Dear mipi,
I understand your concern. You probably know that, but I write it for the sake of new users who might not know it : you are one key-press away from the solution. When you select a note, press enter (to enter note entry mode) and watch the caret, and specifically the little note on the left base of the caret. It will show if it is a downstem or upstem voice, and its number.
A big thumbs-up from me to the Dorico team for their implementation of Voices.
I’m currently working on a major unpublished romantic work for piano and cello. Believe me, the voices in the piano part are legion and complicated. However, everything is going fine after a tip from StefanF about resetting voice directions.
A combination of keyboard shortcuts, colours and Starts/Ends voice has let me do everything. Wouldn’t object to the following at some point:
Keyboard shortcuts for setting “Starts/Ends Voice” parameters to avoid having to use the mouse
Being able to set the colours of the different voices (colourblind anyone?)
Ties between voices being slightly better
Exposing the Voices definitions in a window to manage them
A big thumbs up from me too. I LOVE how voices work in Dorico. And I especially love not being limited to only 4. I do a lot of piano and organ music and I couldn’t be happier with the easy way you can add or subtract a voice whenever you need to; you can stay in note input mode and change voices very easily; “remove rests” is one of the best inventions ever… The whole experience is so fluid and easy. I have set shortcuts to turn voice colors on and off which is very convenient. I too deal with “legion” parts on the regular.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw one of the official pre-V1-release blog posts showing a Bach keyboard part. How well everything auto-adjusted and how the voices were handled. I was giddy. To my delight, Dorico has lived up to my every hope in that regard.
I also enjoy how easy it is to change which voice notes are in if you accidentally input them into the wrong one. Highlight, right click, change to upstem/downstem voice X and you’re done. 2 seconds. Love it.
I do wish that when entering with the caret active the little voice guide note to the left was SLIGHTLY larger. It’s somewhat difficult to see, especially on a higher resolution monitor. ’Tis a tiny little thing, for as important as it is.
What is your display scaling set to?
I’ve been on a 4K laptop for about a year now, and only recently did I set a higher display scaling percentage. I’m much more pleased with the legibility of things like menus and panels and such. Same with Dorico interface: the items are larger and easier to distinguish, particularly the caret thingie you’re referring to.
I used to care which voice I was in (Finale mindset), but with Dorico I only care wether it’s up or down. This has never bitten me.
There are times in complex keyboard parts where you do need to “plan ahead” (especially if there are weird things like slurs ending in the middle of a chain of tied notes, not on the first or last note!) and when you have already created 5 or 6 voices on a staff, you probably don’t want to have any more - but most of the time I agree with you, because unlike Finale or Sibelius, different voices don’t have different pre-defined rules for note spacing, etc.
You do have to be careful… Sometimes roque rests can appear if you inadvertently open a voice, enter in that same voice a few measures later without applying the correct properties in the measure before the break. Thankfully “remove rests” and the “ends voice immediately” options make for easy fixes, but you still have to be vigilant whenever you have more than 3 voices.
I have a shortcut for remove rests. Other than that I really don’t seem to need to be careful. I’m sure I could think up something that would bite, but in my day to day work I don’t think about it anymore, as long as the stems go the right way.