Fingering?

Right. Sticking is part of drumset notation - I’m guessing you’ll have it included there Daniel, when you get to implementing this, yes…?
http://web.mit.edu/merolish/Public/drums.pdf (scroll to last page for example - all mostly adhering to Norman Weinberg’s Guide To Standardized Drumset Notation).

I hope we will be able to implement a dedicated tool for sticking indications when as part of the work we are doing on unpitched percussion notation, but I cannot 100% guarantee it (software development is hard, priorities change, unexpected situations arise, etc.).

Thank you for all you are doing for the world of music notation and composition! I’m looking forward to the fingering popover for the cello etudes I’ve been writing.

I wonder if you have considered the possibility of alternative fingerings in the fingering popover? If not, I’d encourage that for a point release. It would allow me to take repertoire for my students and write in the alternates so I can have a beautifully formatted edition all of my own for each piece, it would save a bunch of time in lessons writing them in by hand :slight_smile:

Can you tell me a little more about your requirements for alternative fingerings, so I can understand better exactly what you need?

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

A decent example I use regularly is the Yampolsky scale book: Amazon.com

The arpeggios in the preview show fingerings both above and below the line. I have also seen writing 2 lines of fingerings above the line, one in parentheses. This is used to suggest 2 equally viable fingerings. I might have one for students with large hands that has stretches, and one for students with smaller hands that has more shifting. Sometimes a fingering might go up the D string for expressive effect, but an alternative that uses the A string exists that is equally valid, and both should be available for the student to practice and decide. Sometimes I just can’t decide if I like one fingering or another in a particularly tough passage, and I’ll write in both.

Incidentally, I have been using text (shift-X) for fingerings until the popover is released (naturally) and encountered a bug. When I am putting in 2 text elements on the same note (2 fingerings, 1 for each note of a chord), I can position them exactly in engrave, but the print preview does not appear to “remember” the engraving changes. This is due to attempting to copy/paste the thumb font from bravura https://w3c.github.io/smufl/gitbook/tables/string-techniques.html U+E624 and make it large enough to match the other numbers. This requires a 33pt font, while the numbers are 11.5pt, so the hidden space is apparently gumming up the works. Is there a better place to report this bug?

Thanks,
Greg

I realized that when I move to print, it was displaying a different layout than the one I was editing in. Probably worth investigating as it is a pretty easy way for a tired user to accidentally print the wrong layout.

Thanks for the link to the book, Greg. Our approach to fingerings is that each note can have a fingering associated with it. At the moment I believe each note can only have a single fingering associated with it (though of course that fingering can include a transition from one finger to another, for example) but I will check with the developer working on the feature whether we already have a plan to deal with this.

Regarding the adjustments you make in one layout not being propagated to other layouts, that is by design, so that you have full flexibility of positioning things in different layouts in different places. We hope that we will be able to add features to copy the properties such as offsets etc. you set in one layout to other layouts, but the way the program works is deliberate so that it remains as flexible as possible.

One last question about fingerings, but first I just want to say how much I like Dorico. I’m currently in the process of entering all the technique stuff I use, so that I can make customized technique books for each student. The transpose feature allowed me to enter all the scales and arpeggios in major/minor formatted beautifully in about 45 minutes. I have each scale/arpeggio in a separate flow, so I can mix/match them easily.

Anyways, I’m going to enter all my fingerings using the text popover out of necessity. I was wondering if there is a format I should use that might make it easy to convert them to fingerings? Or should I expect to manually convert them after the first release to implement fingerings? I don’t think that will ultimately be too hard, I can select all the text elements and delete them, then use the fingering popover to enter the new ones, but you all are smart, so I thought I’d ask first.

Here’s an example of extensive piano fingering (including multiple alternate fingerings and original fingerings set in italics).


It’s an extreme case and beautifully solved! (I’m not asking for full support of this. The ability to italicize fingerings as well as other things might be useful for critical editions though.)

It certainly looks pretty, but I sometimes wonder why any pianist who is capable of playing the music needs to see that sort of fingering, let alone three different alternatives. They are all pretty close to “the obvious options” IMO.

Compare with the rare occasions when Beethoven actually wrote piano fingering on his own music - in every case I know if, it tells you do to something that isn’t at all obvious, but there is a musical point to that particular fingering way that would be hard to express any other way in the score.

Debussy had the right idea - he refused to add any fingering to his piano etudes, and in his preface gives the reason - even if it was the “best” fingering for some particular pianist, the mere fact that it was printed dogmatically on the score would make the pianist look for an alternative that might be worse!

What edition is this?

Keep in mind that some students are young yet talented, and haven’t developed the critical facility to understand how different fingerings work or not. Also, for stringed instruments, people with smaller hands often need vastly different fingerings for the same passage. Being able to suggest both in a learning (not performing) edition is invaluable.

Having said this, I of course never write in alternative fingerings in my own performance parts. This is a tool I would use for teaching. I might, for example, swap out one fingering for an alternative and send that pdf to a student. Or send all of them to a former student now teaching. There are lots of use cases for multiple fingerings in education.

Wiener Urtext (An edition cluttered with editorial annotations – yes, and fingerings – but among the most beautifully engraved volumes I’ve seen so far. Actually this one aroused my interest in engraving.)

To some extend the same is true for piano music.

Thanks, Florian! Thats what I thought.
John Ruggero has also spoken to the excellence of Wiener Urtexts critical editions at Notatio previously. It’s easy to see why.

It’ll come when it comes but any more news on this? The next update or after that?

It’s been confirmed here several times that fingering was one of the main new assets (along with unpitched percussion notation) of the next update, due in autumn — still a month and a half available until the end of the season :wink:

Thanks as always Marc. I’ve just spent a morning formatting and placing fingering notices so great news!!

Thanks for the new fingering options in Dorico, great!

It seems that the asked option to draw a fingering number in a circle (or at least to underline the number) is not implemented, too bad. I have no idea of a possible workaround for this. So - will this option come in the future?

Properties to make an individual fingering circled or underlined is definitely on our backlog for the future, but I’m afraid I can’t say when we might be able to add them.

Thank you, Daniel. So I will exercise patience :slight_smile: