In the Dorico for iPad v. 6 manual, it says: “If no notes or rests are selected in the music area and you select a note duration, mouse input is enabled. If you move the mouse pointer over the staff, a shadow notehead is displayed to indicate where the note will be input if you click.
Disabling mouse input prevents Dorico for iPad from starting mouse input in this circumstance.”
I cannot make this work and I cannot find any setting where I could have disabled mouse input. I can select everything with a mouse, I just can’t make it work for note input according to the manual. What am I missing?
If you have a project open, you can head to the Preferences (top right menu).
Go to the Note Input area and then further to Mouse Input.
Here a screenshot from the desktop version:
It’s missing here as well. Thanks, much appreciated that you checked; then it’s not just on my setup. Yeah, I was starting to suspect perhaps this text in the manual is something that has accidentally carried over from the desktop version. But I originally found it in the Dorico 5.1 for iPad manual, so when I saw it in the v. 6 version as well, I thought I must have missed something. But these things can happen; especially in roughly 1200 pages long manuals.
It’s a bummer though, as I’m kinda forced to use a mouse with the iPad. I have a skin sensitivity to overusing touch screens and thefore have to use an Apple Pencil, but the Pencil is unreliable and inconsistent in Dorico. However, mouse works great, except for the note input issue. There are several solutions to that, but I would prefer just clicking them in, as it’s by far the most direct way for me (not a proficient keyboard player).
If you have a mouse attached to your iPad (via Bluetooth?), you could theoretically use it to click onto the virtual keyboard. That would be more precise than clicking into the staff. Of course it will be helpful, if you know your way around those keys - even if you don’t feel like being a concert pianist.
The bluetooth mouse that I use on my iPad is very precise, and I think clicking in notes with the mouse would be much better than using the lower zone keyboard. I’ve tried it on the Dorico desktop version. The main issue is not that I’m not a keyboard player, but having to look down at the lower zone keyboard every time I write a note/notes. I don’t see what I’m doing until I look up at the staff. It’s of course a matter of quick glances, but it just feels disjointed to use the lower zone keyboard. Kinda like typing text with the iPad’s onscreen keyboard, where I frequently hit the wrong keys, but don’t notice until I look up at what I’ve written. So I mostly dictate to input text. Hm… maybe notes could be written with dictation? Now that would be fast
Good point; I hear what’s played on the keyboard, so at least mistakes are caught instantly.
Actually, I just discovered that dictating note input in Dorico on iPad can be done. I activated Voice Control in Accessibility, and then in Dorico dictated the commands: “press B key”, “press C key”, “press D key” etc, and this is how it turned out. Dorico accepted the input even though the iPad keyboard wasn’t up and an external keyboard isn’t attached. Obviously only saying the letters would be a lot faster; gonna see if I can figure out a way.
That should work. There’s an app called “A2M real-time Audio to MIDI” that I’ve tried for inputting notes into Cubasis by singing them. I’ve only tried it briefly and the result was some kind of MIDI note chaos, but my singing pitch was all over the place. It might be useable if adjusted properly and sung properly. I remember trying a similar app; “MIDI Guitar”, and that one tracked guitar playing surprisingly well. And since these apps work with Cubasis, Dorico might accept that MIDI input as well.
