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I find that Dorico is frustratingly difficult to sketch in, but is outstanding at producing finished work. At the moment, I still doodle in Finale because it is so fluid - I’m always having to push Dorico away because it tries to make too many decisions for me. Still, I’m here to stay. Since they are aware of the problem (and aware that MuseScore is acutely aware of it too), I expect this will get sorted out
It is hard for me to imagine what you find more fluid in Finale than Dorico about note entry and editing. In Finale when you insert a note, the following notes move over – but only in that bar, and then you have to answer the big dialog. In Dorico, insert mode works any way you want, on one staff or all, with no concern about ties, dots and other rhythmic notation. Notes can be moved to neighboring staves in one operation with a keystroke.
Being locked into “frames” (one measure in one staff) was the most restrictive aspect of Finale for me (1988–2003). Conversely, understanding how Dorico works lets you take advantage of a huge amount of automatically correct notation.
That’s the problem. I don’t want automatic anything - not when I’m sketching. I have no idea about what you’re describing with Finale - it’s not my experience. I’m scratching my head and I have been using it since 1991.
I’ve muted the topic.
That sounds like a subjective workflow depending on tastes. I grew up playing drums, percussion in school, bass, and also piano. Quite often I think about rhythm first. In my view, you can take any 3 pitches of a basic triad, say C-E-G, it’s the rhythm that brings it to life. So I frequently think about rhythms first, and then apply pitches according to my harmony after. Different strokes and all that. I actually love that with a keyboard shortcut I can flip the modes from pitch first, or duration first – because sometimes I do start with a group of pitches and not sure about the rhythm yet. But most of the time I definitely prefer duration first, and I don’t think there is any one true, correct way.
The next update is apparently going to help in this area even more.
I like that I don’t have to think all the time about rests and durations - Dorico makes dealing with advanced time a breeze.
Dorico has speedy entry-coming to this from Finale (~1990-2024) there is Pitch Before Duration as an option, and even with the Simple Entry-ish default (duration before pitch), that is like when I would enter a run of equal durations in Speedy Entry with the caps lock key down and a number entered for duration.
For the record, I never ever used Simple Entry in Finale. Dorico does remind me of that in the sense that it’s easy to accidentally input notes. But I’ve been able to get around pretty well. The issues for me relate more to ties (such that a tied note can’t be partially selected unless you untie it before messing with a tuplet or selection on the durations you are interested in selecting), and copying notes by option-dragging. Yes, it’s possible in Dorico, but not smooth.
And I’m also going nuts with the way Dorico imposes enharmonic spellings. The app can do a lot of things very nicely and powerfully-moreso than Finale. But sometimes, I’m running up against the program doing what it wants to do, rather than what I want it to do. Sometimes Finale did that as well, largely due to inherent bugs they never fixed.
I used to post a lot to the Finale forum when in the middle of a new work, Finale would do some crazy nonsense and I needed to find out if it was just me or if there was something I needed to adjust in the program. I’m definitely finding some frustrations today using Dorico for a new work, mostly around enharmonics and issues relating to operations on tied notes. So I think this is going to be true for all notation programs; there will always be some frustrations. The reason I gave up on Finale and switched to Dorico, despite many misgivings on my part, is that Dorico works; Finale has lots of glitches and given the situation, none of these will be fixed. So I’ve made peace with Dorico, and suspect many users who are thinking of leaving Dorico out of frustration will stick with it as well. I’ve not been approaching Dorico as “why doesn’t it act like Finale did?” I really have been ignoring how I used to do things in Finale, since Dorico really isn’t anything like Finale in most regards (again, it does have an equivalent to Speedy Entry, but most things are different and often better).
Because its just trolling. As a rule of thumb trolls should be denied oxygen.
This fascinates me, because I have the exact opposite view. (For the curious: I use duration before pitch.) With an attached midi keyboard, it is very easy to noodle around, then press enter and go to town with entry, then the simple press of exit allows you to noodle around some more, before popping right back into note entry with another single click. Arrows allow you to pop all around the staves, and you can change the rhythmic grid to make the forward and backward navigation more intuitive depending on the context. You an stretch the caret to multiple staves when doing something homophonic; there are just so many tools that make it very fluid and fast to get a lot of notes in very quickly.
Well, can someone advise me as to whether I’m headed in a sensible direction? I’ve bought a 32 button Streamdeck and am customizing its buttons to roughly emulate Finale’s speedy input mode. I use Dorico’s pitch-first input. It’s starting to work, except, for instance, I can’t find a good way to move the karat left or right. So I have to continually move my hand back to my computer keyboard’s arrows to edit notes, etc. I have to solve several problems such as that. Am I wasting my time? In Finale’s speedy input, I can type out a medium slow melody about as fast as it is played. I need to get back up to that type of speed in Dorico, to continue making a living. Has anyone gone down this road? Can I hire someone who could, for instance, teach me how to solve that little advance-karat problem, and a few others like it? Maybe with a zoom lesson?
