After about 40 years using Finale, and specialising in Avant garde music of complex notation, I have taken a look at Dorico. It is clearly a serious tool and a contender for that “top spot”. Yesterday I gave myself a real challenge, to reproduce in Dorico a page of a score that I had recently set in Finale. I chose a page that I thought would be a challenge, but not impossible, or maybe a few details would be insurmountable. It took nearly 8 hours (mostly due to my learning and unfamiliarity with Dorico to be fair). maybe future versions of Dorico will allow more fluidity. But, the bottom line is I (we) did it.
Congratulations, Peter, for taking the plunge at the deep end!
I’d wager that’s not a straightforward score in any app.
Many users find there comes a moment of epiphany, when they suddenly ‘get’ the thinking behind the way that everything works – e.g. all objects of duration working in a similar way – after which, it becomes more like second nature.
That’s about the time that engraving a single metal plate would usually take!
Definitely, I remember. And a page of Notaset. But we’re not comparing to 50 year old technology now, of course. I have to compare it to Finale. In Finale the bar set up, cast off and first page took 90 minutes. After that about an hour per page. So that’s the benchmark now. Given that I keep wasting time with mistakes, then can’t remember which menu item for which setting, etc, etc. I can foresee getting down to about 3 hours. Maybe quicker. It’s not a good comparison, so who knows. The thing that bugs me most is accidentally double clicking in Engraver mode, not realising what I’d done, then ploughing on without watching the screen enough. It’s a challenge, but I always liked challenges.
OK, I see. So they have to be created as Playing Techniques within Dorico and then they can be grouped and joined by an arrow (for example). I’ll do some tests on that until I can use it comfortably. Thanks for the steps.
I’ve go the arrows working by grouping the playing techniques, thanks.
I’ve not yet found hw to keep them grouped in the same document without arrows (I don’t always need them, but I’ll work it out from here. That’s a great tip, thanks
Now I can create a playing technique with a blank space and join the blank space with any line design, creating a long repeat of them matched to the noteheads that I choose to attach the invisible space to. This opens up a huge scope of future possibilities. Great help, many thanks
