Today Mr. Barron showcased the “Piano Option” feature in the Dorico 4 Official Launch Stream (08:42), and suggested its usage for educational purposes, which is exactly what I would like to use it for.
The problem I have are the black key colors. It’s hard to distinguish whether the key is pressed or not, even on full monitor brightness. I work with lowered brightness to minimize the eye strain, and that makes the problem even worse. So my question is, is there a way to change the black-key “key-pressed” color?
If not, I would like to kindly request this feature. It would be nice if it could look maybe
like in the Pianoteq VST where pressed keys are fully emphasized.
Welcome to the forum, @anbass. This is also something that was hotly debated by our beta testers during the development process. I will talk to Anthony again about this issue and we’ll consider it further. Thanks for the feedback!
Hi, was this feature added to Dorico? I would like to use it for education purposes, online lessons. Changing the color of something should not be difficult to code! Thanks
Do you remember where that option lives? I wasn’t aware of that one before, but am not finding it. I still seem to have the “barely visible” option selected and would definitely prefer the dots!
Thanks, this works but only if you go back on a chord, it doesn’t work while you press the keys for the first time.
I want to highlight the notes I am pressing and show them to my students, both on the keyboard and on the staff. Dorico is almost there… but not yet.
Besides that, I am almost sure some of my students will complain that blue dots on black keys are hard to spot.
This is a situation where willing to make something beautiful, you make it less usable. The full keys of a bright red color would be less fancy but much better.
Hi Fred, I just tested it myself and realyzed this works when you go back on a chord, but not in real time, in the moment you press the keys.
This makes this feature unusable for education purposes, I am afraid.
Ah, ok, thanks. Yeah, I was hoping to have it show on a projector or on Zoom so that students could see what was being played. I’m still just using VMPK.
Maybe you already know them, but some good alternatives are Midiculous (you can have notes written, but just one chord at a time) or Classroom Maestro (you can write simple chord progressions or scales). Chordieapp is even simpler, can recognize chords though.
These apps are extremely simple compared to Dorico, Musescore or Finale. It’s incredible that none of the big softwares can do what is achieved by little apps, with just one developer behind them.
They didn’t think notation software would be used for online education, of course, but this is the new world after Covid.
Well, I teach online since 2013 actually… but Covid made it much more popular!
Thanks for your reply, best regards
I tried this one for a bit a couple of years ago. (I think @dan_kreider hipped me to that one) but at some point I reformatted my desktop, and bought a new laptop, and never loaded it on either.
I guess I’ll probably always end up needing some sort of external solution for when Dorico isn’t open, but it sure would be convenient for the students to be able to see whatever notes on the keyboard are pressed when I’m using Dorico in class/lessons.
I use Synthesia, actually. It’s really nice and easy to distinguish. I use it with a cropped screen via OBS, so I crop out all the goofy floating piano roll bars and just show the keyboard.
Thanks Dan, this is a good option, also.
So sad because Dorico has it all: a nice virtual piano, a nice score where notes get written correctly in real time when you play them.
It’s incredible the color accent for black keys is… black! The blue dots didn’t solve the issue at all, since they don’t work in real time but only during playback (and anyway, blue dots on black keys are not very clear).
Why not change accent color to red? Should be an easy fix and it would make Dorico the new standard for music education…
