Hi! I understand things are likely hectic with many people switching from Finale right now, but I wanted to ask if it would be possible to add an option to change the direction of chord input in a future update. Currently, the default is to start with the bottom note and add notes above it. However, it would save me a lot of time if I could switch the input direction to move down instead of up. Having to manually shift each note down an octave gets a bit tedious. Thanks!
I don’t remember anybody requesting this before. Could you say more about why you find it hard to input chords from the lower notes to the higher ones?
You can also specify that you want to input a lower note rather than a higher one as your input notes, rather than having to add them, then shift their octave down.
Thank you so much! After using Dorico for a year, I just learned that key shortcut. Also, to answer Daniel’s question, for some reason, my brain prefers to build chords top-down when composing. I recognize it is quite weird and am 100% aware most if not all people would find this abhorrent.
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It’s not unheard of. Some choral directors prefer the piano accompanist to build a chord from the top down before starting.
For entering notes using the alphanumeric keys, for chords and/or melodies, I find all those modifier keys pretty unwieldy, considering how often they’re required. Double-tapping A to mean ‘the second closest A in either direction’ would be my second-favourite-ever feature after the dotted note double-tap.
Never really thought about this, but I would imagine it would be very useful when voicing out/filling out harmonies from the melody note in a top voice down. I’m immediately thinking of jazz arranging, but it would really benefit any tonal music I suppose. I’ve been checking out a few of Elliot Deutsch’s videos, and a few of them show how he harmonzies from the top down (like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSfNLJuAYSg). Would probably be a useful flow!
Has this been fixed in Dorico 6 (is there now an option to change the direction of chord input where you can start with top note and go down, rather than the default?
Isn’t this solved by using the virtual piano keyboard in the lower panel, to select whichever pitch you want, in whichever order you want?
That’s got to be faster than remembering which meta-key you need for up/down the octave. And of course, an actual MIDI keyboard, where you can enter the chord in one go, is always going to be faster than any scheme on the computer keyboard.
There are arguments against adding complexity with different combinations of modes of input: pitch before, top down, dot after…
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