Guys excuse me for a while as I have to go sell and/or rent instruments to 5th graders this evening for my Meyer Music store herein OP, Kansas.
But I will come back perhaps later or tomorrow morning. This will continue until rental season is over in a week or so.
Thanx,
EB
Sometimes I get the impression that people come here who simply donât want to learn and instead just want to bleat around. The reasons for this can be manifold: too high expectations of yourself and the software (being able to master everything immediately or within a few hours), not getting over the frustration about the cancellation of the development and sale of Finale, or whatever. Strong negative emotions often prevent you from thinking clearly. For this reason, and because there is no point in spending a long time feeling frustrated about something that you canât change anyway, I recommend that anyone with such feelings should put them aside, calm down and approach learning Dorico calmly and openly. Learning calmly and step by step can even have an accelerating effect. At this point, I wonât accept the argument: âBut I have to work through my jobs and tasks promptly; I canât do that in Dorico (yet)!!!â, because Finale is still there and usable! Work with Finale until you have mastered Dorico or other notation software, and learn it when you have the time. I recommend this to every Finale user who has been presented with a fait accompli!
The moaning and groaning makes no sense at all because there are too many successful users of Dorico, which disproves that this software is the last piece of junk! There are also long-standing ex-Finale customers who switched years ago, some of whom were frustrated at the beginning and are now experts! It is possible, but only if you open up instead of closing yourself off through permanent frustration. Cheers!
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Yeah, maybe not immediately, it will for sure take them 2 months, like it took them 2 months to fix all the bugs users encountered immediately on their first ride, oh wait, it took them longer - oh wait, they are still there. Oh waitâŚ
The only thing you will get immediately from MS is the bugs that jump at you. I checked MS some days ago and immediately found the same hickups I found almost exactly 1 year ago. Please go and check dynamic levels for a start. After that hairpins fromm ff > ppp, and watch the sound die away halfway through the hairpin 
Well, good luck then.
How funny, recommending MuseScore to Finale users in a Dorico forum
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Please allow me to amplify in full sympathy one of the many good points that @Len_von_Geist makes:
No doubt many of you came to Dorico having already achieved a very high level of ability in Finale. I know that was the case for me, having used it for 32 years before switching.
Itâs understandably frustrating â and perhaps even uncomfortably humbling â to suddenly feel like a ânewbâ using the type of software tool you think âshould be obvious/easyâ given all of your previous experience. When I was tempted to feel that way I paused and reminded myself that those same feelings were true when I first learned Finale, but now with the extra challenge learning Dorico that I was older and more experienced (âwhich means it should be even easier, right?!?!â â âNOT!â).
Give Dorico at least the (genuine) benefit of the doubt, sure, but also have compassion for yourself if youâre tempted to feel frustrated at being (temporarily!) âincompetentâ under the trying circumstances of Finaleâs finale, and even perhaps enjoy the opportunity to experience the âbeginnerâs mindâ (or âemptying your cup,â as @blatboy shared) while you learn.
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I remember my first days in Finale. Dorico is easy
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I thought my 20+ years of Sibelius fluency would be helpful in transitioning to Dorico.
I was sadly, quite wrong. 
So I began at the very beginning, with basic note entry on simple projects. Just learning the lingo and where to find some options/settings was a big challenge⌠at first. This isnât software you diving into and muddle your way around, trying to get the results you want. Think of it as a totally new program that you donât know ANYTHING about â and start learning from scratch. Yes, this takes time. But the time invested in learning the intricacies will pay off exponentially in time savings in future projects. Hang in there, it WILL get better!
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Lillie_Harris thank you your help was appreciated.
The rest of you Dorico cheerleaders, I think I found the wrong place to come for help.
@eebiggs1
I am very sorry to hear that. While I agree with you that Dorico could be made a little more beginner-(or transitioner-)friendly with rather little effort (shortcut tool-tips for all mouseovers, keyboard underlines in every submenu of top row drop down menus for example), I find it rather rude to call us âcheerleadersâ and this place the âwrong place to come for helpâ, to be honest.
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Youâre welcome here any time @eebiggs1 - whatever your questions.
Thereâs an unusual level of activity and perhaps feelings of excitement here at the moment, itâs true - in general, you should find that the community here is kind, patient, and very helpful. Weâll be here if you need us.
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Dorico is like christmas, one of the most beautiful things you might deal with.
It can be overwhelming, even too overwhelming.
Charles Dickens comes into my mind.
