- a tuplet with multiple notes in one voice (1)
- select
- filter the the lowest note (2)
- Strg-X (delete) (3)
→ result: the “rest” obviously looses the truplet property
Don’t think this should happen.
Deselect the tuplet bracket before you press delete
Ok, accepted as a workaround, but still this cannot be the normal behavior; it is quite clear what want when I select, filter, delete.
An exta step deselection the bracket should not be needed.
This is the intended behaviour. This argument has come up before, when users expected notes to be copied as tuplets even without the tuplet itself being selected (which is the reverse of your problem).
Essentially, edit operations occur on the selected items, no more, no less. You can for example delete just the tuplet bracket itself, which will leave all the notes in place.
I would argue it is not 100% clear what you intend to do. Example: you might want to copy the notes you filtered. In that case, it is important for the tuplet to be selected, otherwise they would copy as a longer duration. If we changed the filter operation to deselect tuplets, that would break this use case. Whichever route we choose to go, it will enable one use case, and break another. What you see allows for the most flexibility, but requires the user the be aware that tuplets must be selected or deselected separately, depending on what they want to do.
So, if I understand you right, Stefan:
If I want to only cut the lower part of taguluche’s triplet and paste it somewhere else, I have to choose between
- selecting the notes AND the triplet, by which I paste a correct triplet but lose the triplet on the source notes
- selecting only the notes, by which I keep the triplet on the source but will not get triplets where I paste the notes.
Is this correct?
“This argument has come up before, when users expected notes to be copied as tuplets even without the tuplet itself being selected”
And it still feels wrong to me the way it currently is 
Indeed, that is a limitation of this approach. In order to cut in this example, you’d have to copy the selection, deselect the tuplet, then delete.
I think I understand why you feel this is wrong, but I can’t see a different way that would accommodate all the different requirements. Tuplets in Dorico are objects that are more than just a graphical marking. They change the duration of notes under them, and they occupy a duration themselves. What you see is a result of that design decision.
TL/DR: tuplets are funny and even with advances by Dorico we still have to do little dances which may one day be able to be automated.
OPINION: I’ve been doing a lot of triplet and sextupulet conversion nowadays, and have got to be intimate with this problem (smirk) which I think is due to the understandable legacy convention of denoting a tuplet with a single number above or below it, as opposed to some sign on each cipher that says that it’s–say–2/3 of the nominal value.
EXAMPLE: Dorico, while astonishingly powerful in many triplet issues that have confused its predecessors, does seem to think of triplets as groups like little molecules with particular properties. Recently I’ve wanted to break up a eighth-note-triplet pattern for orchestration such that each downbeat is sustained on the cellos, while the rest of the pattern is in the violas: of course there’s no point–nor is it conventional–in having, for instance, a dotted quarter with a three above it, when it’s really a simple quarter note. Now the remaining two triplet-eighths need to have the ‘3’ selected as well, but that’s not such a problem if you know that’s the simplest way–if you don’t do that the pasted notes are found to bulge out over into the next beat or bar, distorting the music there, if there is any. Each desired treatment of our often strange source material has its own challenges, and puzzles to solve. And sometimes re-inputting the notes is going to be the most convenient and efficient way, which Dorico’s powerful popover system makes a lot more pleasant than it used to be (although I’m still getting used to and learning it).
GENERALIZATION and ANECDOTAL HISTORY: People used to MIDI (and guitarists used to TAB) tend to think of music as events on a kind of grid. Part of the power of Dorico is that it seems to think of it as a flexible flow, which is exciting for me since it opens up all sorts of previously unavailable possibilities, but it does mean that there are new implicit rules and restrictions. I remember when Sibelius first became available on other than just Acorn computers, and how different its note entry conventions were from what I was used to with Finale and then Encore. Encore was simple, intuitive and fast–like a word processor for notes, and I spent years with it–but just didn’t produce beautiful scores, while Sibelius did, with many elements of that beauty increasing automated, especially when Bob Zawalich and others wrote a vast horde of brilliant plug-ins to simplify complex or repetitive procedures. Finale could do so much, but when I used it it had three thick manuals, like university maths textbooks, and I suggested that a music student (as I was) could do a two-year diploma course in Finale alone; the Sibelius manual was a breath of fresh air with its clarity, wit, and intuitive index.
I totally see what you are saying.
I hope in the near future Dorico will geht some kind of a usability upgrade. From time to time the structures that Dorico “thinks” in have some negative effects on the user interface that are not necessarily required. This is one point onthis list. I understand that Dorico needs the information of notes being a tuplet to copy and paste the correct note length. But it could know that implicitly when I select only the noteheads.
From all the tuplet work I do, I have never stumbled upon the requirement to select notes of tuplet and paste them somewhere else using their non-tuplet value. I don’t say that this feature is not at all needed by every user, of course, but I’m pretty sure the Dorico team could find a way to make the default workflow more accessible without Dorico’s way of “thinking” getting in the user’s way 
Thanks!
I was surprised that Dorico’s handling of tuplets is pretty conventional, albeit comprehensive.
I would have expected them to be note lengths like any other note length, rather than a ‘thing’ that you do to notes.
The Dorico team has taken this back to semantics approach with most other things.
This could be something like pushing ‘5’ for a quaver, followed by alt-3 or alt-5 to modify it as a triplet-quaver or quintuplet-quaver. (There is no doubt a better way…)
This would make things like writing a single triplet quaver, followed by normal quavers, rather than Dorico’s ‘specialist’ tuplet treatment which prescribes an entire beats worth just because you’ve placed one. Dorico doesn’t do this prescription with ‘normal’ note-lengths.
Sibelius has exactly the same issue. It would be nice if Dorico found a way arround this, even if it was another “filter out tuplet marks” option.
