Hi everyone, just saying hi. I’m a 30+ year guitar player who started out with Finale when I was no more than 14 or 15 years old, back in the days of installing the software on floppy disks that arrived in the mail.
Bought the crossgrade last Christmas along with the Udemy course but never got around to learning it and kept working in Finale until a handful of weeks ago (when I decided it was time to begin making the change official).
I’m learning a ton in the course and on my 71st page of handwritten notes as I go along, enter notes, and learn the popovers, shortcuts, and menus. A lot of things so far I like more than Finale out of the gate, but because I’m a guitar player, I’m not sure yet about some of the specific guitar aspects (just quit training for the night on the Infographic section in the Udemy course, where we’re creating a Guitar Tablature notation legend).
I instantly don’t like that there is no way to create brackets around natural or artificial harmonics. Usually I would notate parts in Finale with the artificial harmonic in the TAB shown such that the artificial harmonic fret number was enclosed in right/left brackets (and have seen this many times in other publications, as I’ve done a fair amount of transcription work in life).
But all the other aspects of Dorico, at least the ones taught in the Udemy course, have won me over so far. Sure I’ll also have strong opinions when it comes to chords and diagrams, but I haven’t gotten that far yet to know if it’ll be “I love this,” or “Oh no.”
Regardless, excited to learn more as things unfold.
Welcome! I don’t play guitar, so unfortunately, I can’t address your concerns. But the Dorico team does read every post here and responds occasionally. You can identify them by the Steinberg logo in their user icon. So, if you make a feature request, it will be heard. Of course, there is no guarantee that the request will be accepted and/or prioritized.
There are a lot of users here, and if there’s a workaround for what you’re trying to accomplish, chances are good that someone will have already thought of a way.
One of Dorico’s greatest features is the team’s responsiveness to user requests. If you could post some screenshots of what you’re after, I’m sure that would be helpful to them in adding the capability.
Otherwise, there may be a way to fake it with a workaround, for the time being.
Glad you’re enjoying Dorico.
It seems there’s as many opinions on chords as there are users…!
Hi all, thanks for the replies…I’ve been pre-occupied with finishing the Udemy course on Dorico. Took about 3-weeks of moving slowly, 5-nights per week into wee early morning hours while writing out hand-written notes from the course. By the time I finished last night I had 91 pages with pencil sprawled all over the pages. My hope is that the combination of watching, then doing, then writing down by hand has hopefully driven a bit of the material into the sub-conscious for muscle-memory development. Recall I’m migrating after 30 years on Finale, but not that old either, as I started Finale when I was a 12 or 13 year old kid. So at 43 I am re-training with Dorico.
I think from here I’m bound to take the course all over again from the start, moving faster through it the second time, without taking all the handwritten notes all over again. This is my plan to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
Past that, I could certainly get better at engraving practices, and he mentions Behind Bars at the end of the video. Bear in mind though that I’m doing this from a guitar player perspective so I’m not scoring orchestral works….
Any user feedback on Behind Bars by Elaine Gould? Worth an order?
I have both a hard copy and the Kindle version. The latter is very cool because I always have it with me, although the book is quite a beautiful object in its own right.
I know some smaller versions have been edited recently, but, I would stick to the original one…
I don’t think Behind Bars will help you much. It’s enough to know that Dorico follows most of the Behind Bars conventions and they are widely accepted.
Thank you. Thinking about this then. Here’s a basic question since I have no experience with that book and see it’s huge….
What’s the best way to work through it? Do people read it academically cover to cover, or more so use it as a reference? It’s available at my alma mater library so I guess I could “audition” it first to see if I’d find it useful. I never got into orchestral scoring or crafting large scores. Just guitar transcriptions for a really long time. BUT….I’m always looking to up my game and get better at everything at all times, so I’m easily convinced.
Thanks. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing…forgetting Finale altogether and learning Dorico as a completely new entity. Thus the learning curve but I think it’s a better approach overall and am following it through. So I haven’t even cracked the Finale refugees resources. Instead I’ve just been going through the Udemy course and then have started “practicing” by re-building from scratch old notations found from my childhood guitar teacher’s old chord melody arrangements, copying stuff over from the Berklee (Leavitt) method, and so forth. I’m hopeful that approaching it this way will get me further along faster than" “Finale did it this way, how does Dorico do it that way?” I’m sort of forgetting Finale altogether to learn Dorico, as you’d advised!
Many here have Behind bars. I too have it on Kindle and the book (I like reading books, not Kindles!) Feel free to search for other book reference threads as there are other books which are recommended, depending on what you are doing.
For me, I did not read Behind Bars from cover to cover, although I started to do so. It sticks in your mind more if you simply look up whatever you are doing at the time for guidance, or anything that looks interesting (which is why a book is better, you can just flick through it and start reading something.) For me, everything is interesting in that book.
If you are wanting to up your game, then it’s a great way to start. The Kindle version might have a Sample so you have an idea of what is in it, or you might find a review on YouTube. It is unlikely you will regret it. Unfortunately there is not much for guitar, Classical guitar section is about 17 pages (if you are doing classical guitar engraving), but there is information on placement, clarity, slurs and lots more if you happen to venture outside guitar into other instruments (especially if you do not play many other instruments ) It’s a very detailed book.
That’s a good idea - with one caveat - please DO NOT WORRY about replicating the layouts.
First get yourself proficient doing the basic tasks of entering notes, understanding voices, tuplets, chord symbols etc. All the layout stuff can be sorted out later!
And if you get stuck - ask questions here before you get frustrated.
Thanks. I’m working late at night usually. Since the Udemy course already taught me a lot about layout, I have actually been attempting to recreate the layouts but only after entering the notes, chords, articulations, dynamics, tempos, etc. into galley view. Then refining layout with Layout Options and going into Engrave mode for fine tuning….
I did run into one very specific issue last week but didn’t have time to post the question.
Probably deserves a new and separate thread. It seems I should be able to hide the root on a chord in succession where the only thing that changes is the quality (i.e. F to Maj7 to 7), but it doesn’t seem to be working when I do use the options panel (Cmd-8) to hide the root on the chord name.
Won’t have time to post photos until later but that is an immediate issue I’m still trying to find out how to do.
Just watched a YouTube livestream on guitar notation and starting to get my feet wet. While searching for some information, wow there are some seriously irritable Finale migrants and guitar players on this forum. Won’t mention the thread I found (and had seen many similar ones on the MakeMusic boards after the announcement last year). I’ll probably have to start some new threads to keep my forthcoming questions organized. Thanks for the replies and welcome here though!
) It’s a very detailed book.