After importing via XML, I get brackets on all tuplets, regardless of settings in the program which made the XML or the settings in Dorico which govern XML import or even the tuplet bracket settings in Engraving Options. I’ve tried selecting Reset Appearance and changing the tuplet Engraving Options, to no avail. I know I can filter for tuplets and turn off the brackets, but this also removes the brackets that I do need, i.e. on values longer than eighths or when there are rests in the tuplets.
I’m also unable to change the tuplet number font. I assume that this is supposed to happen in Engrave/Font Styles…/Tuplet Plain Font. Changing this doesn’t alter the tuplet numbers. Am I doing something wrong?
On a different topic: how do I alter secondary beaming globally? I’d like to have secondary beams break to the rhythmic value but I can only find a way to reset all beaming, which alters other beaming I need to keep as is. Also, there seems to be a strange anomaly in Dorico’s secondary beam breaks. The beam of group of 8 32nds gets broken to the 8th (correctly), but if the first note is a rest, Dorico breaks the beam to the 16th. This shouldn’t happen and I can’t find a way of changing it. In addition, the secondary beam of a group of 32nd triplets gets broken to the 8th and not to the 16th. This isn’t really correct, either, but I can’t find a way to change it.
Last problem: on my laptop, I can’t select the Bar Number Font popup from the Edit Font Styles menu. The contextual menu jumps around, making it impossible to select.
To change the font used for tuplet numbers, you should both choose the font you want in Engrave > Font Styles, but you also need to make a change on the Tuplets page of Engraving Options to tell it to use the plain font.
For your MusicXML import issue, I suggest you switch off ‘Tuplet placement and bracket visibility’ on the MusicXML Import page of Preferences, which will cause Dorico to use its defaults for all tuplets rather than taking any notice of the way the tuplets are declared in the MusicXML file. You should nevertheless find that doing Edit > Reset Appearance and Edit > Reset Position on the tuplets in your project works fine – if not, please perhaps cut down a representative sample of the file and attach it here.
As of Dorico 2, bar numbers are drawn using the bar numbers paragraph style, rather than the font style, so you should use Engrave > Paragraph Styles to change the appearance of bar numbers nowadays. You may find the old bar numbers font style still exists in projects created in Dorico 1.x, but it’s no longer used.
As for your beaming issues, the relevant options are found on the Beam Grouping page of Notation Options. It’s possible that Dorico doesn’t yet have a combination of options that matches your preferences. Perhaps you could provide a couple of pictorial examples to help me visualise what you want to see?
Thanks for your response, Daniel.
I’d already changed the font in Engrave/Font Styles/Tuplet Plain Font. I’m afraid I don’t see anywhere in the Tuplets page of Engraving Options where any mention is made of fonts.
I’d already turned off ‘Tuplet placement and bracket visibility’ in the MusicXML Import page but all tuplets still show with brackets, also regardless of the settings in the exporting program. Reset Appearance and Reset Position didn’t change this, either. I’ve attached a portion of the file.
I was able to change the bar number font (thanks!) but I still can’t change the tuplet font.
My secondary beaming issues can also be seen in this file. I ran the menu item Edit/Beaming/Reset Beaming but in bars 1 and 2 the oboe’s 32nds break properly to the 8th but the flute 32nds break incorrectly to the 16th. As I also mentioned, if you replace the rest at the beginning of the flute 32nds with a note, Dorico suddenly breaks the secondary beam to the 8th. In addition, in the last bar Dorico incorrectly breaks the triplets to the 8th, whereas the beams should only break to the 16th.
One last question: why does Dorico change the direction of the oboe slurs in the first bar to go downwards? They weren’t that way in the original, it’s incorrect this way and I can’t find either a setting or a function in the properties panel to change it.
L’elisir test.dorico.zip (501 KB)
The tuplets show their brackets because that is how Dorico handles that situation: a tuplet bracket will only be automatically hidden if it encompasses all of the notes in a primary beam group, i.e. if it and the whole beam are equivalent. You will need to use the ‘Bracket’ property to hide these tuplets in Dorico.
To change the tuplet font, set ‘Tuplet digit style’ to ‘Plain font’ on the Tuplets page of Engraving Options.
Do you mean the oboe’s ties in bar 1? It’s because those notes are written in a nominally down-stem voice, and there is a bar rest in the “first” up-stem voice. I can’t see from this excerpt why the oboe has ended up with two voices, but depending on the other music that’s going on you can either change the default direction of that voice to be up-stem via Edit > Voice > Default Stems Up or (and this is what I would recommend) select all the music and do Edit > Voice > Change Voice > Up-stem Voice 1.
For secondary beaming, Dorico follows the rules specified in Gould that the primary beam should use the total duration of the beamed group to determine the primary beam: when there are eight 32nds in the group, you get a single primary beam line because 8 x 32nd = 1 8th, but when there are only seven 32nds in the group, the duration of one eighth isn’t reached, so you get two primary beam lines instead. You can select the first note of the second secondary beam group in the beam and set the ‘Split secondary beam’ property to ‘8th’ to get a single primary beam line there.
