Here’s the deal. I taught Finale for a few years at our local school district USD 231. Some folks got it right off or at least after some time with Finale. Some just never seemed to grasp how Finale works at all. You can find the same thing in other fields for instance Music Theory. Some folks just seem to grasp how theory works and for some it makes no sense at all. Some drop after Theory 2.
Or perhaps a software comparison might be Photoshop. I am proficient with Photoshop but some of my photography friends aren’t. It’s just a mess to them. And this is not because any or all of them are stupid it just is not logical to them.
You folks that have taken to Dorico need to understand that. A lot just doesn’t make sense to a lot of us. If any of you truly want to help you need to keep that in mind.
I think everyone in this forum is perfectly conscious of that. And the Finale refugees six months ago have made this even more obvious: it’s the first time in Dorico’s history that people would invest in it without being absolutely interested — and that makes a difference. Many differences, actually.
First, the appetite for learning a new tool. It used to be a given that people who invest over 560€ want to learn the tool. And when you are curious about something, the state of mind is ready to learn. Or at least, not fighting against learning new ways, new points of view.
I’m too tired to elaborate on following points.
My question is: what did drive you into starting this thread? Do you feel the help was not diverse, or good-humored, or friendly enough?
My personal point of view, as a day-1 dorician who has spent a lot of time in this forum in the past eight years is that this is the most interesting, friendly, helping, generous place on the entire internet.
I feel so little motivation in learning it that I’ve started twice, and just gotten back to Finale. I feel like an old dog trying to learn new tricks, and not knowing how to start. They say it’s more intuitive. I don’t find it to be so.
Welcome to the forum @josesolismusic!
Is there something in particular that is troublesome for you?
Hi @josesolismusic, here some suggestions:
(Playlist with 5 videos):
(recent Discover Dorico video):
(Dorico First Steps Guide Part 1):
(Dorico First Steps Guide Part 2):
I agree. One thing that is worth noting if you are going to use this forum it is not as helpful as some here claim it is. It is not as friendly either. Be careful whose reply you pay attention to. In my circle of friends most are still trying to figure Dorico out some have given up and gone back to Finale for as long as possible (that just could be me and truth be known there is no reason today, 02/12/2025, to abandon Finale especially if you are using a PC. However Steinberg has my money do I doubt that upsets them much)
Above all don’t criticize Dorico here!
I’m sorry that you have experienced so much frustration with this forum as well as Dorico itself. There are certainly some voices here that show intolerance and impatience with “newbie” questions and criticisms.
Like any social media forum, I think one must ignore such behavior.
I hope you also found some friendly and helpful replies. Certainly the actual Dorico staff such as Daniel Spreadbury and Lillie Harris have been exemplary in their kindness and supportiveness.
As an enthusiastic finale convert, I hope you’ll keep at it and eventually have an “ah hah” moment where you’ll see the advantages to Dorico that so many of us have found.
Hi, just wondering if you have actually asked for a refund for the Dorico purchase, probably a long shot, but worth asking.
‘Intuitive’ is in the brain of the beholder. Or something like that.
I started in Finale, went to Sibelius, now Dorico. I found Finale absolutely non-intuitive, and gave up. Found Sibelius to be about as intuitive as they get. Went to Dorico, mostly because Daniel Spreadbry was there, and I loved him at Sibelius.
At first, I found Dorico quite confusing, mostly because I was still ‘thinking in’ Sibelius. So I tried something, and it has worked for me and for many others I have suggested it to.
- Pretend you know absolutely nothing about music notation software of any brand. Start from total ‘scratch,’ as they say.
- Pretend you know absolutely nothing about how software in general works. Music notation or any other kind. (Unless you’re a programmer, you won’t be far from the truth!)
- Watch the Dorico tutorial videos until you reach the ‘tilt’ point and can’t absorb any more.
- Read the manual, ditto.
- Start your first project with something small and simple. (After you do steps 3 and 4 above.) Create a lead sheet or piano piece. Don’t try to write for full wind band just yet, even if you thought that was your forte. Every time you get stuck, use the help button, over and over till you find the part that helps. (May take a few tries. Be patient.)
