When I’m ending a measure say in voice 2 (steam down no number) and starting a new measure where I want voice 1 (steam up no number) I’m finding I’m making a lot of voice errors. When I end a measure where I was entering voice 2 and I start a new measure, I don’t realize that I’m still if voice 2 (steam down). Very frustrating. since voice 1 and 2 don’t show numbers but only the steam up or down it’s not obvious. I quess don’t understand the rational behind not showing all the voice numbers. I know it would be better if I worked using the voice colors, but using black is easier on my eyes.
I’m thinking that maybe the input caret note should reflect the voice color your in.
I find that if you double click to the right of the rest where you want to begin entry then it picks an up stem voice. If you double click to the left of the note where you want to begin entry it picks a down stem voice. Not sure if this is always consistent. It seems consistent for empty bars at the end of the score. But otherwise, I can’t figure out why it picks the voice it does.
I find the whole voicing system to be an exercise in frustration. Mainly due to the circular list thing. The list gets created in the order of voice creation, so it doesn’t always cycle the same way from score to score (unless you are rigorous about how you create your voices).
I also don’t see how they are going to deal with filtering and other voice edits. For instance, are we going to have to cycle through a list to select the source and target voices for a swap function? It just seems like at some point you need to provide a number or a voice ID in order to deal with these features. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. They must have thought this through.
Speaking of circular lists. I really hope we aren’t going to see these types of structures when dealing with chord names and chord voicing in chord diagrams. I never liked this in Sibelius (still don’t). Just show us a collection list and let us pick one.
I think the most helpful update will be the ability to switch notes to a different voice so one can correct mistakes without having to retype the notes.
While I agree that it’s easy to to make mistakes, I think it’s just a matter of getting used to it. The voice logic itself I find fine, as long as one thinks of it in pairs. There’s pair 1 (up/down), pair 2 (up/down) etc. etc. When, in the future, the ability to copy/move voices becomes reality, I assume they will come up with a matrix which will automatically list the voices in use and where they can be moved …
It’s workable but frustrating, as I said. Take an extreme example (as I often like to do): say you have 6 voices 1 up-steam, 5 down-stem. So if you are entering down-stem1, then to get to the up-stem voice you need to type v 5 times (or some other number depending on the order in which you created the voices). Now imagine if there are 20 down-stem voices. You get the idea. It just doesn’t work in some cases without driving one nuts. I know these are not practical scenarios, but given there is no limit to the number of voices, there needs to be an easy (less frustrating) way to deal with this.
tl;dr: Circular lists are a bad idea when there is no limit to the number of elements in that list.
another thing I find annoying about the way voices are set up is when I have two separate voices in unison Dorico seems to treat that as one note, so when I want to edit the second voice, for example if I use the cursor to click on that voice and then scroll it backwards when it gets to the unison it’s not in the second voice. Sometimes I have to bump one of the notes up an octave to reveal the note I want. So put another way, if I’m highlighting a particular voice I want to be able to scroll through that voice using the cursors but it doesn’t work.
When copying from paper, you want to keep your eyes on the manuscript. Any diversion tends to produce errors. That’s why if you want to attain speed it’s important to know your shortcuts. Taking your eyes off the manuscript to look at your voice choice slows you down and encourages errors…Not a good idea. I was going along with my transcibing at a great pace. I kept my eyes on the manuscript and made no engraving errors. I was so happy until I realized I screwed up on the voices. Even though I knew, from testing, that the last voice I used in the previous measure, say voice 2, continued when starting a new measure, I still made the mistake because I kept my eyes on the manuscript.
Here Is another situation I found myself in. I know now that when I start a new measure, you stay in the voice you last entered so, the last note I entered was voice 2. I got to the next measure, changed the voice back to voice 1 (stem up) by hitting “v” and proceeded to enter notes. Then in the same measure, entered all the voice 2 notes. Went to next measure, hit “v” for voice 1 and continued entering notes. Big mistake. When I finished the previous measure, before going to the next measure, I had to correct a note in voice 1 in the measure I just completed. After fixing the note I went to the next measure, hit “v” to get to voice 1, without looking at the note caret and started entering notes…the notes were in voice 2. You see, by correcting the note in voice 1 then going to the next measure, I stayed in voice 1. When I hit “v”, I thought I was going to voice 1 but since I was already in voice 1 I went to voice 2 by mistake.
I don’t want to appear unpatriotic, but I liked the way Sibelius handled Voicing (Alt+1-4) with the different colours. It was so easy to handle voices.
Sorry guys…but like I said before, I don’t worship software.
Just my opinion.
Hans