I have finally had a chance to try out Dorico and been impressed by the great care that has gone into its design and many of its features, particularly in the area of piano pedaling. However, it was not clear to me how to insert more complex piano fingering such as that illustrated in the accompanying example without using workarounds. The problems I encountered:
Large slurs used for finger interchanges over longer distances. I used normal slurs.
Small slurs used after and before single finger numbers also used to show finger interchanges over longer distances. I used the text tool.
Slurs used to show finger slides between two different notes. I used normal slurs.
Ability to put in alternative fingerings above each other separated by straight lines. I used text blocks and a pedal mark for the straight line.
Automatic placing of fingering in front of notes on the staff as well as over or below them. I did this by hand.
I did mention thins early on. At that time, they were not aware of this kind of notation but did say that putting it in the hopper for future development would be a good idea. When alternate fingerings get to be complex, it does read better. I even found an example where they angled one of the line to make space, but that’s an extreme case!
Alternate fingerings separated by horizontal lines has been requested in an earlier thread, to which Daniel responded that there are no plans to add such functionality. Hopefully, he’ll reconsider and put this on the list for the future.
As for John’s other points, these also seem like logical additions as the program matures. The current fingering tool, while rather basic, is a very good start and there doesn’t seem to be any inherent reason why any of these features cannot be added in the future. Fingerings within the staff will likely be added simultaneously with support for guitar fingerings (where this kind of placement is the norm rather than the exception). Other than that, I guess we’ll just have to have patience. Hopefully, the team won’t rule any of these features out.
Thanks for everyone’s support for this functionality. It is such an essential part of editing piano music, angled lines and all, and the workarounds so difficult to implement in Dorico (at least for me) that the lack of it will unfortunately prevent my use of the program.
I forgot one other item. The little bracket used to show notes played by one finger needs to be adjustable in length, because not only neighboring notes but two black keys a third apart can be played by the thumb, as Chopin discovered and made good use of. The bracket in my example is not quite long enough and not placed properly for this reason. Even three black or four white keys can be played by the thumb, a device used by Bartok and others.
I have to disagree that Dorico’s current fingering tool is “rather basic”. If Dorico’s fingering tool is “rather basic” then other programs’ features for fingering are positively paleolithic. Automatically handling things like deferred substitutions and cautionary fingering for keyboard music goes way beyond “rather basic” in my opinion.
It seems to me that the workarounds you had to employ, John, at least when it comes to drawing slurs, are no worse in Dorico than in any other software, so it seems odd to me that you would decide not to continue using Dorico for the lack of automatic support for this kind of notation, given that no other software has automatic support for it either! I do understand, of course, that it’s easier to employ workarounds in software that is basically designed to accommodate and indeed require workarounds than it is in software that is designed in the opposite way, and that is a short-term downside of our approach. I hope that in the long run it will prove to pay off, however.
We will make it possible to stack alternative fingerings above one another in a future update. Adding angled lines between them is more problematic, and not something we have scheduled at the moment, but I wouldn’t rule it out for some time in the future.
Thank you for your reply, Daniel. Dorico has great promise, and I certainly hope that the necessary functionality (including those adjustable fingering brackets) will be added to allow me to use it in the future. At this point, there are still things that it cannot do or are too cumbersome to do that are essential for my work, so I will need to bide my time. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to enjoy exploring the program over the few days that remain in my trial.
I don’t know about Sibelius these days, but in Finale, dedicated functionality for fingering is non-existent, so I’d say basic functionality in this regard is quite the improvement. Anyway, I certainly didn’t mean that this functionality in Dorico wasn’t good, or that it must have been a piece of cake to implement. I’m sorry if I gave that impression. I meant that stacking fingering numbers above each other automatically is the most basic problem to solve for such functionality (except for only being able to accommodate single notes, of course). The same thing goes for substitutions, IMO, as they are completely essential in piano music. In addition to this, however, Dorico supports simple editorial and alternative fingerings in brackets, which in my mind makes it rather basic as opposed to totally basic. No offence intended.
I can’t speak for John, but I think you’re hitting his main point when you acknowledge that workarounds are easier in software that is designed to accommodate them. Finale has it’s articulation tool, it’s smart shape tool and it’s metatools, which are all very useful when applying fingerings manually. Using the text tool in Dorico simply doesn’t compare; it is much more cumbersome.
To me, being able to apply and stack alternative fingerings is the most important aspect that John is asking for. As long as there is a line tool which can easily be used to apply the horizontal lines in between, I don’t see a very pressing need for this to be done automatically.
