Pitch before duration input | New Features in Dorico 3.5

šŸŽ¬  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 “Pitch before duration input in Dorico Pro”…

Hello, I’m Anthony Hughes, and I’m here to show you the new feature in Dorico 3.5 that allows you to input notes specifying the pitch before locking in the duration.

Toolbox button, enable with K, basic operation (00:15)

Until now, the only way to input notes in Dorico was to first choose a duration, and then click or type the pitch to make the note appear.

Many people like having the option to do this the other way round, and it’s now possible in Dorico by way of this new toolbox button,

or by pressing the key command “K”.

[The note durations in the left palette will initially be greyed out in this mode.]

With Pitch before Duration enabled, when you type or play a note, you see a shadow note on the caret and you can freely change that note either by typing different pitch names, using Alt and the up and down arrow keys, or by playing different notes on your MIDI keyboard.

Once you have decided on the note you wish to input, click the desired duration in the Notes panel, or use the relevant key command and the note is created.

This gives you the freedom to experiment — especially when using a MIDI keyboard without the need to keep exiting note input.

The other Notes tools work as normal, for example, engage chord input when using a computer keyboard, or simply play chords on your MIDI keyboard.

Because choosing a duration will commit a note, when creating tuplets specify the tuplet unit in the popover; for example ā€˜3 in the time of 2 ā€œeā€ for eighth notes’.

If you’re not familiar with this method, which works with Dorico’s legacy input method as well, you might find it’s a real time-saver when working with tuplets.

Preferences (02:02)

If you think Pitch before Duration note input is going to be your preferred method of working in Dorico, you can set it to be the default. Open Preferences and switch to the Note Input and Editing category.

Dorico’s default is to specify pitch ā€˜After Duration’, but you can choose ā€˜Before Duration’ to always start projects with this new method active. You can always freely switch between the two input methods by toggling the toolbox button or by pressing K, whether note input is active or not.

As an extension to this feature, we’ve also added this next option which works with either method of note input. It allows you to add accidentals, rhythm dots and articulations to notes immediately after they have been input as opposed to having to set them before. For example, if I input this quarter note C, I can now sharpen it, make it dotted, and give it some articulations.

I do hope you have found this video helpful. If you have, please click the thumbs up button below to let me know you’ve liked it, and subscribe to the Dorico YouTube channel today to see many more videos like this one. I’m Anthony Hughes. Thanks for watching.



THIS POST HAS BEEN TRANSLATED:
Eingabe der Tonhƶhe vor dem Notenwert – eine der neuen Funktionen in Dorico 3.5


I hope you’ve found this tutorial transcription to be helpful, and appreciate your support OF NOTE by subscribing to this blog. For even more ongoing music notation news and info, please follow me on Twitter.
~robert puff

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