I’ve been using Dorico for about a year and a half now, after decades with Finale. I have a decent grasp of working with the program by now and having written quite a few wind band and big band arrangements with it.
But even though I am basically up to the speed where I was with Finale, I have a feeling that I’m not working as efficiently that I could be.
I love the basic ideas behind Dorico: Get the music in place first, and worry about how it looks on the page later. Do most visual adjustments through settings rather than dragging individual items around… That was easy to wrap my head around and was a big step up from what I’d worked with before.
I have read the well written manual. Haven’t watched many videos, since that way of learning typically doesn’t work well for me. And I have been reading this forum a bit lately, trying to absorb good practices.
Get to the point, Rikard!
It’s easy to get stuck in the first way of doing things that get the result you want, but I’ve started thinking about my workflow and how to practise Dorico use. The obvious thing is to learn more key commands, but when in the middle of notating a piece for orchestra it’s quicker right now to not search the popover reference and instead just click around in the panels until I find the thing I’m looking for.
I’m considering making myself some exercises or in some other way figure out a training regiment, and I’d like to hear your ideas. Do you have any ideas for getting from “competent with Dorico and the person my colleagues ask for help if they have trouble” to… I don’t want to say expert, but at least someone with a quick workflow and a good grasp of the various options.
Nobody expects you to set, learn and remember a keyboard shortcut for all the hundreds of functions of the software. Some things you just don’t use very often, if at all. And of course this is different for every user, too. The Jump Bar is a good middle ground, as typing a few keywords is probably faster than aimlessly clicking around. And if there is a shortcut set for a specific function, it will show up there too so it’s even useful as a reference tool.
That said, as with any skill you learn by repetition and putting in the hours. A good way to practice is to take an existing score and try to recreate it as closely as possible in Dorico, in order to force yourself into the technical corners of the program that you’d otherwise be inclined to avoid. That way you also take creativity out of the equation, so you can in fact take the time to do something the ‘proper’ way.
This is something that I, as a former long-time Finale user, have realized but still need to remember to use! It is probably the best tool available to help reinforce learning and retaining key commands that I have not used often enough for them to be automatic. Thanks for the reminder!
Even if that’s the case, I’d still recommend watching the Dorico channel videos. Anthony’s guides to various functions are short and to the point, and they often show you something you might not know existed, which you can make a note of.
John Barron’s lengthy ‘Discover Dorico’ sessions are very good “real-world case studies” – how to achieve something using a particular document. (You can speed them up to 1.2x, to get through them more quickly…!)