Tip: Double or halve durations of selected notes

by Anthony Hughes | Feb 2, 2021 | Tutorials | 4 comments

1. Quickly double or halve note durations for selected music.
2. Use the Write > Edit Duration menu items to double or halve the note durations instantly.
3. With Insert mode enabled, lengthened notes will not overwrite each other, and no gaps will be left between shortened notes.
4. Add your key commands to make these functions even more accessible.

4 Comments

Thomas Hewins on January 5, 2024 at 7:07 pm

Whoo! That has made my day!
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Victor on January 23, 2024 at 12:43 am

This function is terrible, it takes forever to do it and it does it wrong, specially when there are triples or odd time signatures, I always have to export XML do it in Sibelius with the “double notes” icon and import it back again.
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- Derek Williams on January 14, 2025 at 3:16 am
  
  Try Halve Note Values in Sibelius, then export MusicXML back to Dorico.
  Reply
Derek Williams on January 14, 2025 at 3:21 am

First please note: when I tried initially to post this comment, and clicked the Gravatar link in the ‘Display a Gravatar image next to my comments’, instead of opening in a new window, my entire post was erased and so this is me typing it over from scratch. I recommend that contents of this page be saved if branched away from, or better, that clicking the Gravatar link open a new Tab or Window.

Now to my question:
I want to halve both the note values and time signatures in a piece I am currently orchestrating that is written in 2/2, 3/2, 4/2, 5/2 metres, such that the entire score shrinks to be in 2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/4 respectively but sounds exactly the same. For example, let’s say there was a score in 4/4 time and there was a bar filled with 8 quavers, that this could be shrunk to be a bar in 4/8 time filled with 8 semiquavers.

I have attempted steps outlined in this video, and from a posts in Steinberg forum ‘How to halve the time signature?’ https://forums.steinberg.net/t/how-to-halve-the-time-signature/127610/8 but only the notes halve, not the time signature. Moreover, a triplet of quavers instead of halving to become a triple of semiquavers as one would logically expect, became the following:
dotted semiquaver, then two demisemiquavers tied together, then a semiquaver, then a demisemiquaver tied to a dotted semiquaver, then another demisemiquaver tied to a dotted semiquaver, and the ‘triplet’ was over a beaming that exceeded the expected three pitches and trespassed on notes after it.

This is possible in Sibelius using Halve Note Values, which exactly halves all note values including tuplets, the time signatures, and shrinks the entire score to half its value, such that it plays back exactly the same. How can I achieve this in Dorico?
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