Disclaimer: I’m still new to Dorico, having come over in the great wave from Finale, so I don’t know yet if this is properly a request for a new feature or a request for help finding an existing feature. I’m hoping it’s the latter, since it feels early to be requesting new features.
Most of the note entry has been great, so far. Aside from having to relearn the numpad durations (which is fair), almost everything has been wonderfully intuitive, and obvious. Almost, except for octaves. I love the Alt+Shift/Ctrl+Shift ability to jump octaves as I’m writing, and I’m adapting pretty quickly.
But when I start a phrase on an instrument, I generally have NO idea how to predict which octave it’s going to start in—especially if that instrument’s last entry is currently off-screen. I guess wrong something like 9 times in 10 right now, which makes for extremely frustrating entry.
Is there an easy way to tell what (hidden) octave the caret is currently targeting? Or if not, could there be, at least for the first note in a phrase?
Or does anyone have any suggestions for tricks to avoid the issue in the first place?
Just a thought - even without using a midi keyboard, having the optional onscreen keyboard in the bottom pane is one way to very specifically sometimes poke the one you want. I didn’t think about it much until I used the iPad version.
Sometimes faster means “faster than what I was doing given that I don’t want to get off the couch. “
It’s going to look back to the last thing you entered in the staff. If there is no last thing, it seems to sort of default to the center of the staff. I agree it’s a little unsure at first, but as you said, the octave shift becomes very facile.
If there aren’t any previous notes on the staff it will actually use the “hotspot” of the prevailing clef (G4 for the treble clef, F3 for the bass clef, etc).
Just enter the first note, and if it’s in the wrong octave, use Cmd+Alt+Up/Down to shift it.
Looking purely at the number of keystrokes involved, there is no difference between chosing the correct octave before typing and correcting it after the first note if it’s wrong.
If I remember correctly, it uses the closest interval to the last note, but if no last note, it references the clef - so for a G clef, G in the middle of the staff
This bit helps quite a bit to know, at least for the entries at the start of a piece. It’s still rather an annoying guessing game if the last entry was dozens of measures ago. But this at least knocks out some of the issues.
Those other times that it pops into an octave I’m not expecting are still annoying and flow-breaking, but at least the rest of Dorico is much friendlier than Finale when it comes to that.
Though I still maintain that there’s definitely room for some indication on the caret of the current octave. Maybe when there’s no current note highlighted and on-screen, it could give an indication of what the reference note it’s jumping from is by a horizontal marker on the caret. Kinda like the preview noteheads at the end of the stave in medieval music. (I forget the term for that, at the moment).
But either way, back to practicing the shortcuts. I really love this popover system, but I’ve gotta get it a little more consistently under my fingers.
@MReed Figuring out what octave the note will appear in when you type requires taking into account at least 4 or 5 considerations, and may require scrolling to a previous page in the score or somewhere else that is offscreen.
The only sane way currently to handle this is to type the note, and then use the modifier keys to move it to the octave required, unfrortunately.
I made a feature request for a simpler method here: https://forums.steinberg.net/t/note-input-defaults-to-wrong-octave-bug-pebcac-unwanted-behaviour-thats-for-sure
On one hand, I’m annoyed when the note goes in the wrong octave. On the other hand, it’s one keystroke ⌘⌥↑/↓ to change it and continue. We can even ⇧← to select backward and fix multiple notes at once, without interrupting note entry! On a third hand, I frequently make the same mistake with my little 2-octave midi keyboard, forgetting what octave it’s set to. Still easy to fix.