I have a file created in 5. First time I have opened it in 6. In each measure there are two small circles under a pair of thirds - what are these? The notes are not harmonic, and they are not string indications. They don’t appear in 5, or in the pdf that was created when the work was completed. The work is for solo guitar, if that helps.
Any thoughts?
They look like harmonics to me. You can check in the properties panel to see if the harmonic property is activated.
That’s what I thought, but when I select them, look at the Properties, nothing in Harmonics is selected. And, they appear in other places (other movements), but with no discernible pattern.
Thanks taking a look!
If you post the file a clever sleuth with work out what’s going on!
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Just in case Properties might show something different - did you select the circles or the noteheads, and also try in both Write mode and Engrave mode?
Another thought:
I know extremely little about guitar, but is it possible that it might be related to the two notes maybe being not playable at the same time because of either being on the same string or too much of a stretch to be played on separate strings. This is as wild a guess as things go, but I’m thinking of something in the Dorico 5 file which the Dorico 6 Proofreading feature has picked up but misinterpreted or mishandled. If you (temporarily) delete one of the notes which has a circle, do the circles go away?
That might be it, however the notes are playable. The last pair looks unplayable, but this is for a 10-string guitar. In any event, the first two are completely doable. But, I will check that later to see if the proof-reading has flagged them. I haven’t used the proof-reading function much, but I don’t think it actually marks the score, does it?
Not that I know of, but with any software occasional oddities can surface when dealing with different versions.
The notes in the last two bars are marked in red. This usually indicates that Dorico thinks they are out of range. Does Dorico know that it is a 10-string guitar, or is it trying to assess it thinking it is a 6-string? I have never used these features but it is possible to select a different tuning and also edit an instrument definition. It might be worth checking those aspects (just in case).
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The Status Bar should show what type of a thing they are.
I would have thought either a harmonic, fingering or a Playing Technique.
Or perhaps an articulation, if the font has gone wrong.
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So…this is strange. I select the pitches, and they turn orange as in the screenshot above. Nothing appear in Properties, and Harmonics are not invoked. However, if I do make them harmonics>natural, the cancel the harmonic, the symbols vanish. The odd thing is I know I didn’t make them harmonics at any point - the score is full of them, the tuning is odd, but I do know how the guitar works, and those would never have been made into harmonics; and, in V 5 they are missing the symbols. I guess just chalk it up to some font-artifact kind of situation.
Thanks for looking at this.
Hi @rpearl, it is difficult to really look into this without having the Dorico file (as suggested).
I think it would be interesting also for the Team, to see what is going on (since you have a clear difference between Dorico 5 and Dorico 6 visualisation).
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As has been suggested, here is the file in question. Just to check, I opened it in 5 and there are no harmonic symbols. In 6, they are still there, although some are gone as a result of my experimenting as stated above. In this file, you can see the phenomenon in the first movement/flow 1, measures 13, 14, and 16.
Between the earth and sky.dorico (2.6 MB)
Done!
It only took two people suggesting this to actually do it! Thanks.
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It’s a harmonic of type “Natural”, set to display as a circle above the note. (Displayed below it because it’s the stem is pointing down.
Nevertheless, the Dorico team should have a look at the file. Because when you select the notes, the corresponding “Harmonic” options in the properties panel do not lighten up correctly.
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The curious thing is that I never set them as harmonics. In the original file - V5 - they display as normal, no harmonics. And, as a guitarist, I do know when I want a harmonic or not. Perhaps Dorico is helping me by making some timbral decisions…? ;>)
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The issue here is that the various harmonic-related properties have ended up in an impossible combination. Normally what happens if you want a harmonic is that you first turn on the property called “Type” (to choose between Natural and Artificial harmonics), and then that enables other properties that you can also turn on such as “Style”. Here, though, some of the notes have “Style” turned on even though “Type” is not turned on. That combination shouldn’t be possible, and so the results are basically unpredictable - I think it will just be chance that v5 isn’t showing them and v6.1 is. I don’t know how it might have happened though. If this project comes from an older version of Dorico it might be that it reflects a bug there, whereby non-applicable properties weren’t getting cleaned up.
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Richard - that makes sense. When I open it in 5, the harmonics are not there (and never were invoked). Something in the transition to 6 made this occur. I can make them go away (whew!), and it appears inconsistently - I can’t pin down why those notes and not others. But, good to know that I haven’t done something to make it happen.
As I say, the incorrect properties are there in v5 too, it’s just that v5 and v6 are making different decisions about what to do in this theoretically-impossible situation. (In fact the internal build I happen to be using for testing today is doing something closer to the v5 behaviour, even though it’s notionally a v6.) Probably this stale data has been hanging around in the project for a long time.
Richard - when I open the file in 5, there is no Style until I invoke the Harmonic; as I never did, how did it get turned on?