Sorry Daniel, but most of the tuplets in my file DO have all the notes in their beam groups and Dorico still insists on showing the bracket, and there’s no global setting I can’t find which will change this (I already have Engraving Options/Tuplets/Brackets set to show only when necessary). BTW, I just discovered that this has nothing to do with XML import at all but that it happens when the beam group is longer than the tuplet. In other words, if a triplet contains only three notes under one beam, Dorico will display it without a bracket. As soon as I connect two triplets together, with or without a secondary beam break, Dorico displays brackets, regardless of any global settings. This doesn’t make sense. It’s fairly common practice that tuplets which are shorter than a beat share a beam which then makes up an entire beat, like bars 4-6 in my file. Why should Dorico place brackets on ALL the 32nd triplets in bar 6 or ALL the sextuplets in bars 4-5 just because I’ve grouped more than one together to comprise one beat?
As far as the tuplet font is concerned, I must be looking in the wrong place. Under Engraving Options/Tuplets I see sections for Number and Ratio, Brackets (which is set to show brackets only where necessary), Design (which contains only line width and hook length) and Horizontal Position, but nothing about fonts. Are we talking about the same page?
I understand the concept of breaking secondary beams according to the value they represent, but Dorico doesn’t always do this consistently. If it did, the break between the first two and last two 32nd triplets in each group in bar 6 would break to a 16th and not to an 8th. The groups of 32nds in bars 1 and 2 ARE complete. The fact that the first one is a rest shouldn’t have any influence on the fact that the secondary beam should break to the 8th.
Thanks about the oboe ties in bar 1. I didn’t realise that the notes were in different voices. It’s interesting that XML import didn’t place the notes in different voices but copying the notes to another Dorico file did. Do you know why? In any case I’d better keep voice colours displayed.
I’ve included an updated file, this time with repeated tuplets set not to be suppressed.
L’elisir test.dorico.zip (503 KB)
I’m starting a new topic on this because it has nothing to do with what I thought might be an XML import problem in my previous post.
When tuplets with note values of an eighth or shorter are beamed separately, Dorico correctly displays only a number when the global settings are to display brackets only when necessary. If one beams more than one of these tuplets together, however, Dorico places brackets on them, despite the global settings. Displaying brackets on incomplete tuplets can be considered ‘necessary’ but this doesn’t include tuplets just because they’re beamed together. Could I request that Dorico not place these unwanted brackets?
Concerning secondary beams, in my previous post I attached an example with a group of 32nds which break correctly to the 8th halfway, except when the first or last note is a rest. Dorico then breaks to the 16th, which doesn’t make sense, especially since Dorico doesn’t display this behaviour if any of the other notes are rests. Could I request that Dorico do this consistently?
I’ve merged this topic with your existing one, since I do consider it to be a continuation of the same discussion. I’ve been very busy over the past few days and haven’t had a chance to spend much time on the forum. I will come back to you in due course. Please be patient: sometimes a thread will go unanswered by me for a few days, but I don’t forget.
Returning to this thread now, so apologies for the delay. I’ve added both of these requests to our backlog for future development. I’m afraid I can’t provide any guidance as to when we’ll be able to implement them, but next time we come to do some work in the areas of beat grouping or tuplets, we’ll hopefully be able to address them then.
In the meantime, depending on the nature of the rhythms in the music you’re working on, you might find the notation option to always show a single primary beam line rather than to show the appropriate number of beam lines for the sum of each of the secondary beam groups to either side means that you have fewer beam groups to fix up in the opposite direction overall. For the tuplets at least it should be reasonably quick to select them and set the bracket properties in one go, but where possible, perhaps try to input the music with the appropriate tuplet bracket settings and secondary beam breaks, then copy and paste to other instruments and update the pitches via Lock Durations so that you minimise the amount of property-twiddling you have to do.
Thank you, Daniel! One last question about tuplets. Is it possible to set the number to show on a particular tuplet even if I’ve set Dorico to suppress the display of these numbers after a certain number of repetitions? The bracket/number setting in the properties panel makes no change in the display. I suppose I could do it the other way around: set the number of repeated tuplets to a higher number and then hide all the ones I don’t wan’t manually.
Yes, you can override the appearance of tuplets that have been automatically hidden by selecting their green signposts and then adjusting the settings in the Properties panel.
Sorry to bring this up again but I never got an answer about the tuplet font. As I wrote above, I’d already changed the font in Engrave/Font Styles/Tuplet Plain Font. I’m afraid I don’t see a ‘Tuplet digit style’ setting in the Tuplets page of Engraving Options.
In addition, I know that it’s not presently possible as a global setting, but I’d like to second the feature request to have tuplet numbers within staves.
Have you tried “Tuplet Font”, rather than “Tuplet Plain Font”? I think the latter only applies if you’ve selected “Plain Font” in the Digit Style section of Engraving Options.
Ben, if you do that you just get square boxes.
Vaughan, set this:
Then set this:
