Trouble moving triplets from Finale

I have a Finale file that has triplets that look like this:

I export these this file in MIDI form, import the MIDI to Dorico, and I get this:

This is obviously not right. Any idea how I can correct it? I would really like to avoid having to edit all instances of such triplets manually.

Hi @arkoenig,

this is actually mathematically also correct=it playbacks exactly the same, it just looks different:
did you try exporting as XML instead of MIDI? That may be better, as MIDI doesn’t know anything about how you want the triplet to be notated, while XML takes care probably better of the notation.

If you instead want to correct this in Dorico, see this post of just three hours ago :wink: :

Unfortunately I don’t know any automatic way to correct this, but:
when you have done it for one of the

you can then just copy the notes, (including the triplet symbol), and paste it in other places, and then using Lock duration, correct the pitches (with a MIDI keyboard goes lightning fast).

Interesting. It hadn’t registered that what’s there is mathematically correct, but of course it is.

Perhaps the real problem is that this is a piece that is notated in 2/2, but in this section, perhaps it should be notated in 12/8 instead with the beat changing from half note to dotted quarter or something.

Anyway, the thing is that the Finale rendition came from an imported MIDI file, and regardless of whether I import that same MIDI file into Dorico, or whether I create a new MIDI file by exporting from Finale, there is still the discrepancy between how the two scores appear. Not to mention that the Dorico rendition is much harder to read.

It even groups collections of notes together that add up to a quarter note–it just doesn’t make that extra little step.

You speak only about MIDI.
Did you try my suggested way of exporting XML from Finale?

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Have you tried selecting those notes and doing edit>requantize using different quantization parameters?

Hi @Janus (sorry to reply to you even if your question. was for @arkoenig)
I tried this, but doesn’t work, probably because the played durations are exactly the same (MIDI), so Dorico has nothing to quantise (but I may be totally wrong):

It would depend on the precise underlying MIDI, but is often worth a try.

That said, the original can be re-notated in just a few steps:
Insert on.
Select and delete the 1st tuplet (not the notes).
Select the 1st quaver C and dot it.
Create tuplet(;) and 3:2e

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Hadn’t seen that yet. Yes, it works! Of course there are then lots of typographical things that I have to go through and delete, but at least doing so is easier than re-editing all the triplet groups.

Finale v.27 has an export option to music.xml.
If I was you, I would try that method first, because it will transform more aspects of your original notation. And it could possibly save you hours of re-editing on Dorico’s side.

Wouldn’t it be nice if Dorico were biased toward grouping triplets in the same way that it beams notes?

Andrew, what was the result of your musicXML export/import procedure?

It worked–kind of. At first, the last few dozen measures were commpletely blank. However, I traced that down to a single measure in a single part in which the total amount of music didn’t match the time signature. Apparently Finale accepted that and quietly put out a nonsensical measure in the score.

Once I fixed that, the rest of it apparently worked. Yay!

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Unfortunately Dorico can be intolerant of these sorts of errors in xml files. Sometimes it’s simple enough just to delete a few notes in the original re-export the xml and add the notes back in Dorico.

I don’t know if this pertinent, but there are 2 Preferences for Music XML import for tuplets, you may want also to experiment with both checked and reimport the XML (not sure how it will behave but is worth to try and check the behaviour):

The problem I had was in importing MIDI, not MusicXML.

What I did was correct the error in the Finale file, then re-imported the whole thing.

FWIW, the problem was in the first bar of the second staff from the bottom here: The middle note of the second triplet should be a 16th note, not an 8th note. In addition, the second beat of the second measure of the same voice should have been a quarter note and 8th note as a triplet, not a dotted eigh and sixteenth. But that problem was that the rhythm was inappropriate, whereas the first measure has the wrong number of beats in it.

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