What version of Doriko do you use and how much did you pay for it? Are you satisfied with it compared to Sibelius and Finale?
Which is harder to learn: Doriko, Sibelius, or Finale?
After using Finale for 32 years, I switched to Dorico about 2.5 years ago, now running the latest version of 5 Pro. (I paid the standard cross-grade price.)
Itâs difficult to know exactly how to answer your question about learning. Since Finale and computer music notation in general were still very âyoungâ when I first started learning, there was always lots of big new things to learn.
Dorico, with its emphasis on the musical semantics of symbols vs. Finaleâs more graphical-object orientation, I had to âunlearnâ lots of Finale behaviors in order to work best with Dorico as a tool and get the (great-looking) results itâs designed to achieve.
My approach, after trying to âdive inâ and just start using Dorico, was to stop back for awhile when I had a gap in deadline projects and spend time with a number of the videos on Steinbergâs Dorico YouTube page, pausing frequently to try out the techniques being discussed. I also spent lots of time using this forum as a learning tool, with questions posed each day becoming exercises for me to pursue.
I will say that the design of Dorico is very logical and consistent, so learning really speeds up over time.
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You will get many different answers to this question, because it all depends on the particular user and what he or she wants to use Dorico for.
I was a heavy Finale user for 25 years, until their announcement in August. I took a look at Dorico, Sibelius, and MuseScore, and I found that Dorico matched my workflow the best. I bought it a couple of weeks later with the Finale discount, and I havenât looked back; Dorico isnât perfect, but itâs a much better piece of software than Finale is/was.
Personally, I have not found it hard to learn how to use Dorico, although I have had to get rid of some well-established mental and physical habits I had from Finale. I find the help pages very useful, and this forum is a fantastic resource.
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If you are not familiar with Finale or Sibelius, you may actually have an easier time learning Dorico, because you will have fewer instincts/bad habits to break.
I personally would not be satisfied with anything less than Doricoâs Pro version.
I say this as someone who used Finale from its first appearance and was rather happy with it, but i could see the future was Dorico, so I started switching over gradually in 2016.
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I used Finale since version 3.0.
I switched to Dorico a few years ago, and for me, Dorico was easier to learn than Finale.
But then, I already had an idea of some tips and tricks on how to facilitate learning (like always having a little notebook next to me and jotting down common commands that I tended to forget.)
Sure, there are some things that were more tedious at first to do in Dorico, but once I got used to the logic of it, it was actually easier than doing it in Finale.
So Dorico Pro for me, and I could never dream of going back to Finale. You couldnât pay me enough to return to the nightmare that Finale turned out to be.
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I always found Finale maddening to use. Tools buried within tools within tools and dialogues within dialogues. To say the program was opaque is a polite understatement.
Sibelius was fairly straightforward.
Doricoâs learning curve was a bit higher only because I had to un-learn a few habits and expectations that I picked up from the preceding two programs. It takes a while to get the lay of the land and remember where everything is located. That said, it is no more difficult than any other professional-grade program that I use. It is one among many, and they all require you to put in a commensurate amount of learning to get the most out of them. Welcome to computing, my friend.
In any case, Dorico was the winner for me (by no small margin, mind) and I recommend it to anyone who will listen. Itâs worth it.
Merry Christmas
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For me, it was not a matter of Dorico being difficult but more that it was different. After reading an absolute minimum amount of documentation (just enough to get myself started), like all new users with their ânew toyâ who just wanted to dive in and get things happening straight away, I tried to âwing itâ by trial and error. Having discovered that some of the terminology and a few key commands were the same as in other notation software, I unconsciously assumed that so much more of Dorico would be âintuitiveâ, namely the same as I was already accustomed to. WROOONG!! After convincing myself that I needed to deliberately ignore my experience of how other software works and attempt to learn how Dorico works, I made progress. This was helped by working through the First Steps, as I learn most effectively by doing the theory and the âprac.â at the same time - the theory explains the prac. and the prac. consolidates the understanding in the brain. The various Dorico videos have also been of great assistance.
After using Dorico for four years, I have almost completely forgotten how Sibelius works and what its key commands are. So much so that I have to consult its manual! Also, I stopped paying the annual subscription for Sibelius nearly a year ago because, for the minuscule amount of note entry I actually did in Sibelius, it was starting to feel like each note I input was costing me a dollar. To be fair to Sibelius, I do use it for opening old files and exporting to musicxml for reworking in Dorico. That and, as is my sole use of MuseScore (which I find so absolutely uninspiring in so many areas), importing problematic musicxml files to compare with Doricoâs import of those files.
If I was asked for advice by new Dorico users, I would recommend to put aside what has been learnt elsewhere in their notation software experience and invest some time and effort in actually learning âthe Dorico wayâ rather than assuming that it will be âeasy enough to work outâ.
