In Finale, it’s possible to flow the entire lyric into the score (option-click the first syllable while in Click Assignment mode)
I’m reading the Dorico manual, and it appears that although you could copy/paste the entire lyric into the Popover, you still have to do a keyboard action for every syllable’s assignment.
Is that correct? Or is there some other shortcut for this?
This aspect of Dorico is still a bit behind Finale, in my opinion. Your best bet for a comparable function is syllable-by-syllable paste, as you discovered. But even there, if you mess up on a melisma, you have to re-copy the lyrics starting at that point and begin again where you left off (if that makes sense).
I never use this paste function personally. Too easy to mess up. I always type directly into the score. It works well enough for me; I’ve done about 12,000 scores in Dorico, most of them hymns with lots of lyrics. And there are some decent export features for the lyrics.
Again, it really hasn’t been an issue for my workflow, though I would still like to see a robust Dorico equivalent to click-assign. The only other lyric function that I find lacking in flexibility is lyric extenders: namely, the ability to create one at any spot, even if Dorico thinks there shouldn’t be one (because the lyric is attached to a non-melisma note). Everything else has been elegant and very, very easy to work with once you learn how to do it.
1 Like
While a one-click solution might be nice, I find that if your music contains any melismas, you would have to prepare the lyrics beforehand with sufficient spaces (and invariably getting it wrong and having to re-do it), that the total time spent was exactly the same as Dorico’s individual tap – or even typing the lyrics in, when you consider getting the lyrics in the first place and hyphenating them.
You can, however, select the lyrics (either by careful lasso-ing, or using the Filter) and then copy and paste them to new locations. Alt-click also works, like in Finale, to paste the current selection.
1 Like
And for contrast I have almost always used the paste-a-syllable-at-a-time method in both Sibelius and Dorico for the past 20+ years, even though I was used to Finale’s methods before that. For music with multiple verses such as hymns it is very useful to watch as they go in, and the rhythm of pasting and extending goes right along with how you sing them.
I made keyboard shortcuts for Filter Lyrics and Duplicate to Staff Below very early on.
3 Likes
I’ve been preparing lyrics in a text editor, and been using Juicio Brennan’s Lyric Hyphenator for years, then click-assign all, and then use the move lyrics tools to accommodate melismas, finding that it goes quickly. I’ve been using Ace Studio for AI vocals, which has one-shot paste-then-adjust behavior similar to Finale, so it shouldn’t be that much of a leap to add the feature. Replacing the pasted lyric in the Popover sounds like it’s not a major issue… I’ll be seeing how it goes! Thanks much for your reply on this!
1 Like
Ah yes, Juicio Brennan. Lifesaver!
@jonburr Tell me more… what is this???
1 Like
OK, this sounds good. At least Dorico can sniff the hyphens, and it requires you to address melisma adjustments where they occur, rather than having to go back and fix em all, as in Finale. Thank you for your reply !
Here’s a wee article on the subject… it functions in standalone, VST and ReWire. Not release quality, except possibly for background vocs, but presentable for mockups
ACE Studio on Arranger for Hire
Thank you for your reply !
Cool. Have you tried Cantamus.app?
1 Like
No! Investigating… This sounds awesome. English voices!
yep, that sounds like the one!
Thanks for the headsup! 
Very cool, vastly better than ACE - although a bit limited, but great out-of-the box. You could spend 3 days using ACE’s comprehensive (?) editing tools and still end up with a vocal sounding like a 19-yo Taiwanese…
At least you can understand most of the lyrics in Mandamus ! And it’s cheap.