I’ve been attempting to learn Dorico since Dorico 2, when I first purchased it. I spent weeks trying to master it sufficiently that I could actually use it on a project. The problem was, firstly, that I’m old. A pencil sharpener was my biggest piece of technology for years. Then I learned Finale and got really good with it. Then I changed to Sibelius about 15 years ago as I grew increasingly frustrated with Finale. Then, finally, I heard about Dorico and decided to give it a try out of frustrations I had with Sibelius. I found it extremely difficult to get my head around it and gave up many times. One of the problems for me being the huge volume of arranging I have all the time and the tight deadlines I have to work to. There just isn’t time to stop and look up instructions or videos every few minutes. For some strange reason, a little voice in the back of my head has kept niggling at me to not give up on Dorico and I’ve kept coming back to it - just a bit, year after year. I purchased all the latest versions so now have version 6.
Well, I’ve finally broken through and completed an entire project, several weeks of work, only using Dorico. And now, I can confidently say I’ve come to love it. The other day I went back in to Sibelius as a comparison and, whilst I don’t hate it, I definitely now prefer Dorico.
So, thanks to all of you who have suffered my frustration ‘rant’s’ and jumped in to help simmer down my fried brain. I now happily announce to people that I am a Dorico user - and I honestly never thought I’d see that day.
It’s probably fanciful - but just ‘letting go’ at times in the knowledge that - if it can be done at all - Dorico can almost certainly do it. And do it naturally, reliably and successfully.
At least, that’s what I’ve found in the almost ten years since I switched from Sibelius (which I first used on Acorn hardware!) to Dorico.
I have been notating on paper recently. From time to time my left hand rises up to key command Save. Hmmm it’s automatically saving—weird thing that pencil (Blackwing with a basic “undo” on the top (eraser)).
Thanks for the memories Phil!
I’ve kind of gone back to pencil more, in the sense that I got a new M3 based iPad with plenty of space and an Apple Pencil, and It’s been a serving of Humble Pie for me too - in the sense that I didn’t understand what Dorico on the iPad can do if you give it a fighting chance.
No it certainly does not replace Dorico Pro for me. But it’s like a whole other tool now, and I can’t overstate the impact it’s had on opening up my creative process. It is a combination of several things - the more Mac like split screen/multiple windows, the pencil being accurate down to a single pixel and not covering up the thing I’m trying to select like my finger did. A growing choice of AuV3 instruments, and a USB C hub with power delivery to drive - whatever. Are you listening Spitfire? Hint hint…
I like the pencil experience for the inviting creative feel, for not spending every minute of the day at my desk yet doing more. And the time at my desk is more focused.
I didn’t reinstall Sibelius when I changed computers just over a year ago. I wouldn’t use it myself having long since converted all my Sibelius files to Dorico and the need to look at scores written in Sibelius is minimal (if it’s really necessary, I ask for a MusicXML export). And if I did have to use it, I probably wouldn’t remember either. Still, I have friends who have not yet switched --despite my efforts to persuade them – because they can’t face the learning curve (which is steep in Dorico for many people, myself included) or have even purchased Dorico but don’t yet use it regularly. And I myself sometimes forget how to use features which are buried deep in sub-menus which I haven’t used in a while.
I’m not going to get into silly arguments about whether Dorico is intuitive or not but we shouldn’t forget that many have a genuine struggle to master the software. For me, all that counts is whether it produces the goods or not and the fact it does it better than the competition is the reason I use it. And presumably the reason others use it as well.
I think we often forget how much knowledge we have built up in the software that we use, and that moving to any new software requires learning afresh.
The upheaval and effort – particularly for Finale users, who didn’t necessarily ‘volunteer’ to make the change – is real, but as you’ve discovered, the joy of being able to command the software to our will is at least as palpable.
I’ve spent lots of time gnashing my teeth trying to come to terms with the Affinity suite after decades of using Adobe’s apps, before becoming familiar with it; and I’m now trying to learn various other Steinberg apps, like Cubase, Wavelab and full HALion, all of which are not without impediment. To say nothing of occasional forays into Xcode.
In the words of Thomas Edison: The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
very true! I must admit that one reason I rarely use Cubase – despite having it installed – is because I can hardly remember how to use it any more except for certain standard things like producing audio mixdowns. Probably it helps that Dorico can do almost everything so I have little use for Cubase – though as integration gets gradually closer, there may be more incentive in the future.
As for Adobe, I’m planning to ditch them as well, though the only thing of interest there is photography apps and I find that ON1 does enough without needing to get into Affinity at all.
How good it is to hear your experiences of learning Dorico. I have been upgrading (up to 5), and I am still trying to understand the weird ways in which Dorico seems to perform in the ways wanted, until by accident it seems to know what is needed. I am still struggling in the early undergrowth of Dorico, many times trying to understand what is going on, but perseverance seems to be the answer. I will keep your story in mind while still using pencil and paper !
I still, after well over 30 years, remember how difficult it was to learn Finale — and I was a computer geek! The shift to Dorico took a little time, yes, maybe about a week doing the first steps and reading a year or two’s worth of posts here on the forum. By the end of two weeks, I felt very comfortable with Dorico and started to forget how to do things in Finale!
Finale, for me, was only difficult in the very beginning… until I learned one very important trick: I kept the (5!) manuals in my bathroom in a “reading basket”. No kidding. My wife would have to bang on the door sometimes to get me to stop reading.
The point is, software companies have forgotten the truly amazing thing about printed manuals–they’re easy to browse and study anywhere at any time. Sure, I can look things up on my phone, when necessary, but nothing beats just browsing through a hardcopy manual.
Boomers like me might be the last generation that appreciates this simple truth. And no offense to the guys making those awesome tutorial videos, but they are a poor substitute for the joy of just discovering a new function or novel use for an old one on your own.
That joy of discovery is what kept me going back, day after day, while I struggled with Finale. If my struggle with Dorico had been just as bad, I don’t think I would have persevered to finish my first band piece, let alone my twelfth (so far) without a printed manual.
Boomers are not the last ones that appreciate manuals. When my parents got their first computer in the early 90s, it came with two brick size manuals - one for DOS 5 and one for Windows 3 - that I devoured. I have lamented the lack of proper manuals for things many times. (Most notably when i last bought a mobile phone. It seems the phone manufacturers simply expect everyone to just know how it works. We get nothing that tells us how to operate it.)
While it’s not printed (and I get your point there), I still appreciate Dorico’s manual. I hate it when videos are the main (or worse, only) option to learn. Dorico’s manual is great!
The trouble is that new releases come so fast that a new paper manual of thousands of pages would be out of date every couple of months.
You can browse the online manual, too.
I learnt Finale on a school computer, and the manual was either lost or unavailable. I was literally just clicking on things to see what happened, and I had know idea what I was doing.
Different people learn in different ways, and we are fortunate indeed that we have forums such as this, video tutorials, and text-searchable online documentation.
This is how the first users of Dorico learned, too, before there was a manual.
(But there were some very generous beta testers, not to mention the development team, who helped us through.)
This forum is also very helpful. Sometimes, I have no idea what question to ask of the manual, what search terms to use, what Dorico calls this thing. I had a sticky problem that another user helped me solve via the forum. I would never, ever have found the issue in the manual, and didn’t even have an idea of where to poke around and click in Dorico. Thank you all for your willingness to help each other!
Yes, I often start projects with just pencil and paper. It’s so organic to me after my first 30 years of arranging being entirely with pencil. There’s still much I prefer about the old way of doing things. But then, there’s edits, and more edits, etc. etc. etc.