Dear Steveparker,
I understand the solution you propose would be nice for simple tuplets. But think about nested tuplets (one think Dorico does extremely well). How easy would that be to notate it with your “modifiers” ?
Nevertheless, there probably is some room for improvement in that field. I find it quite complicated to handle tasks when tuplets are involved.
Hi Marc,
There is no doubt a better solution than my suggestion. Underlying it is that I’d like tuplets to be treated as note lengths (like any other), rather than being treated as something you do to note lengths. Why should a triplet quaver be followed by two more (or notes that add up to that)? Dorico doesn’t expect that of crochets or quavers?
The reason Dorico requires tuplets to be a rational duration is because otherwise the following music becomes un-notatable. If you have a single triplet quaver, then of course that leaves one third of a quaver “missing”, and a duration of a third of a quaver is not notatable.
Daniel, I don’t understand?
If I put a single triplet quaver at the start of the bar, it’s surely up to me to work out how to make that fit with what follows?
I would expect Dorico to treat it the same as if I enter repeated minims into bars of 3/4 - it moves the portion that doesn’t fit to the next bar.
I appreciate that Dorico does the same as Fin or Sib, but a lot better. It is still prescriptive in a way that Dorico seems to avoid elsewhere.
Steve, if you place a minim at the start of 3/4 bar you get a crotchet rest after it. If you place a triplet quaver at the start of a 3/4 bar you get two triplet quaver rests and two crotchet rests after it. What’s the inconsistency here?
Steve, it would require Dorico to conjure tuplets that you didn’t create. If you had a single triplet quaver at the start of (say) a 3/4 bar, followed by a dotted minim, this would then have to be notated as a triplet quaver (how would this be notated clearly as a partial tuplet, by the way?) followed by a minim tied to a crotchet occupying to thirds of a triplet of quavers (again, how would this be notated?), tied over the barline to a leftover triplet quaver. Dorico doesn’t conjure up tuplets unless you specifically create them.
I really wanted to reopen this thread, because for me it would be very important to get things changed.
I often work in the following way: I input a kind of sketch to a piano system, using a midi keybord,
that means: harmonies appear initally as chords, keep things together. Only when I am basically satisfied, I distribute the notes
to their staffs. That means: Select - Filter Chord notes - Paste.
This simply does not work now seamlessly. See the attached sample.
There ist no way to get the thing done in a simple way: one half works, the other half gets ruined and must be rewritten.
I hope that that “design decision” will not be your last word on this. If it is really a design decision, I dare to say, it was
a bad one.
So I beg you, I implore you: rethink this. Really. Please take this as a serious “customer complaint”.
And wouldn’t you “simply” have to take into account, that the tuplet property is a property of all chord notes, under the tuplet bracket, not only of the selected ones. In other words: There is - or should be - an invisible Tuplet Bracket for the non selected notes!
Because if I select the upper notes in the cord and the tuplet bracket - then the not selected notes obviously have not stopped to be part of a tuplet - so they should stay tuplets, when I take the selected notes away. If I wanted them to be not longer tuplets, that would require a second edit move.
Otherwise, the not-selected notes would have to change their appearence, when selecting notes and tuplet bracket would mean, that the unselected notes stop to be tuplet when I include the tuplet bracket in the selection… Is it comprehensible what I try to demonstrate?
And this behaviour of Dorico has another aspect:
“Essentially, edit operations occur on the selected items, no more, no less. You can for example delete just the tuplet bracket itself, which will leave all the notes in place.” (stefan some posts below)
And exactly this is obviously not the case.
Dorico is changing, overwriting notes that were not part of the selected items. The notes are not “in place” - they overwrite.
It may be difficult do decide, what goes in place of the tuplet, if the tuplet property is taken away from some notes.
Sibelius simply deleted everything, hm, but at least did not overwrite other notes, so: relatively well done.
May be you could give us a switch with four options for this case: Delete all notes in the tuplet range, Fill the range up with the first note of the ex-tuplet, Fill the range up with the given values as long as possible, or Extend all the note values with overwriting over the following notes.
I know how tricky tuplets are, I once wrote a Plugin for Sibelius, to double a voice with triplets to a second voice, because Sibelius could not do it via simple copy-paste without messing everything up. I never made the Plugin available to the comunity because it was so rudimental and it worked only on simple tuplets, not on nested ones … it’s really difficult. But am I supposed to write a new Plugin for Dorico - as soon as we can do this - , to get a tuplet copy-paste right?
Reallly I think this is important, because people that test the demo version will run into this and think twice.
And in our world, commercial success is the base of a long living and evolving software… and I want Dorico to be this.
But the way it handles tuplets now is a serious obstacle to my way to write notes, and I think, Dorico should facilitate as may different ways to write notes as possible.
I don’t know if you listened to Daniel’s interview at the Namm — the link was on Dorico’s hub I think, and certainly on the Facebook page. A “tuplifying” function was evoked, it might solve your problems… Fingers crossed!
I think that there should be an unspoken rule that selecting notes within a tuplet means I do not want to lose the tuplet — so Dorico should by default cut notes AND copy the tuplet property. If I want to change them to duples THEN i need to invoke a function. This way filtering chords work (tuplets remain in both voices) and a desired user experience happens. If I want to transform a tuplet into duples I would think of it musically as a transformation, and not a simple copy n paste, like now. So losing the easiness of expanding tuplet to duples is not a big UX problem for my use case. It would be extremely helpful if there was an option somewhere that it can just work this way.
I am in the middle of expanding a midi sketch to a proper instrumentation and all the tuplets I have to copy into different voices and instruments (explode is out of the question here) cost me so much time…