- Think about the history of Dorico. The people who had made Sibelius a success were all laid off by Avid, the new owner who bought Sibelius from the Brothers Finn. They were hired by Steinberg to create Dorico, from scratch, as though music software had never been thought of before. From the bottom up, in a logical manner, with no indebtedness to anyone or anything else. (Finale had been invented by programmers who knew nothing about music. Sibelius had been invented by musicians who knew nothing about software. Suddenly here were people who knew both. That’s why you have to learn it the same way, from the bottom up. From scratch.
- When all else fails, come to the forum for help. Ignore the negative responders. Listen to the positive ones. Learn from them. And come back to them for more help if you still need it. No one will mind.
- Post your project, not just a screenshot, or a snippet. Nobody is going to violate your copyright.
- ‘Rinse and repeat’ as the laundry directions say.
- Above all be patient with yourself. It may or may not seem intuitive, but you’ll get it eventually. And oh by when you do, watch out! You’ll be unstoppable.
Hear hear!
I think we trying to answer questions should aim to be a bit more polite. Even if the questions might seem not perfectly formulated.
As an example, in at this time ongoing thread, a user has uploaded a PDF of a very specific layout done in another program. The question was understood more or less by some as:
“I want to do this now! I do not want to learn from the start! It is a lot harder than in my old program! I hit problems all the time! Might as well give up!”
Clearly, none of the exclamations above was meant by the poster. But it somehow triggered a number of not totally helpful responses. Maybe we can learn from this example and think about how to respond.
Some thoughts:
- Don´t take it as critique of Dorico as such, read it as fully understandable frustration. Dorico is a very deep program and it is not easy going from beeing expert an another program to become a new beginner in Dorico.
- Some things are very different in Dorico and may be very difficult to find. Especially if you don´t know what to ask for. Frustration again may rear its ugly head.
- Some things actually are difficult to do or may take a lot of steps to achieve in Dorico. These might have been extremely simple in another program, or at least feel very simple after many years of working in another program.
- Some things really cannot be done in Dorico at the moment. Break-out scores is only one example (it can be faked but not really done at the moment). How could a newly arrived friend know this?
Finally, let´s welcome our new friends all the time. After all, I want Dorico to be a successful program for the foreseeable future.
I have no intention of asking or even wanting a refund. I also bought Sibelius and I have Musescore. In the time remaining until when Finale stops working I will know which I am going to go with. Unless some changes are made which I doubt seriously could be, I don’t see it to be Dorico at this point but I am satisfied I could use Dorico if forced to.
BTW, I just got another email from a friend that is in the same boat as me. I get several of these lately so I am not alone in my feelings.
"Thanks for the tip. I have bought Dorico, but gave up because nothing made any sense to me. I tried and tried,but gave up in frustration that I wasted my money on it. I think I will buy the Finale friendly version of Sibelius. Until then, I’m keeping my Finale cranking out charts.
On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 10:04 AM <eebiggs1@gmail.com> wrote:
Have you tried Dorico? If not and you are thinking about it, you will see a level of frustration you have rarely experienced before.
I am going to keep Finale operational for as long as possible
Ernie Biggs"
Dorico has the uncanny ability to turn the simplest of tasks into something difficult to impossible. Don’t get me wrong as Sibelius has some ugly issues too and as many unhelpful forum users. But if your goal is to get notes on the page and a score as quickly as possible Sibelius is the winner. Much more Finale friendly. Musescore is more like Dorico and has the best in app sound by far. Musescore rumors has a Finale set of commands coming, we’ll see.