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I think I have to say something here. I follow this thread from the very beginning. I can only guess how frustrating it might be to lose the program you relied on. But one of the things I like the most about Dorico is the community that helped even with my dumbest questions. Always polite. And I felt the same thing with your questions. But the way you react feels like you are blaming Dorico or this community for your situation. Itâs not our fault.
trust me people here are very helpful. Calling them cheerleaders is not fair and you might consider to apologise.
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I donât have that impression. Some people like spending time on complaining, of course â but personally, I havenât seen any music software developer which pays as little attention to user friendliness as the Steinberg/Dorico team. You may of course see this as another statement from someone who âdonât want to learnâ, but since there are no other score apps out there which both have Doricoâs amount of functions/solutions and and the high level of user friendliness such a a score apps deserves, I really want to like Dorico. I have spent a not more time on figuring out the many quirks in Dorico (and the large amount of steps needed to execute basic and often used actions) than with any other app, and I have used music apps for 35 years (and written many reviews). .
Complaining certainly makes sense when there are so many UI solutions in Dorico that could have been implemented selfexplanatory way. This is particularly important in creativity oriented applications â because none of us (I guess) want to be distracted when we are in the midst of making music: we want to keep focusing on the music; not on the application we use.
âI think I found the wrong place to come for helpâ
You may possibly be right about that â even if most of the Dorico tips Iâve seen on this and other forums come from people who have good intentions. The reason is probably that most people who still are active in Dorico discussions are those who âsurvivedâ and got through (or bypassed) all the hindrances that are baked into the Dorico user interface. The help attempts are often about using the manual more, looking more at the How To Get Started videos and abut using more popovers. But there are many types of popovers (circa 15 categories?) and so many things to remember in terms of what to type into each of the popover categories.
Dorico is very far from also being a DAW, and Dorico isnât fully integrated with Cubase (or other DAW, of course). Many Dorico users already use a DAW and possibly a Sibelius, Finale or something else â so mant of us use at least two or three apps, and will need to deal with several different sets of key commands and other UI solutions. Steinberg should therefore, IMO, have spent a lot more time of making Dorico user friendly in a way that will help Dorico users to not have to learn about all Doricoâs special solutions.
In other words, everything we need to learn about Dorico should be baked into Dorico itself. This means a lot more key commands (they wonât disturb us when we donât need them), a lot more contextual menus, a simpler way to find and customise key commands, menus/submenus for everything â and built in help help functionality at least as good as the one found in eg. Logic Pro.
Personally, I have tried to become fluent in Dorico in three different periods (around version 1, 3 and 5 IIRR), but have more or less given up. Itâs 12 years ago Steinberg took over the Sibelius team, and what you describe, eebiggs1 (âDorico 5 has an amazing ability to make even the most simple of tasks impossible or impossibly difficultâ), is still very, very valid.
âYou know one bad thing is all the Youtube vids out there are for or can be for whatever version of Dorico. And, I have version 5 which isnât the same as some or most of them.â
I think I know what you mean, but IMO Steinberg shouldnât have created an app which needs all those videos, forum questions and manual sections. One day, maybe Dorico is selbsterklärend, but by then â many of the current users arenât around anymore due to the slow UI simplification rate. Too bad because simplicity and self-explanatory-ness (is that a word?) is particularly important in software which deals with complex tasks.
Looking for contextual menus (which should be everywhere), proper help functionality (also everywhere) or UI solutions which means that there are fewer (as few as possible) questions to ask, isnât ârandomly fiddling aroundâ. I guess you agree in that?
The above - and the fact that Dorico often needs many actions (eg key commands or clicks) to execute tasks which need fewer actions in other music apps â are the two weakest areas in Dorico IMO.
@Ppp
hello Ppp, welcome to the forum.
Are you new here or have we met in this forum already?
You mention you are struggling with Dorico 5 (most recent version), but also version 3 and version 1. Have you tried to contact this forum with its invaluable help before? You might have missed one of the most important corner stones during Doricoâs development. This is the place where you can ask and are also welcome to suggest improvements. Dorico grew and developed not in a software developer team alone, this forum has been a vital part of it. So yes, you are very welcome here, ask, suggest, help and get help where needed.
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Here again we have the problem that a circumstance is described so vaguely with an accusatory undertone that one canât really help. Whenever a new Dorico user â sometimes I would like to use the word âsupposedâ, as I often have the impression that some users have not touched the software at all or not enough â writes something along the lines that Dorico is cumbersome, not intuitive, or that you canât concentrate on the creative work, the music, etc., then I can no longer take it seriously. Depending on the writer, I read between the lines that it is simply the surprise that Dorico is not like Finale, Sibelius etc., and then the person concerned sits there resigned and sulks. If at least the specific problem was described, one could helpâŚ, but new users who write so vaguely usually try to figure everything out for themselves without help and are then disappointed when it doesnât work so well and give up within a short time.
