🎬 This article is a transcription of one of the excellent tutorial videos posted to the official Dorico YouTube channel.
Presented here in written form with the kind permission of its creator, Anthony Hughes, this tutorial is titled “How to Input Dynamics in Dorico”…
Hi, I’m Anthony Hughes. I’m going to show you how to work with dynamics in Steinberg’s new music notation software, Dorico.
I have some music in Write mode and without anything selected,
I’m going to come over to the Notation toolbox here on the right hand side of the window, and click this button to open the Dynamics panel.
I’m going to click on the forte in the top palette here and you’ll notice that I’ve now picked up this forte, and I can click at the rhythmic position where I would like it to appear in the score.
I can also do this the other way round: I can select a note in the score and then click on a dynamic in the panel.
And with that dynamic still selected in the music, I can click on other dynamics in the panel and it updates in the score. I can even add one of these ‘modifiers’; for example a subito.
In the same way, I can drag out a selection over multiple notes
and then choose one of the hairpins in the panel (or use the key commands Shift+comma or Shift+period, because of course they are the keys with the angled brackets on them that look a little like hairpins)
and that will automatically create the crescendo or diminuendo and make it the length of that selection.
With the hairpin still selected I can lengthen or shorten it by holding down Shift+Alt (Windows) / Shift+Opt. (Mac) and pressing the left and right arrow keys. The rhythmic amount it will change by is dictated by the resolution of the rhythmic grid set using this control. (lower left hand corner).
(To clarify, if no notes are present, the rhythmic amount the hairpin will “snap” is dictated by the resolution of this rhythmic grid. If notes are present, the hairpin length snaps to existing notes or rests.)
I find a really quick way to enter dynamics is by using the popover which I can summon with the key command: Shift+D.
I can do this over a selection and type, for example, p, less than, f, press Enter
and Dorico will input a piano with a crescendo up to forte spanning the length of that selection.
You can also use the dynamics popover during note input, allowing you to specify the dynamics at the same time as entering notes.
Once a dynamic has been created, you have complete control over its appearance by using the Properties panel.
Here I can enable the ‘Gradual style’ control to choose between displaying a hairpin or crescendo text, in a variety of formats.
I hope this has been helpful to you. Please subscribe to the Dorico Youtube channel to see more videos like this. I’m Anthony Hughes, thanks for watching.
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