I don’t think any of these programs are intuitive as they are burdened by an extraordinary, complicated task. My 35 or so years on Finale provided no help in learning Dorico - but while learning Finale I also learned advanced notation, which made the learning curve a lot shorter than I expected in Dorico; I knew what questions to ask. Finale actually doesn’t do many important things at all, some major gaps in functionality were plugged by plugin developers. This compartmentalizes some advanced tasks which are comprehensively embedded in Dorico’s walls, foundation, plumbing, and wiring. It is a lot to be sure. But right up until my last day working on a Finale file, though, I was still referencing documentation. You should work with whatever gets your music on the printed page. If that’s Sibelius, MuseScore, or Finale, go with it. Bach used oak gall ink and split quills - the music itself is what matters, not the methods used to write it down.
Ernie, this is one of the friendliest and most helpful forums you’re likely to find for any software. Sure, opinions can get heated, and there are few people who can’t ‘read the room’, like anywhere. And there is plenty of comment about Dorico’s shortcomings, features that are lacking; or interface issues.
If you’ve got a specific problem with something that you’re trying to do in Dorico; or concepts that you’re trying to get your head around, then I and many others will be only too happy to help you. So please avail yourself of that. Start a post about something you’re trying to do, or trying to understand.
There are great many Finale ‘refugees’ who have expressed here that they now feel confident and comfortable using Dorico; and many have expressed a preference for it regardless of the events of last August.
However, you won’t learn anything if you keep telling everyone (yourself included) how terrible it is. Come to it with an open mind, and it might surprise you.
But if you don’t want to use it, there are plenty of other choices, Finale included.
That having been said: you won’t find me on the Sibelius forums, telling people about why I’m not using Sibelius.
If I had to list the number one complaint about this forum it is the fact you don’t like and don’t want it to be criticized. It isn’t the small rude responders. Dorico is not perfect. It has many issues and I am going to guess as many Finale users that have tried Dorico and stayed with it has a similar number that have abandoned it. I know what I see with the group of friends, teachers musicians and other Finale users have told me.
Repeating the statement that you all know Finale users that have taken to Dorico and now love it doesn’t help us ones of us that are not feeling it.
People don’t buy or even demo Dorico or any app to fail at it.
If I had the power or ability to make a suggestion that would improve Dorico substantially, it would be to have drop down, yes a right click on the mouse, contextual menus that had everything that can be done to that item in one simple place. The biggest problem I have and have heard for others it not knowing where to find things with so many different menus right side, left side, bottom, write mode, engrave mode, setup, whatever. This is why so many say it is not intuitive. It’s not! It is confusing to say the least. Now couple that with some things Dorico can’t do and bingo you have failure galore.
For instance, it took me forever searching through Dorico only to find you can’t have different margins on pages. That’s nuts.
As a newbie to Dorico, and trying to learn by seeing problems in the forum and searching in the manual if I could find a solution, I searched for Page Margin
The first result was this
Which brought me here
I suspect the reason not to have a right-click with all the options is because it would be such a very very long list, especially on smaller laptop screens.
For a right-click on a notehead, it presumably would have many of the popovers, and then hanging off each of them all their options, all fingerings, all ornaments, all figured bass options, all note tools for transposing or adding additional notes, harp, hold/pauses, all playing techniques, dynamics…
Speaking of dynamics you could not put in p < ff for instance. Whereas how they decided it, was to have Shift … F or O …H … D etc. and the popover has various options so you can add more than one entry.
If the right-click only had a few of these, there then would have to be a way to add any of the others. It’s just a different way from other notation software.
I am quite happy to have a print out of the popovers beside me as I go, but also a summary list of the main ones I use that I cannot remember … until I have used them a few times! 
Some are using Stream Deck (or similar) which could be useful, especially if you use different notation software so the button is the same, but coded to work with each to input whatever you need, although admittedly some actions are a completely different process.
Best wishes for your music notation whichever you are using.
This is technically true, as it is a Layout Option, it is fixed for that Layout. But you don’t have to use those margin settings at all if you don’t want to! If you need that sort of margin flexibility, just set them all to 0 and create Page Templates that give you your desired layout.
With margins set to 0, I could have a first page template like this:
… or like this:
Or whatever type of layout I want, and switch between them with a single click. If you want complete flexibility, don’t bother with the margins and design as many Page Templates as you need to suit your requirements.