I’m a 30 year veteran of Finale on my day 3 of Dorico, which I am approaching as a whole new program, and I don’t need to continue my Finale ways in Dorico. I can already see that Dorico is a totally different animal.
I will be inputting all notes with a MIDI keyboard. For note entry, I now understand the distinction between the original, “specify pitch after duration” and the updated, Finale Speedy Entry style “specify pitch before duration” and how to switch between them. There must have been a reason why Dorico was first originally created only with “specify pitch after duration”, although it’s great that “specify pitch before duration” was added. I can see where both ways of note entry would be useful.
But before I develop any bad habits, would the experts here and people whose income depends on how quickly they can generate a perfect page answer my question: For the quickest possible eventual workflow, am I better off learning Dorico with most of my note entry with the original “specify pitch after duration” or “specify pitch before duration”?
@FredGUnn made a great point somewhere recently that if you’re “composing” then pitch before duration might be better as it allows you to experiment a bit more without inputting notes, whereas if you’re just typesetting, pitch after duration might be more helpful.
I’d agree with the assessment that if you need to ‘noodle’ on the keyboard between entering notes, then using Pitch First allows that easily.
But if you’re entering a run of sixteenth notes, then (unless I’m mistaken) you’ have to change the pitch and press the duration for each one, whereas using Pitch After, you just set the duration once and play the notes.
The beauty of Dorico’s implementation is that you can switch between the two modes just by pressing K, so you’re not confined to learning one or the other.
Most of what I do is copying existing manuscripts or old prints into new scores, and I use Pitch After. (In fact, I always used SimpleEntry in Finale, too.)
It took me a couple of days on dorico to realise that there were two methods to notating. For finale i generally use the mouse to click on the staff for note entry, so after noodling in dorico a bit, ive come to realise that duration before pitch works best for me. I select the note duration then click away on the staff. In dorico, i just need to position the note horizontally on each staff using the caret position (the orange ruler) to skip the rests. To each his own. The best thing i found since being “forced” to dorico is that the (sound) output is far better than what i could achieve in finale, and setting up was much easier as well with the right playback templates
I appreciate your intentions in working thoughtfully, and I realize that we long(-er)-time Dorico users have been harping about this issue of habits here in the forum these last ten day. But from my perspective, that needs a bit of fine tuning.
Doing things like lots of manual dragging rather than dialing in engraving settings are the kinds of Finale-rooted habits that are discouraged — in part because they ultimately cost the user time rather than save it. (There are other reasons.)
But I wouldn’t consider either note-input method to be a potentially bad habit to form then have to break down the road.
In fact (and echoing @benwiggy), taking advantage of the ability to seamlessly switch modes in Dorico simply by typing K to meet the needs of the musical moment may itself be the best habit to build. After all, each is more efficient for certain musical tasks in relation to our individual computer and peripherals set-ups and usage.
And learning to switch modes flexibly is akin to instrument doubling. It’s readily doable, and though it entails different specific finger actions/sequencing, all of the fundamental principles remain the same.
Right, the beauty of Dorico is that both input methods work equally well and easily.
And the ability to customize your Keystrokes very easily means you’ll be working very intuitively and quickly before you know. I integrate a StreamDeck and have done so for a few years. Check out Scoring Notes/Notation Central for more information on templates that can get you up and running. Then, you can customize even more to your workflow needs.
Speaking from experience after 20+ years of Sibelius use.
I also keep going back and forth between these two modes, they each have pros and cons, neither one quite perfect hehe.
One question I have is in duration before pitch mode (with QWERTY only), is there some key I can use to advanced the cursor after I have entered a pitch to advance to the next note position? Right now after entering a pitch (which has to be entered with ABCDEFG keys), then it remains selected and it can be moved up and down after the fact. That is good, but the problem is there is no way to advance to the next note other then hitting ABCDEFG again to advance it.
The problem with that mode is that I have to look down a lot and move my hands around on the QWERTY a lot to do that. ABCDEFG are awkward to begin with. I would much prefer if I could use just duration keys and arrows to enter everything, hovering both hands in one place over the QWERTY and not having to look down.
So this means I need a way to advance the cursor to the next note. The behavior could be to assume the same pitch as the previous one (which is currently selected). that key would unselect it and advance to the next note…entering the same pitch and having it selected where it can be moved with arrows again, also, etc. Basically then it would be possible to go much faster with duration-before-pitch…with one hand on the numbers and one hand on the arrows. does such a key exist?
Note this would be even faster then speedy mode in some ways because when you need to enter a run of same duration it could be very fast. The needed key would be the equivalent of choosing a duration and clicking on the staff with the mouse where you want it.
