Hello. It’s not my first post, but I couldn’t access the other ones. Think it was on a different email.
So, my problem is that I was trying to work on a choir piece to finish for my accompanist today. And as I’m working, all of a sudden I must have hit something and it changed my layout to only the bass clef. It also made the page tan instead of white. So I have done everything I can think of to get back to the layout I had been using, and nothing is working. (Why isn’t it possible to just undo this? Please make that a possible feature).
As a side note - I find Dorico to be the most user-unfriendly program I have ever worked with. As a Finale user coming to Dorico this last year, this program has frustrated me beyond measure. It’s like, everything requires a secret code or five mixed together, that if you can find the menu where you are allowed to put the five secret codes in, then it will temporarily unlock a feature that lets you do something like what you meant to do, but not exactly. From moving a “g” to an “a”, to figuring out how to add a simple time signature, to trying to move a line of lyrics to a different page, to requiring two or three buttons clicked at the same time to do one thing, to having the notes that you just planned on putting in resetting if you click a different measure. Guys, you really need to simplify this program. I wish I hadn’t bought it.
Thank you. A simple fix for a problem I didn’t even know how I got to. But I couldn’t get out of it no matter how I tried.
As for the other side note response - To be fair, I used Finale for only about 10% of what it could do, and I ignored a lot of the other stuff. Heard Sibelius was pretty user friendly but I never got into it. Thanks for trying to help a new guy out.
Hey Ton. Sorry for coming off as I did. It was the last straw after a frustrating afternoon of trying to make the program function the way I wanted it to, without success.
So, I have had Dorico now for about 6-7 months. While I haven’t been able to use it regularly, I have tried it for many things. And I have 7 open tabs with these resources you mentioned. Part of my frustration is that I don’t think the intro videos don’t really transition a person well from one music software to this. They introduce the software, but it’s overwhelming and I’m not getting a good grasp on it. No mater how many times I watch segments of the video (which so far, has been several).
What would really help is if someone makes new videos, saying, “Back in Finale, you used ‘Speedy Entry’. You did it like this. The Dorico version of ‘Speedy Entry’ is this. Here’s what you have to do to do it.” That would actually be worthy of the title: Finale to Dorico. As they are right now, they’re not as helpful as they could be.
I will also say - if even the basics of Dorico are this frustrating and user-unfriendly, it doesn’t give me a lot of motivation to learn to use the rest of this software. Here’s a suggestion how to simplify. Instead of having combinations of buttons in the write setting that need to be pressed together to do something, just make it so that one button does one thing and have more buttons. Have friendlier menus that allow you to do more than just enter a secret code. Like, make every menu one that people can interact with by pointing and clicking.
One feature of Dorico I do like is when you press “J” and can go directly to a command. That option is great about 75% of the time. What would make it greater is for more commands to be recognized. For instance, I had a problem trying to move lyrics from one page to another. That command wasn’t an option. One time I had to figure out how to move the notes from one voice to another. That wasn’t listed either. I ended up doing both tasks over from scratch because it didn’t have a command for it. Please make a way that it recognizes more commands. Thanks. I’ll get down off my soapbox now.
Can you give some examples about button combinations that you have needed to use? I think you may be talking about modifier keys that are used with the arrow keys when moving items. This does take a little getting used to, but once you do, Dorico is very consistent about how those modifier keys work across the program.
Menus with secret codes: Are you talking about the popovers? If you’d rather interact through pointing and clicking, then you can use the panels on the right to access the same functionality. Personally, I love the popovers and find them easy to use. Want a 2/4 time signature? Shift+M (for meter), 2/4, Enter. Allegro q=120? Shift+T (for tempo), Allegro q=120, Enter. Forte? Shift+D (for dynamics), f, Enter. Double bar? Shift+B (for bars and barlines), either || or just double, Enter. Three stroke tremolo? Shift+R (for repeat – in this case, repeated notes), ///, Enter. Yes, tuplets and chord symbols get a little more complicated.
Well, the jump bar only gives you access to commands that Dorico has, and there’s isn’t a command for “move lyrics to next page”. And even for the commands it does have, you need to know the Dorico name for that command. (I wish this were better, too.) For example, moving notes from one voice to another will be under ‘Change Voice’. But if there are commands you use often, you can assign jump bar shortcuts that make sense to you and make the commands easier to invoke.
As Dan says, many of us used to use Finale. I second his advice to forget what you know about Finale – think more about the end goal you want to achieve, not what the “Dorico equivalent” is to something in Finale.
I think in the long run you are better off accepting the the concepts behind Dorico are different from Finale. And that you have to learn something new, rather than adapt your old workflow to a new canvas.
Say you are going to the supermarket by car for the last 20 years and at the end there is a sharp corner left. One day you decide to do that by bicycle. Ask your self how to do that corner on a bike, instead of just trying to sit up and turn the steer. And feel uncomfortable every time because you didn’t adapt and shifted your bodyweight to the left too which is the way a biker would do.
Start from zero. Go through at least a part of the First Steps Guide before jumping in the deep. You’ll benefit in the end.
If you’re talking about the codes the different popovers accept, here’s a list of those secrets
As TonH says, there may not be identical analogues or similar functions. And indeed, Dorico’s “Duration, then Pitch” note entry isn’t the same as Finale’s Speedy Entry, and I don’t think it’s helpful to think of it as being the same. (Note: I’m not saying better or worse: just different.)
Jason Loffredo has done a pretty good job in showing what is similar, and what is different, with reference to Finale.
