My fastest/preferred way of entering music into Sibelius used to be one hand on the numeric keypad selecting note durations, and the other hand on the MIDI keyboard inputting them. So I’d use the num pad to hit quarter note, then play the MIDI note I wanted inserted as a quarter note, and so on.
I’m trying to learn an equivalent in Dorico, but it’s proving a lot harder than I expected. Can anyone point to a tutorial (YouTube or other) where someone demonstrates this easily?
Note: in the context of the tutorial I’d really like to also know how to input rests effectively. For example, if I’m in 4/4, and want to input a dotted half note followed by an eighth rest followed by an eighth note.
I’ve searched the Dorico documentation and even watched several note entry tutorials and always come away frustrated that they haven’t explained EVERYTHING. (I’m sure it’s in there…I’m just tired of searching.)
Two of the golden rules about note input in Dorico are to think of the duration of the note as it sounds, not as you think it should appear on the page; and that you don’t need to input rests.
For rests, simply put the caret where you want notes to go, and Dorico will create the appropriate rests for you. You will almost never need to override the rest choices that Dorico makes, and if you do, normally you can change something in Notation Options or by specifying a different beat grouping for the meter that will make the change you wanted for you automatically in any case. (Though of course options to input rests with specific durations do exist, you should really try to do without them, at least while you’re learning the ropes in Dorico, so that you learn how the program can help you to work more quickly and efficiently.) Hitting Space advances the caret by the note value selected in the panel, and that’s normally all you need to do. Then type or play the next note, and on you go.
When I say that you should think of the duration of the note as it sounds, what I mean is that you should think about the overall duration of the note you want to input: you might be thinking that you need to input an eighth tied to a dotted quarter, for example, but normally you don’t: instead, you just think to yourself, “that is a half note in duration”, and input a single half note. Dorico will take care of any splitting of the note across beat and bar boundaries, adding ties etc. as necessary.
Once you have got your head around these two crucial differences between Dorico’s note input and that of other programs, you’ll start to feel in tune with Dorico and start to understand the power and flexibility of its approach.