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I donât quite understand why one should forget everything learned in Finale to be able to learn Dorico. It is possible to learn both Swedish and Finnish languages, even though they have entirely different approaches to structure and thought. I plan to continue using Finale as long as my computer and the software Finale are functioning properly.
I have used Finale for over 30 years, and now I can say that I know how to understand and work with it. I seek to very seldom use the net or manual.
Finale is a complex and hard labyrinth, but it has endless possibilities to do what you want. I donât find Finaleâs structure and way of using it âold-fashionedâ or âtoo complex.â The complexity gives composers many ways to achieve the same results using different tools in different contexts.
Another thing is that many composers seem to want easy-to-use software with billions of possibilities. There is a little dilemma in this. If you use simple notation software, you should write simple music. No more dilemma.
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Welcome to the forum.
Iâm not quite sure what point you are trying to make. But I am sure that many Dorico users were not even born when you started using Finale. Their expectations of software are doubtless very different from yours (or mine).
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You donât need to literally forget everything about Finale. Itâs just that Dorico takes a very different approach to engraving, so thinking of how you do something in Finale isnât going to help you do it in Dorico. Itâs not uncommon for someone making the transition to Dorico to post a question here that begins, âIn Finale/Sibelius I do abc to accomplish xyz.â The response is typically, âthatâs great, but Dorico doesnât work like that.â Itâs best to not even think about the other program and come to Dorico fresh with no preconceived notions. IOW, to figuratively forget about the other program
To keep with your language analogy, when learning a new language, the student is always told to try to think in the new language, not to think and translate from the old language. So itâs basically the same advice.
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Oh, but you donât. Heaven knows I learned to depend on work-arounds to accomplish things Finale couldnât do without some creative thinking, and that skill is easily transferred to Dorico.
I started with Finale virtually on day one and used it for over thirty years. I also started learning Dorico on day one and moved back and forth until Dorico accumulated the features I needed. Although I still wait for features I wanted, Dorico gives me the best collection of the features I need; and with the practice I have had (not to mention reading almost everything posted here) I have grown more than comfortable with it.
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I think itâs better to say âhigh learning curveâ than âdifficultâ when referring to a program.
I used Finale for 25 years and switched to Dorico this semester. I think Dorico is awesome!
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Yes, but what you know about Swedish wonât always help you with learning Finnish!
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I think that says it all.
Different, and above all, with its own vocabulary.
We have to learn according to Doricoâs logic, not by trying to apply habits from other software.
But that goes for any softwareâŚ
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This has been done to death. Apart from âFlowsâ, every other term in Dorico is taken from either music engraving or computer typesetting.
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Not quite, Ben.
There are still terms like âGalley viewâ, which caused a debate on this forum, and the way in which the instrument players, or groups of instrument player, are named, which donât suit all languages and all cultures (Set-up mode), and so on.
We just have to get used to it to enter its world.
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For basic note input, I found Dorico much harder to learn than Finale. Finale note input is completely intuitive: Select the note duration or rest from the palette on the left, and click in the bar where it should go next. You choose the pitch with the mouse, and the note or rest snaps to where it belongs to rhythmically. (For me, intuitive in this context means: âresembles the process of writing music on paperâ.)
Doricoâs note input mechanism is counterintuitive and weird, both because you donât actually input the rests, and because note input and note editing require being in different modes (which remains, even after a few years of using it in Dorico, a fairly unpleasant user experience for me (othersâ mileage may vary of course), and has taught me to try to stay in note editing mode as much as possible (by hitting R to repeat the currently selected note and then modifying it rather than switching to input mode and entering a brand new note from scratch).)
However, as you go deeper and need to do more things, Dorico is much better. And throughout the process, to me Doricoâs scores look like the real thing. Out of the box, Finale output always looked to me like it was done in the equivalent of a musical word processor. Basically, Finale is easy and amateurish like Word, and Dorico is harder, but professional, like InDesignâŚ
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I suggest grabbing Dorico SE (Itâs Free) and finding out first hand 
Dorico SE: Free Music Notation Software | Steinberg
Elements and Pro add support for bigger scores, plus more features and abilities, but SE can give you an idea of the basic workflow.
Spend some time experimenting in the free version. Get the hang of entering notes and suchâŚ
If SE grabs your attention and youâd like to go deeper, you can also get a time limited (60 Days), fully featured demo version of Dorico Pro. With a key combo, the same installation of Dorico Pro can cause it to launch as the Elements Edition instead (hold alt or option key while launching).
You may want to watch Tantacrulâs (Martin Keary of MuseScore) latest video, which examines the Finale interface from the standpoint of a novice user, and shows just how frustrating and ânon-intuitiveâ Finaleâs interface is.
For anyone wanting to use Dorico, Iâd recommend pouring over the extensive video tutorials. Once youâve watched a few, and have seen the way a few things work, you can start to âintuitâ how other things work, because thereâs a lot of consistency.
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For me, this is one of the best features of Dorico.
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