To be able to use complex software such as a notation programme intuitively â and Dorico is intuitive â you need to understand the concept behind it. Thatâs why Iâd like to explain it to you here:
Dorico relies on presets that the user can customise to their liking so that they donât have to fiddle around too much when writing the music. This is actually what you want from Dorico: focusing on the creative part. There is a dedicated settings menu for each of the five modes â layout, write, engrave, playback and print. Everything is clearly illustrated in the respective menus so that you can set something without having to try it out because you know immediately what effect it will have. This is very intuitive, if you ask me.
The notes are entered the way you want: In write mode, you have a button at the top left where you can switch between âDuration before pitchâ and âPitch before durationâ, depending on what you prefer. You can start entering notes by clicking anywhere and pressing [ENTER]. When entering notes, you can add anything that is not notes using the popovers. These shortcuts are very intuitive: [SHIFT] + the appropriate letter. [M] is Measure/Meter, [D] is Dynamics, [T] is Tempo, [L] is Lyrics, [K] is Key etc. (you can find them all in the manual if you search for them). You can then type the corresponding information into a popover. Examples: â3/4â as time signature, âq = 142â for tempo, âdoubleâ for double bar line, âfermataâ for a fermata etc.
I think this information is enough to get you started. You can always look in the manual and ask here if you want to know something specific, but always describe your problem precisely and not vaguely so that one can help you.
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@ppp, I am certainly interested to learn from your experiences of trying to become familiar with Dorico. In particular, it would be helpful to me to have some examples of some of the basic and often-used actions that require a large amount of steps. Possibly there are already simpler ways with fewer steps to accomplish the basic and often-used actions you will tell me about, but equally, perhaps you will surface some obvious areas where we could improve efficiency.
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Lillie -
I was having some issues with positioning of Bar numbers (none of my settings were changing anything). My default font was Bravura. I changed the bar number font (in Paragraph styles) to Academico and they moved to exactly where I wanted them to go.
It is challenging to have 4 separate menus for all things related to Bar measures:
Paragraph Styles - Bar Numbers (part) (fonts)
Paragraph Styles - Bar Numbers (score)
Layout Options - Bar numbers
Engraving Options - Bar numbers
WL
Yes, this is challenging, but once we ask âwhy?â are there Layout Options for Bar Numbers, why are there Engraving Options for the same âBar Numbersâ. The answers to these questions are very easy: because there are aspects to the Bar Numbers that relate to the Layouts, then there are aspects how to engrave them, and so on. It means, once we understand the way Dorico separates all the modes in a logical way, suddenly questions disappear and enlightenment is happening. We learn about Dorico, when we notice where options are placed.
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I think it might be a matter of personal taste. I remember when I switched to Cubase from samplitude pro years ago and found everything so confusing and really not intuitive. In samplitude I used to right click on anything and a corresponding context menu appeared. In Cubase everything is different. But guess what. I recently opened an old project in samplitude and found it absolutely not intuitive.
Speaking about Dorico. When I decided to use a notation program I tried Sibelius, Dorico (3) and Finale. I found the inherent logic of Dorico very appealing. Itâs really easy to get started but can get really deep. Remember: itâs a Pro-App. And all of the hundreds of possibilities need to be organised. And there is still the magic command âjâ that brings you anywhere. It canât get any simpler to me. And as far as I know, you can custom build key commands (?) But if it is not for you, thatâs fine and you might want to use something like Staffpad.
I also think you are wrong with the statement, that only users wright here who âsurvivedâ or bypassed the problems. But what I experience these days, is that a lot of (very understandably) frustrated Finale-Users come here and want Dorico to be the same as finale. Itâs a big difference if you choose to learn a new program or if you are forced to. But people that are here for a long time chose dorico for what it is and might be in the future. And some might fear that the direction Dorico was taking might be interrupted to please the many new users.
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Thanks for asking. Since I have so many wishes, each of them would probably be better off in a separate thread or in a feature request thread, but Iâll give it a try using one situation only:
When I use key commands to audition the previous/next chord on a piano track, Dorico will only play back either the treble or bass clef. That may be useful in some situations, but in the early composing process I want to hear the full chord.
Since that canât be done in a simple way, I need a workaround. That workaround is to set the piano track to use a single viola (C clef) instead of a piano (G+F) clef.
I have the same problem in Logic btw, but in Logic, I can switch back and forth between piano clef and viola clef with one single click, using the so called âstaff styleâ menu.
The closest competing functionality Iâm aware of in Dorico is this complicated process:
Have you set your preferences appropriately?
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