Hi Fred,
I agree with you, I just have to get used to thinking differently
In the meantime, I changed the keypad numbers to match the Finale and Sibelius because I was making too many mistakes at speed
Since I don’t work as a score copier but orchestrate directly, I prefer to set the pitch before the duration to avoid unwanted input
Wouldn’t it have been more straightforward to enter the values normally with the dot and slurs without calculating anything else?
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When I switched to Dorico 5 years or so ago, I decided to spend one month to learn it with the defaults before diving in and customizing, so I forced myself to learn the Dorico durations. I now mess them up in Finale!
Agreed, I work the same way.
You obviously could enter these the standard way, with ties and dots, but it’s faster to do it the way I did it. Obviously to get to that level, you have to have been using Dorico long enough to know exactly how it will interpret your input given your settings and defaults. I’ve been using Dorico for a while, so I generally know what rhythmic groupings will be displayed with my given input and settings, and knew the way I input those would be faster. Obviously that will come with time and experience with the program as you get more comfortable with it.
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When I said
this is exactly what I meant.
Once you remember that the eighth tied to dotted quarter notes in FredGUnn’s example are just syncopated half notes, you can get on with entering half notes (one keypress for the pitch and another for the note value, reduced to solely the pitch once you’ve input one of them). This is substantially fewer keystrokes than entering an eighth, then a tie, then a quarter, then a dot, then repeating and repitching.
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Here another method (that sometimes can be very handy, especially with midi imports, etc…): using menu Write/Edit Duration/Extend To Next Note. No calculation needed 
:
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Yes, I’ve been using Extend to Selection in particular and it’s very helpful (have not yet used Extend to Next Note).
Off topic: how does one embed a video here? I’ve tried and it didn’t accept .mov files. Is there a specific video format required?
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Just change the file extension from .mov to .mp4.
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I’m always fascinated when I read this.
I’m firmly in the “pitch after duration” camp, but I also compose a ton in Dorico. I find no friction or difficulty in doing so. At least for me, I find that the amount I hit escape and enter to be less than the umpteen repeated keystrokes required every time I would actually want to enter in notes. Strings of 8ths or quarters (or any other value), for instance, are sooooo much faster it’s not even close.
In any case, I’m glad that the options are given so people can work how they prefer to work. But it does fascinate me. lol
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Understood. As a trackpad user, it’s very easy for me to inadvertently tap and enter unwanted notes, or forget I’m in duration-before-pitch mode when I try some things out on my synth. I used to make the same mistake at times in Finale if I had caps lock on (which is essentially duration before pitch).
Perfect; thank you
Me, too. 
Fascinating, yes.
Now here is something I had not considered. This is a fair point; I have MIDI keyboards both at work and at home, so this [largely] a non-issue for me since I’m not interacting with the mouse as I’m inputting.
I should clarify: I mainly use Dorico (as I did Finale) with a MIDI keyboard. But even so, I do use the trackpad a lot to select measures for various commands and if I accidentally touch a letter on my mac’s keyboard, it can happen. Hard for me to reproduce when I’m thinking about it, but it happens when I’m not thinking about it, in other words…
Here’s as simple 3 bar example. Let’s say I need to orchestrate this in 5-part harmony for a sax section:
A couple of workflow points: 1) I’m not just going to do it in my head, or on paper first, I’m going to use notation software. 2) I’m not going to work strictly left to right, rather I’m going to voice the “important” emphasized chords first, then figure out what passing chords I’m going to use to get there. With these caveats in mind, I can extend the cursor through the section, play whatever I want on my MIDI keyboard and never have to ever leave the input caret until I’m done. I can go from the example above to this …
… to this, all without leaving the input caret:
I tried out lot of various voicings and passing chords, but never once left the input caret, which I kept extended through the entire section. After I finished the 3 bar phrase, I tested the playback (which then leaves the caret) and it’s fine:
Without being able to stay in pitch first input, I would have had to leave the input caret to test any voicing, then restart it again. And if I forgot to leave it, then I would input a bunch of nonsense potentially overwriting existing voicings too as I’m not working strictly left to right. Pitch first input is simply way faster from a compositional workflow standpoint and many fewer keystrokes as I’m not leaving and restarting input all the time. This was just 3 bars, if it was a 300 bar arrangement, duration first would be thousands of extra keystrokes.
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Out of curiosity: how do you press the note value if you’re playing a large two octave chord with two hands?
You don’t need to keep the keys down in pitch before duration (in Dorico, at least).
Find the chord you want, then take your hands off the MIDI keyboard and type the rhythmic value.
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Yeah, as Leo said, once you hit the notes on your MIDI keyboard, they will appear in gray as Dorico awaits for the value to be input. The glitchy thing is that Dorico only interprets the gray notes in the clef of top instrument, regardless of the actual clef being used, so you can get an odd appearance like this:
I’m not usually looking at the gray notes anyway, so it’s a non-issue for me, but something that probably should be addressed at some point.
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Thank you @FredGUnn for sharing your composing workflow for such situation. I learned something new, and can see the advantages of PBD for such cases.
And by the way, nice spicy passing chords there 
(Is very interesting and fascinating, for me, to see different people’s approach in using the various functionalities adapting the workflow to their particular needs.)
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Thanks! After 30 years now, I’m really, really fast at pitch-first input, probably just a tenth of a second or so between hitting the pitch and duration, but I’m willing to concede that it should be possible for an experienced duration-first copyist to be faster than I am at inputting a straight up copy job from an existing manuscript. I almost never use duration-first, but even I will switch to it occasionally for an etude or something.
I’ve just never understood how a composition workflow using a MIDI keyboard can possibly be faster with duration-first than pitch-first. Unless it’s completely worked out in your head, you’re working from a pencil manuscript, or you’re writing a single line of all eighth notes, I’ve just never seen a demonstration that shows how duration-first can compete in speed once you need to use your MIDI keyboard for actual composition. A two keyboard setup with one MIDI keyboard for composition and one for input would be faster probably, but awfully impractical for most users. If you need to use a single keyboard for both composition and input, the time wasted switching between those two modes with duration-first far exceeds any time savings on the input side of things. With pitch-first, those two modes are the same, so there’s no time wasted between composition and input. Work out the line / voicing / whatever and you’re already in input mode ready to input it.
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