Pros and Cons Using a Stream Deck

Will a physical Stream Deck really help navigating Dorico 5 pro?

Depends on the individual. Some people here swear by them. I bought one, spent hours setting things up and I never use it. I think if you’re the sort of user that sets up a lot of custom key bindings, it will probably work well for you.

If you search here at the forum, you will find a number of threads on Stream Deck, and a reference to Notation Express (and variants) where it is all set up for you.
And creating a macro script … do this, then do this, then do this makes some tasks easy and can save time.

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

Welcome to the forum @Rufus2!

I think that most people would find a Stream Deck useful once it’s set up to best suit them.

Thank you Daniel.

Good to know! Thank you.

I was once using this for Cubase, and I think it also possible for Dorico.
I love to buy Streamdeck but still thinking which version .. the XL seems a bit overkill for me

It was a godsend for me. I’m very bad at remembering key commands, they work great but feel very “code-y” and abstract. Having a pretty button to press makes me happy :blush:…
The more, the merrier… At one point I even contemplated putting a second XL next to my first one!
But a few weeks ago I discovered a Plugin able to define long keypresses, and now some of my buttons have second functions. And of course I made custom icons for them! E. g. Short press slash region, long press chord symbol region…

Benji

can you make your own keyset using stream deck? instead of buying? if yes I want to buy

Yes many usually simply create their own key commands, button mappings, scripts. This way, you create it related to how you work and what you want to do. Many parts of Dorico you might not need to use, whereas other parts, sequencing key commands or buttons to input various text or whatever is where it works efficiently for you.
(Compared to Notation Express, as mentioned in a previous post, which gives you many of the key commands, some of which you might not ever use … however you can simply edit it and arrange buttons etc. where you want them to be, add others, delete the ones you do not use.)

This reference page might help you understand, and shows how to set up key commands etc.
System action information

Yes, you can. My issue was the generation of the icons for the buttons, however. The pre-made, huge set available from Notation Central is reasonably priced and contains 99.7% of everything you could ever wish for… :wink:
And if you create a second page of icons/actions, you can pick and choose wich ones you need most, copy/paste them into that new page and always start from there.
But yes, I have a few buttons that fire off regular key commands, displaying a custom icon.
B.

P.S.: Got pizz’d by arco… :wink:

The Stream Deck marketplace offer sets of icons, many are free, others you purchase. Then you can add these buttons to represent what that button does.

Elgato Marketplace, some icon sets (of very many sets available)

Selecting a button and adding an icon using the SD software, shows the sets to choose the icon from.

In one of the Stream Deck threads here at this forum, is a set of Dorico notation/music related icons if I recall correctly, ideal to use for your own setup.
Edit: found it!

haha snap! :laughing:

This I hadn’t seen yet! Very nice!

Thx,
B.

Actually I find it too time consuming most of the time to choose an icon for every button, so mostly just type in text for each button as a label. I do not use much of my software regularly, just for specific projects, Dorico being one of them, so I found I forget what the icon looks like for something, or what it means, what action it does … whereas text, I simply read it and know what that button does, in that software.

Where SD (and others, LoupeDeck is another) can help as well, is where you have two different notation softwares (at the moment for me, Sibelius and Dorico), so I can have two equivalent sets of buttons, the button actions on the same button location. As I switch between them, the buttons look the same, but the underlying key command is different, appropriate for that software I am in (SD automatically switches as I switch between them).

Also, last year I was using Sibelius, helping a friend who also has Sib. I had a specific task(s) to do related to divisi and various other things, so I simply set up a few buttons to streamline what I had to do (something like select the top note of a group of notes, copy it to another staff …) and it made the job very much easier, especially when you can script (one action, followed by another…)
I just used words, no icons.

Glad you found it useful :slight_smile:

My own view is that it’s not really useful. I have the 32-button version and Notation Express XL but I just don’t use them. My teenage daughter (an occasional Dorico user) finds it OK but, if you can remember even a handful of keyboard shortcuts you can do without a Stream Deck.

Logistically speaking, I have one hand on computer keyboard, the other on the MIDI keyboard and my eyes on the monitor and I’m pretty fast. Moving my hand away to the Stream Deck and looking at that to navigate the menus just slows me down. Even the mouse doesn’t get much of a look in, except for the scroll wheel. It’s keyboard shortcuts all the way for me.

To be honest the thing that impacts my productivity in Dorico more than anything else is remembering where all the different options are: Engraving, Layout, Notation and Note Input. Just wish I could get my head around that…

1 Like

Don’t you use Jump, or does it not work for some of them?

There are two drawbacks to using the jump bar for finding settings. The first is that it will only give you results from the main categories in each settings panel - so if you’re looking for a specific setting, the Jump bar probably won’t give you any results. The second drawback is that you only get suggested results if you type the exact name of said categories.

So let’s say you want to change the start of system barline settings but don’t remember where to find that.



No suggestions for where to find this setting.


Aha! There are barline settings after all! But I still have to sift through 2 different option panels.

While:

1 Like