Chords

Is there some trick to entering lots of chords quickly that I’m missing? It just seems incredibly awkward. It seems in chord mode it would be much better if right moved you the current note duration to the right, rather than one rhythmic grid unit.

Assuming you’re using the alphabetic keys on your keyboard, you hit Q to start chord input, then build the chord bottom up, then hit Space when you want to move on to the next position. It will advance to the next rhythmic position immediately following the chord you entered, as if you had input a single note and Dorico was advancing the caret on its own.

I really liked it to enter chords by marking your note and pressing numbers in Sibelius. In combination with direct playback i could enter chords quickly by ear.

Yes, I agree that being able to specify notes by interval would also be a useful addition to the current system.

Talking about chords and Sibelius, I have a couple of questions.

If I transpose a single note within a chord using key commands - what will I hear when I use the key command? Will I hear only that note, or will I hear it together with the other chord notes. I prefer to hear all the notes, so I hope this works - including when I use the piano staff. If I remember right, this only works for one clef at a time in Sibelius.

If I have a sequence of chords on a piano track, and use Dorico’s “go to next” key command (whatever it’s called in Dorico), will I be able to hear all the notes in these chords each time I move left or right?

Entering chords is one of my biggest problems too. It would be nice to be able to select a passage and hit “8” in order to add octaves to all the selected notes or other intervals with different numbers. I also find it a bit annoying that you don’t only have to enter each note of the chord manually, but that the rhythmic value needs to be specified too. Very strange and not intuitive for me, although I can see its usefulness in rare cases. The default behaviour should rather be to add notes with the value of the “base notes”. I hope that the Dorico team will add useful and timesaving ways to quickly transform single notes into chords. Also some kind of bulk selection of notes inside chords (e.g. all the 2nd or 3rd notes etc.) would be nice (I used this feature so much in Sibelius).

But I don’t want to enter this forum with complaining and requesting only. :wink: My heartfelt thanks go to the geniuses behind Dorico and to Daniel for his amazing commitment and communication with the users. I also thank my colleagues who have contributed so many helpful questions, comments and solutions.

HI guys, yes, another happy Dorico user here, seeing it’s wonderful potential already, and as someone already mentioned, I don’t want to come out of the gates with complaints, but I’m sure Daniel and the team won’t take it personally. In fact I’m sure they were expecting it.

I absolutely agree, that the interval input was on of the great features of Sibelius. Having a bass note, and then building up from there. Especially in regards to more contemporary composition where the pitches were not on my mind, but the intervals. For instance if I am working on a piece that incorporates ‘set theory’, I much liked the idea of adding based on numbers. I just did a little test, using write mode in Dorico: I selected a horizontal group of notes, and pressed [shift +2] and nothing happened. Both in input mode and out. This would lead me to believe that this simple keystroke is not being used for anything. (I tried it from 1-8). Could it not be easily inputed in a future update?
Thanks for the great work.

Dear Aleos,

I have the feeling you are just trying out Dorico for little hours…
You can add notes by interval using the proper tool for that, in Write mode (Add notes above or below in Write menu)
Simple keystrokes ARE used for other things. In write mode, if you select notes and press shift+2, you might well transform all these notes in 64ths ! if you don’t press shift, then you will have dotted (pizz) notes…
Try some more this new software, it takes some time to leave old habits we all have, but it’s worth it because this new stuff has a lot to offer. Do not forget the guys who wrote Sibelius are the (almost) the same in this team, so they KNOW what they have done some years ago, and we could give them some credit when they DECIDE to do otherwise now.

Dear Marc, I couldn’t understand your point of view. I miss this functionality very much as well. Dorico has lots of things Sibelius does not have, but why not to take from Sibelius something, what was so useful. I understand, just pressing 2 or 3 in a write mode will change a length of the note, but for example Alt+2 or Ctrl+2 or even Shift+2 in write mode are just not used. Why not to implement such useful tool. Last night I had to create quickly one sheet for piano, so I had to choose Sibelius instead of Dorico just because of this functionality.
I understand just pressing Alt+2 or Ctrl+2 or Shift+2 etc in a write mode would be probably out of a concept, because in order to write a chord you have to activate a chord tool (Shortcut Q). But any way after doing this, these commands are still not used. I would appreciate very much if your team would discuss it once more. It would saves for user a lot of time…

For what it’s worth, Marc isn’t on the Dorico development team – he’s just a very active member of this community (and a valued one at that).

I have already said that I agree it would be useful for Dorico to have this functionality, and I have a good idea about how we should implement it, but we haven’t had a chance to do this yet. Hopefully we’ll be able to do so in the relatively near future.

Dear mipi,

I actually agree with you, as for now :wink: and with Daniel too ! I am sure they will find something faster that going to the menu and “Write notes above/under” which is clearly way longer than a keystroke or two !

… and, if it is in a menu, can we create our own short-cuts?