I’m new to Dorico 5 pro and the biggest thing Dorico is fighting me on its complete disregard for any rules regarding accidentals. I keep thinking (and I’m hoping) that I’m doing something wrong because with the deadlines I have and the workload I’m currently under I really don’t want to think I’m going to spend as much time as I have fixing Dorico’s handling of accidentals.
Here’s the various situations - In one, someone sent me their midi to completely clean up and fix and arrange so it could be played by real sections. So the music was in “C” or nothing or whatever when Dorico imported it, but it clearly had accidentals. If I add a key signature (and the key signature / transpose function could not only be a topic, but a study in how badly something can be implemented) the program doesn’t bother to change the notes to be enharmonically correct. So if there were D and G flats and I make the key signature E, they don’t change to C and F sharp. Ok, fine, not efficient but I can use respell. I use respell, and it will change some, but not all of whatever I select. Some will become correct and yet some will remain Db and Gb. So I have to manually change those using “filter by pitch” and going through the whole rigmarole of creating and adding rules (and seriously, there’s no column to save often used rules groups?! That should have been added 5 versions ago). Highlight the Db and Gbs and then move them to the right harmonic (and no key to simply flip enharmonics? Do the people who program this even work with music in real life?! I have to manually choose to move them up or down?)
Even worse, Dorico will randomly add double sharps and double flats which just takes more time to fix. I’ve tried the wonky "Use transpose, transpose to unison, and select “respell to avoid double and triple sharps and flats” and same exact thing as respell. It will eliminate some double flats and sharps and others will not touch and leave them as double and triple sharps and flats. And re-running transpose, or using “respell” will not fix it. Meaning I now have to waste time going into filter, filter notes by pitch, and start setting up a bunch of rules to select double sharps and flats, so I can then manually change the stubborn ones.
Even more of a PITA, it will insist on using E sharps and C flats everywhere. Even if I select “prefer simpler accidentals” it will insist on using C flats. I would assume simpler accidentals would fix that, but I guess not? So back to filter by pitch we go for a third time.
Is there a reason why Dorico is so random in which accidentals it feels like applying the rules I checked, to?
I’m sorry if I sound combative but it’s really frustrating and in the past two weeks I’ve had two symphonies someone needs copied, an orchestration for a documentary on PBS, and a big band arrangement dumped on me, and of course everyone needs it yesterday because their deadline is the only one that exists, and I notice I’m spending (losing) a tremendous amount of time having to hunt down and correct so many accidentals. I’m already putting in like 18-20 hour days trying to meet the deadlines and if Dorico could work with me for once it’d take a ton of stress off me.
I even had one instance where I had the same part in both Violins 1 and Violins 2 being doubled, and I added the E key signature and selected the notes in both staves, hit respell, and Dorico fixed the notes in Violins 1 from Db to C# and actually left the ones in Violins 2 as Db! I don’t even know how what to do with that.
Even before I added the key signature and respelled, I had another part where the flute and oboe were doubling each other. The note was a “C” and in the flute Dorico made it a B# and in the oboe it made it a Dbb. That was from a midi import so I don’t know if it’s transcribing midi maybe it just randomly assigns accidentals with no regard to what it named the same note in other staves?
I’m not hating on Dorico - I don’t have a choice. I get that I’m a veteran Finale user of about 28 years and so Finale is way more efficient to me but with each new windows update, it’s breaking things in Finale and it’s not gonna get fixed. The last windows update broke undo in Finale for me. After using it the first time, it gets grayed out and no longer works in a piece, so I accept I have to finally jump into Dorico with both feet for all my work moving forward. And with so much work with short deadlines, I’m gonna get frustrated as the stress gets higher. There are things I think work good in Dorico - I think I like popovers - they might be fast to work with as I manage to remember more and more of them. I like how I can add slurs and dots and crescendos and stuff while I’m entering notes without having to switch to different functions (although coming from Finale’s ability to do the layout while you’re working is much more efficient to me than doricos “write first, then do the layout” workflow since sometimes I’m changing things and it affects the layout so I have to keep switching back and forth. I like how easy it is to scoot around the score in galley mode with no problems and no artifacts. And even though I like Finale’s “Play from left barline” more than having to select a note on a staff and hitting “P” which is less efficient, I like being able to select a group of notes on a staff and hitting “P” to hear that staff soloed so it’s worth the tradeoff to me. Or how you can designate instruments as rhythm instruments and the chords automatically copy to them so I don’t have to keep copying and pasting chords to different staves. Of if you fix a chord, all of them update in the other staves so I’m not chasing down bad chords in other staves. I like that a lot since I work a lot with chord names. Drum notation is a dream for me in Dorico since you can assign which notes go to which voices and upstem or downstem and as you play them Dorico will put them in the correct voice with the correct stem direction without me having to constantly switch voices as I enter the notes. And add the little “o” on open hi hats. So there’s things I am optimistic about.
I feel like I can manage to learn to work as fast in Dorico as I did in Finale. The problem is the things Dorico is more efficient in that might be saving me time, that time is completely lost and then some, with all the random accidentals I have to chase down and fix in a score that Dorico is choosing to ignore the rules for.
Maybe something like Finale’s Spelling Tables would fix this? If you can’t fix the accidentals at least add “double / triple sharps and flats” to the filter menu. Or even better, in the “Select notes by pitch” dialog, let me save my groups of rules in a user column.
Oh, and you need to add “Select chord names” to the filter menu so I’m not constantly spending time scrolling around a score selecting chord names so I can copy them to another part of the score.
TL; DR - Dorico is cherry picking which accidentals it feels like applying the rules to and I’m losing a ton of time chasing down accidentals in the score and fixing them manually. All I want from Dorico is no double sharps/flats, no B sharps and F flats, and for God sakes, at least make the accidentals enharmonic to the key signature when I use respell.