I think using the simple hot key function in Streamdeck you should be able to assign buttons to left/right arrow keys allowing you to move the caret. You could also create hot key buttons assigned to alt+up/down arrows to allow you to move pitches up and down. You could then orient them on a Streamdeck in such away that is laid out exactly like the arrangement of arrow keys on a keyboard. Then place these next to your row of note values, as well as a hot key button for entering/leaving note input, and finally one if you wish switch between pitch-before-duration and duration-before-pitch (kinda like the caps key in Finale). So in other words without your hands leaving the streamdeck, in one place, you should be able to accomplish almost 95% of what you’re looking to do, I’m sure.
This decision is ultimately up to you, but if it were me and I relied on a specific software to make a living, I would not attempt to transition to another one overnight, reliant on it fully for my bread and butter. Since Finale will still work for still awhile longer (or potentially forever if you don’t update your computer), why not continue using Finale for your primary jobs, and take your time transitioning to Dorico, learning it on the side? An enhancement to input even closer to Speedy Entry is said to be coming for Dorico 6, but we don’t know when that will be. In the meantime, Finale can still work, and Dorico (and we) will still be here to help when you’re ready.
So no, I don’t think you’re wasting your time, and learning it as soon as you can will pay off sooner than later. But if you have job deadlines looming around the corner… ultimately only you can decide if it’s worth your time trying to learn a new program or not.
see here 
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Excerpt :
Yes, that is what I was referring to, thanks for sharing.
To come back to the OP, I agree - Dorico is not very usable (or enjoyable) without study, and it does require commitment, but …once that initial barrier is overcome, everything changes! It’s an incredible program that is worth every bit of effort invested into it, and more.<<
How many of us struggled with Finale for a long time and had the same experience. - crazy learning curve but worth it if you stuck with it. I certainly did. When I changed to Dorico I tried it, struggled, put it away for a while and went back to Finale, eventually tried Dorico again. Second time did the trick and I’m glad that I found Dorico and didn’t give up. And once I cracked the Dorico code, so to speak, it didn’t take long to get up to speed. In fact, once I started to understand how Dorico works, I progressed faster in Dorico than I did in Finale.
Yah, all good psts, thanks, esp “hot keys” on the stream deck, I’m using that now and am getting there. I think I’m going to proceed. Correct I don’t ex[ect to move all my work to Dorico for a while, and i can have some patience learning it. It just has felt several times like it just wasn’t going to work. thanks, and wish me luck.
In my case, I bought Dorico because Finale died. For a month of trying Dorico, very frustrated. I purchased the Sibelius. My laptop has Finale, Dorico, Sibelius, and Musescore. For the Musecore, I avoid it because can not enter Chords if there is no note or slash, annoying. Trying Sinbelius for 1 week, even if it is not like Finale, but it is more intuitive than Dorico. I think, Silbeluis is the next for me, until it died like Finale .
Sorry to hear that you’re feeling frustrated after trying out Dorico @hoangbr2014 – is there anything we can do to help you?
Have you tried working through some of the learning resources, like the First Steps guide, or tutorial videos (one example below) ?
No, Finale is not dead. Provided you don’t change your computer or update the operating system (which isn’t essential), Finale will still work for years to come, especially as, after contradictory informations, MakeMusic has assured us that you can de-authorise and re-authorise the software with no time limit.
It seems madness to me to immediately adopt a new software as part of a professional activity. To obey who ? MakeMusic ?
Dorico takes a long time to learn and you have to give it that time. If, after this learning period, the software is not suitable for the repertoire in which you specialise, there will be other choices (and Sibelius is an excellent one, I grant you).
In the meantime, continuing to use Finale will be the path of wisdom.
Also it is not sure that OS updates break an application. If someone is forced to use a new OS version, or has a new computer it is worth checking if the application still works.
In the end you could easily have a virtual machine with an old OS inside a new OS, especially for some operating systems. The overhead is minimal with current computers, and copy/paste operations work, along with having shared folders between the host and the guest OS.
It can be done with many programs like VirtualBox, the one I use often for this but also there is VMWare and other newer options for technical people.
Many hurried to purchase Dorico, like me, just to have something new, without testing it enough before, but who can really do?
You’re right that there is no immediate panic; and there is plenty of time to learn Dorico calmly while you continue to use Finale for ongoing projects and urgent jobs.
But, equally: I would not put money on MM’s authorization server still being up in 5 years time. And it’s won’t be long before macOS changes something that Finale relies on. (Windows too is removing some shackles of ancient compatibility.)
Finale is now just like SCORE or Encore. Increasingly, it will require skill and effort on the user’s part to keep it running. Users need to prepare, so that their music won’t be lost when Finale stops working.
Yes.
It’s this invitation to calm that I wanted to pass on, because I’ve noticed recently on this forum some interventions tinged with disappointment or anger that are hardly reasonable, but partly due to the panic created by MakeMusic. 
As far as I’m concerned, I see this from a distance because if I was a Finale user a few years ago, I am not any more : indeed, I’ve been working in Sibelius for a long time, because this software offers me all the flexibility I need for French baroque music.
I’ve set up a number of librairies there, which save me an infinite amount of time in my work, and quite simply I’m used to it now. I wouldn’t be so foolish as to drop everything and adopt Dorico just because MakeMusic tells me to !!!
However, Dorico interests me on a few points, particularly the powerful page layout.
I’m giving myself a year or more to study Dorico, which in the end I may not adopt. And that wouldn’t be the end of the world, would it ?