Hello all,
I’m struggling a little bit with Dorico’s overenthusiasm for ties 
Admittedly I am not generally entering all my notes manually and I do know about the “Force duration” button, but all the same I am wondering if it is possible that I’ve missed a preferences item which would make Dorico opt for the simplest single duration (probably dotted) in any given situation rather than tying one note to another. For example, I might prefer dotted eighth notes rather than an eighth note tied to a 16th.
The only way I’ve found of editing to get what I want is by re-entering the notes.This is quite a bit of hassle.
Still enjoying working with Dorico though and love the results.
Best, Michael
Perhaps you could upload a screendump or two of your problem scenario(s)?
There’s no single option you can specify that would prevent Dorico from using ties, I’m afraid: you should review the options on the Note Grouping page of Notation Options, as they are the most relevant options available. If the music you’re entering uses tuplets as much as the piece you showed me recently, then you have a different problem, which is that you cannot currently influence the beat grouping used for tuplets: at the moment, this will always follow the number of subdivisions of the stated unit, e.g. a 7:4 eighth note tuplet will always use a beat grouping of 1+1+1+1+1+1+1/8 (if you see what I mean). We do plan to make it possible to specify beat groupings for tuplets in future.
Thanks Daniel. Yes, I have reviewed all those options and tweaked them according to my preferences but it doesn’t help me with ties and groupings within a single beat at the moment.It is indeed a bigger problem under tuplets. I can see how allowing flexible grouping for every situation could become very complex. Perhaps a simple Preferences checkbox for preferring dots to ties might be a simpler solution. Of course I have no insight into the way this is actually programmed in Dorico so forgive me if that is a little presumptuous. Best, Michael
And here’s a screen shot of something I’m tinkering with at the moment. You can see that the clarinet (middle stave) has the kind of (edited) notation I would prefer in bar 1 whereas in the second bar you can see what Dorico gives me by default.
That is a nice-looking excerpt, and very fast! For what it’s worth, in the second bar Dorico seems to be doing its job, fitting the clarinet syncopations into the 3/4 meter. This looks like a good place to use Force Duration.
It is frustrating that Force Duration can’t act retroactively on notes already entered; that is a known issue which has been discussed on the forum before, and I think it will be addressed eventually.
If you enter the time sign in the clar as [3]/4 it should fix the ties…
Ooh, thanks for that bit of wizardry. It works. Not sure how though. Can you link me in to an explanation for that? Best, Michael
I should have thought of [3]/4 - thanks fratveno! There have been several time signature threads - basically, square brackets are a way to override or specify default rhythmic groupings, without changing the appearance of the time signature. [2+2+3]/8 will appear as 7/8, etc.
[3]/4 treats the entire bar “in one”, which can useful for pieces like Beethoven’s Egmont overture, in this thread -
That’s fantastic. Many thanks. Great community here.
I guess that’s sort of implicit in the doc, but I’m not sure I would have made the connection:
https://steinberg.help/dorico/v1/en/dorico/topics/write_mode/write_mode_custom_time_signatures_using_popover_r.html