To add to what David Bailey wrote about Dorico: You can set your own keyboard shortcuts to be just about anything, and you can easily change the ones they provide. I changed the durations shortcuts to match Finale’s (so I don’t have to relearn from nearly 30 years of Finale practice). I moved the enharmonic change (among other things) to match Finale. I’ll keep tweaking their shortcuts to match my learned instincts.
David B talks about moving between Write and Engrave mode. That’s just cmd-2 and cmd-3. Writing is for putting in notes, dynamics, slurs, adding cautionaries, while Engraving is for moving things around from their default positions and general page layout. There are also modes for Setup, Play, and Print. In the first release, there was no vertical staff adjustment, but that’s been added in the first update, while note and measure horizontal adjustment is coming soon. So, for me, now that I have a sense of how the program works, my workflow is virtually the same as Finale simple entry for note input (both midi and keyboard typing). Slurs and dynamics and articulations (which can be put in as you go or later without tool switching) are fast and easy, and kind of like Sibelius. Tuplets are a different process, but easy and very flexible (nesting is easy if you want it): you set the underlying duration, type ; then x:x (where x are your numbers), hit return, and enter the notes. Triplets are just entering 3. The program isn’t ready for real work. Lots of basic notational things still aren’t possible or they require work-arounds. Dozens of things are promised and should be coming in the next 6 months or so. Playback, even with Garriton (which is possible but took some effort to get to work) is still pretty bad but they say will improve. There has been one free upgrade (a good one) and another promised by the end of the year. They are meeting their announced deadlines. Right now, they have a demo download to try out. I’d say in about 6-12 months, this could be a genuine contender. The thing that REALLY stands out, right now, is the general spacing algorithms. I have yet to find a situation where I would want to respace notes or move measures around (except for page turns), even in highly complex music. This all constantly recalculates as you enter things, though you can freeze systems and pages if you want. The look is quite beautiful, general choices they’ve made quite good ones. They are listening closely to the early adopters, and making long fix-it lists they are telling us about, sometimes as the developers fix them. Daniel Spreadbury reads EVERY post on the forum, and responds unless someone else chimes in first with accurate information. The potential for wonderfulness is also in the way they have conceived layout. I haven’t figured out the fancy things, but generally speaking, music is in “flows.” Those might be separate movements, but also could be anything. The flows generate automatic parts. In Engraving mode, you can create and position music “frames” and text “frames” any way you want. Then you can associate any flow or part from a music flow into any music frame. So, for example, you could write a 4-hand piece for piano with the pno 1 on the right facing page, pno 2 on the left facing page — nothing to fix or tweak except the page turns (which is easy to do). It is strange notating without thinking about meter — but the music in Dorico really is just a long stream that isn’t connected (behind the scenes) to bars. You can put in or take out barlines, add or change meters, whatever you want. The music re-notates as you go in something that is usually more-than acceptable — or you can fairly easily override the details. But you can also just set a meter and go or change meters whenever you like. If you change meter so that, for example a 4/4 ending with a half note is now a 3/4, it automatically becomes tied 1/4 notes, AND vice versa. 16ths are automatically regrouped according to the preferences you can set up. I never took to Sibelius, and as a Finale user since version 1, I think there is nothing I can’t do in Finale. I have a real sense of its ins and outs and behind-the-scenes brains (or lack thereof). I was surprised, though, how, at least for me, Dorico was not too tough to begin to learn. I would not yet want to start a serious project in Dorico, and when I prepare classroom stuff, I go to Finale first. At least for now. But it is conceivable to me that in two years, I might be a dedicated Dorico person. I say this almost completely because of the spacing algorithm. I became aware of how much time I spend tweaking that in Finale when, expecting bad results that would need fixing, Dorico instead did it right the first time. If they got this SO right in v. 1, it makes me expect that they will get a lot of other things right down the line. The cost for educational crossgrade is pretty cheap ($179?). The non-educational crossgrade is not a lot more. Full cost is expensive, but competitive. Copy protection is fierce (only one computer OR a USB dongle — your choice), but not hard to get a new install if you change computers or have a computer crash. I have no idea what upgrades will cost, nor how often they’ll come, but Daniel S says the first six months, at least, will be free upgrades for the version 1 people. My other hope is that Finale will note and respond to the challenge, as they did when Sibelius emerged fully on the market. Competition in this field isn’t great for the company bottom lines but it is pretty great for the consumers. Anyone with specific Dorico questions can feel free to write to me personally. I’m not affiliated with Dorico in any way. I just am excited about their product. David Froom dfr...@smcm.edu _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu https://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale To unsubscribe from finale send a message to: finale-unsubscr...@shsu.edu
