Tablature Quality of Life Request

[AlvinWayne]

Hello Dorico Boards,

I’ve been glad to use Dorico since Dorico 1, and am very glad to be able to use Dorico 3 with my guitar students over some other popular Guitar Notation Software. However, in those software you are able to change the tablature string while entering music into the sheet music, which is an invaluable function of guitar notation.

In my work as a professional educator and composer I do a lot of transcriptions of contemporary music. For guitar these fall into three main categories: Solos, Acoustic Fingerpicking, or Vocal Melodies arranged for Guitar. Very rarely will these be played in first position where Dorico defaults to, which means I spend just as long correcting fingering as I do writing sheet music in.

Currently the workflow is:
-enter note input mode
-notate music
-dorico makes an incorrect fingering choice
-press esc
-navigate with arrows down to the string (this can be a lot of arrowing, especially writing off the treble clef as guitar often does)
-press N or M
-press esc
-arrow back up to where I was previously on the treble clef(again, many arrows)
-enter note input mode

Within Guitar Pro 7.5 the workflow is:
-enter note input
-notate music
-guitar pro makes an incorrect fingering choice
-press alt+up or alt+down to adjust fingering while still in place on the staff
-continue on notating

As you can see, having the ability to alter fingerings while still in note input mode on the treble clef is the superior option. I am very thankful for the ability to do alter them at all, and I understand how tricky the coding could be – maybe just an option in the hotkey menu so users could assign their own shortcut? Unfortunately until this is fixed writing out transcriptions or arrangements for guitar in Dorico is just too cumbersome, when nearly all fingering choices made by the program are incorrect. I do not mean to disparage the coding of the fingering algorithm, it’s an incredibly difficult problem to solve and no answer would ever be correct in all circumstances, but this quality of life improvement would save a lot of time.

Thanks! Love the software!

[tcreverb]

I click on the tabbed note with a mouse then hit the N or M, but you still have to re-enter note input mode. It seems a little more efficient?

-enter note input mode
-notate music
-dorico makes an incorrect fingering choice
-using mouse click on the incorrectly tabbed note
-press N or M
-enter note input mode

[dspreadbury]

Thanks for the feedback. We’ll look at what it would take to make it possible to use the commands to move notes from one string to another from a notation staff as well as in tablature.

[AlvinWayne]

@tcreverb

I click on the tabbed note with a mouse then hit the N or M, but you still have to re-enter note input mode. It seems a little more efficient?

-enter note input mode
-notate music
-dorico makes an incorrect fingering choice
-using mouse click on the incorrectly tabbed note
-press N or M
-enter note input mode

This is a bit more efficient but it is still far from desirable. I try to leave my hand off the mouse as much as possible, which I believe is the intended way to use Dorico for note input. The keyboard navigation is really to notch.

[AlvinWayne]

@Daniel at Steinberg

Thanks for the feedback. We’ll look at what it would take to make it possible to use the commands to move notes from one string to another from a notation staff as well as in tablature.

Thanks Daniel! Really appreciate the communication, and if I can provide any extra documentation I would be glad to.

[micck]

@AlvinWayne

Currently the workflow is:
-enter note input mode
-notate music
-dorico makes an incorrect fingering choice
-press esc
-navigate with arrows down to the string (this can be a lot of arrowing, especially writing off the treble clef as guitar often does)
-press N or M
-press esc
-arrow back up to where I was previously on the treble clef(again, many arrows)
-enter note input mode

Here´s a quicker way to do it:

• enter note input mode in the tablature system
• notate music on the correct strings

To change the rhythmic durations use the higher/lower keyboard commands and/or specify other commands for the note durations you need.

[AlvinWayne]

@micck

@AlvinWayne

Currently the workflow is:
-enter note input mode
-notate music
-dorico makes an incorrect fingering choice
-press esc
-navigate with arrows down to the string (this can be a lot of arrowing, especially writing off the treble clef as guitar often does)
-press N or M
-press esc
-arrow back up to where I was previously on the treble clef(again, many arrows)
-enter note input mode

Here´s a quicker way to do it:

• enter note input mode in the tablature system
• notate music on the correct strings

To change the rhythmic durations use the higher/lower keyboard commands and/or specify other commands for the note durations you need.

Yeah. That is a faster way to do it if you want to only notate tablature, but it isn’t writing music then, it’s just writing tablature. I don’t let any of my students use tab, and I stopped using it years ago too. I don’t find switching notation per instrument a good way of working.