Because after 6 months of full time use, brainstorming as a composer is still more difficult in Dorico than in Sibelius
I’m still searching for the best equivalent of Sibelius’s briljant way to ‘stack’ thirds. For example, this simple figure of 9 notes:
In Sibelius, that’s:
c 3 3 d 3 4 e 3 3 esc
That is 10 keystrokes, 5 of which are the same, which makes it extremely simple and without thinking. When I come up with these chords, I can input them in under 1 second (far faster than realtime).
In Dorico, the equivalent I know is:
enter c e g space d f b space e g b esc
30% more keystrokes, 83% more different keys. Please keep reading when you think that this is not a big deal.
This may not be a big deal if you are either an engraver (not brainstorming in Dorico) or a pianist (inputting chords by midi). But I don’t have a piano and use computer keyboard note entry as my instrument of choice to compose music. I would really like to switch to Dorico for this after 15 years of Sibelius, but it would be so nice if it weren’t 83% more complex (in this example, which is quite representative).
I have to think a lot more, not only about the root note name, bot every other note name too, which makes this figure 3 to 4 seconds to input. I use Dorico a lot, but for brainstorming I now returned to Sibelius because it’s so much faster.
(As a side note, when making an error in the note duration, I have to revert to the mouse, because there is no shortcut to select an entire chord, which also adds significantly to the time and complexity.)
(And another side note: forgetting to switch chord mode (q) also adds significantly to the total time, a complexity Sibelius doesn’t have.)
I have 3 questions:
- Do you (Dorico developers) have plans to improve the composer experience in future versions (as opposed to the engraver experience, which is superb already)? I’m not only thinking about the number of different keys that are needed to input music, but also e.g. better auditioning tools like scrubbing.
- Do you (all users) know other shortcuts to input these notes with less keystrokes and less different keys with Dorico now already?
- Could you please resist replying that you “shouldn’t” compose in a music notation program?
Thank you for taking the time to read my long post. I understand that the primary focus of Dorico has been engraving, and I’m very happy that my music looks so much more beautiful now since I switched to Dorico for engraving purposes.