After having used Finale for many years, I switched to Dorico, as many of my fellow composers did. I do not regret it. I find Dorico easy to use and it helps me write music more effectively than before. So, bravo Dorico developers, you clearly know how to address composers’ needs.
This said, there’s one area where I find Finale much more advanced: that of key switches.
In Finale, I set up a list of key switches (KS) in the expression category. All KS were simply set up as a MIDI note. It did not matter if, says, a F#0 would trigger a trill in one instrument, and a sforzando in another. You just sent a F#0 to whatever instrument you were using and bam, the correcy key switch was triggered. Then you could add the name of the effect any way you wanted. Worked every time.
Now, KS in Dorico drives me nuts. Maybe it’s me (probably). When I watch Youtube videos on the subject, it seems so clear. Reading the manual leads to the same conclusion: following the described steps should work. Yet, what happens to me is that some effects, correctly triggered by a KS, are “sticky”. Here is an example: in a piece with flute, I program a staccato KS (F#0 in this case) and an ord (natural, C0) KS. In the score, the staccato works fine. Then when a next note has an ord (natural) marking, which whould mean: return to normal, the staccato remains in effect.
To correct that, I entered in the expression map for the staccato marking an Off event, set at C0 (normal, natural). That should stop the staccato effect when the staccato note reaches note Off. Yet, it does not, although this Off event “trick” works well for other KS.
To clarify:
The staccato marking appears as stacc in the score. The stacc effect has been entered the in Playback techniques as well as in the Playing techniques. Once that’s done, I created that stacc effect in the Expression map, and that worked. Affected notes sound as staccto. Yet, they did not return to normal even though they had the ord making (I also tried with “natural”, sams thing).
Other techniques, like trill or sfz did return to normal (they too had the Off event at C0).
I am spending lots of time watching Dorico’s Youtube videos, reading the manual, trying out things, to no avail.
What am I doing wrong?
Dorico 6.2.30
