order of sequence or the proper way to input stuff.

Ties are still throwing me off. When should I add the tie. Should I input the first note then hit the tie button and then hit the second note or should I input all the notes first go back and select the notes to be tied and then hit the tie button. What is the proper procedure?

How about copying and pasting. What is the proper procedure for copying one instrument part to the other instrument part. I have been just using the marquee tool to select the notes and then selecting the whole rest in the measure I want to copy to and press control V. I find that somethings don’t copy 100% if you don’t get it all selected? Is this the proper procedure for copying and pasting music from one staff to the next?

I am coming from sibelius where slurs/ties/articulations copied and pasted from one staff to the next depending on what note they were attached to.

Also, what is the proper procedure for entering rest into a measure. I know the , key is the rest key but do I have to use my mouse to input that rest in the measure or are their short cut keys. I have tried to input rests and I select quarter rest (still stays a half note) then an eighth rest (still says a half rest) and then I input a eighth note and then the half rest changes to a quarter and eighth rest. Whats the proper procedure for entering rests (with and without a mouse)

I know these might be silly questions but I want to know how the developers imagined the procedure going. Make sure Im doing it the right way.

What would happen if you entered the entire value of the tied note (if it spans a barline) as a single value rather than as tied notes and let the formatting engine handle it?

Of course ties within a measure would have to be handled in the old-fashioned way.

Yes, unless it’s a tie of more than a bars length, I think it is quicker just to add the note value.

DG

If you don’t use the “force note durations” option, it doesn’t matter what order you do it - Dorico considers the whole set of tied notes as a single “thing”, and it splits the notation up into separate notes and ties in your score following the rules you select in the Notation Options (in the Write menu).

In fact, if you want something like two quarter notes tied across a barline, you can just enter a half note before the barline and let Dorico do the rest for you.

Well, it only copies the things you select! You have to be careful not to miss tuplet numbers, slurs, etc. If you miss them with the marquee selection, you can use cntrl-click to add them afterwards.

There will probably be better ways to select a passage in future updates (well, I certainly hope there are!)

Usually, rests don’t really “exist” at all in Dorico. They are just “gaps in between notes,” and Dorico fills up the gap with appropriate rest-signs following the Notation Options.

If you move the caret, or click with the mouse, where you want the next note to be, the rests will “magically” appear when you enter the note. The left and right arrow keys move the caret following the tick-marks on the ruler above the bar. If you have selected a note value (6 = quarter note, etc), the space key moves the caret by the corresponding distance, whether or not it aligns with the ticks on the ruler.

So, if you are using the keyboard, the quickest way to “input a rest” is usually to press Space - but you won’t actually see a rest in the score until you enter the next note.

You only need the “,” method to input rests if you want to force Dorico to create rests that don’t follow the Notation Options.