In pitch before duration this is easier because in that mode entering a duration DOES remember the last pitch and carries it over to the next pitch… What I am asking for would make this behavior very similar…some way in duration-before-pitch, to carry over the previous pitch to the next note position, without having to hit ABCDEFG to do it.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re describing. In duration before pitch, after I select a duration and then specify a pitch, it’s true that the note that gets entered remains selected for manipulation, but the caret also advances to the next position, ready to receive the next note. Isn’t that what you want?
no I want to be able to use duration-before-pitch without ever having to hit ABCDEFG keys for pitch…using only arrows. There is no way right now. doesn’t matter if the caret moves forward, the last entered note is still remaining selected…which is good…and the process of entering that note is not really finished yet until it becomes deselected. Right now the way to deselect it is to enter an actual pitch for the new caret position. And you can only do that with ABCDEFG keys. If there was a key, as I am asking, we could automatically enter the same pitch to the new caret position, which could then be moved up and down with arrows until we hit that new key to unselect it and enter the last known pitch at the new caret position, etc…
Well actually not quite because if I want to enter a different duration then the r key doesn’t work…so… yea I need something like the r key…but it only repeats the last pitch…using whatever new duration may have been specified…or the same duration if nothing new was specified.
so maybe the Y key, which in my preferences is not mapped for some reason even though the key command chart shows it…as being something called “input pitch: X”, I mapped it to option Y for the moment and it seems to do something similar as what I am asking…but its not using the same as the last pitch…its not clear to me at all what exactly it is using for the pitch, but it does seem to enter a new pitch in DBP mode without having to actually hit ABCDEFG keys
I disagree. The ability to use arrows instead of ABCDEFG was added to speedy mode for a reason. The reason it’s faster is because as I already explained, on a qwerty laptop it’s not possible to hover your hands over both the ABCDEFG keys and the number keys at the same time comfortably. And it’s also pretty awkward to use ABCDEFG even if you could because you often have to use the same finger for different notes, reaching up to e or down to b and c, for example. This means you have to continually and repeatedly look away from the screen and down to the keyboard while trying to enter even a short phrase in order to find the keys and fumble around with your hands. It’s painstakingly slow compared to speedy mode where you can hover your hands over numbers and arrows and keep your eyes glued to the screen.
I see what you mean about the Y key. Interestingly that does work in a way but yes it’s kind of slow because generally it always places the note on what it thinks is the relevant line or space of the staff rather then use the same as previous pitch like speedy mode does. It could theoretically be possible to use something like only one of the ABCDEFG keys so that you can hover your hand but then the arrow usage is less intuitive. If there was a “repeat pitch only” command then you could hover your hand over that key and going up by a third would always be two arrows up after that for example. So you enter the music a bit more like you would be reading it, thinking in intervals.
Anyway, speedy mode is able to do this automatically so guess I’ll just have to get used to flipping back and forth between PBD and DBP modes frequently as needed. A numpad would be helpful for hovering the hands better but MacBooks don’t have them and an airplane seat doesn’t have room either. Or many other tight on the go situations where only the built in qwerty is convenient. At home it’s non issue when a midi keyboard is available.
It’s also unfortunate that a few things are awkward in speedy mode; thus I need to switch back and forth a lot, for example chord entry is hard without using ABCDEFG also. Can’t use popover Note Tools in PBD mode either which would be helpful. I want to set up some keyboard maestro macros to enter some known chord shapes quickly with the popover but can only use DBP mode for that I guess
In Finale, Speedy was always pitch before duration. I believe that moving the shadow pitch via arrow keys was added to Dorico to help former Finale users who were used to that workflow. I don’t think it was envisioned that people would use the arrow keys with duration before pitch.
FWIW, as a former Finale user who exclusively used Speedy + QWERTY, I have found duration before pitch to be a better option in Dorico, even though it meant retraining a lot of muscle memory. I also mapped the Z-M keys to be a C-B scale, since that’s close to the mode I used in Finale; I find that much easier to touch type than A-G. (I think the only default Dorico commands I had to move to new keys were Next Voice and Create Voice.)
There are advantages to both modes but using arrow keys in DBP I would be equally as useful as it is in PBD. Or it could be, it’s not quite there right now because of the missing command I am asking about now.
You should not discredit finale users so much. There is a reason people love using the arrow keys, it’s faster!! I am not even coming from finale but I can immediately see how much faster it is. And more musically intuitive. Dorico should embrace this idea a little more. And it is with the recent update in PBD mode but would be even better if both modes could support the use of the arrow keys.
I think there are numerous things in dorico that currently work better in DBP mode, which is exactly why I’m asking about this, such as building chords and using note tool popovers, for example. The notion that after entering a note you are temporarily in edit mode and so can interact with the note as if you are in editing mode all the same way. That makes it consistent with what you do when you are actually in editing mode and that is very cool And a good reason to be in DBP mode but then dorico would be even better if I could use the bloody arrow keys to enter notes in DBP mode in a speedy way like is possible with PBD mode. The reason it’s called “speedy” mode in finale is because it is actually faster. Finale also had their own “simple” mode. Finale users want this feature because it’s actually speedier, not because they only know how to use arrow keys. I personally will be flipping back and forth between the two modes frequently due to this but then that has its own inefficiency and confusion about which mode you’re in when you are going fast