Three scores in three months after moving to Dorico

Dorico
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While there are still things I’m learning since moving from Finale in early September for all my compositions, I just finished my third work in three months with Dorico, representing nearly two hours of music. I typically composed 2-3 works per year (five per year when I would travel all the time to my office on the other coast for my day job , where I could hole up in a hotel room and compose at night, but that hasn’t been the case for years). I do think switching to Dorico has increased my output for two reasons:

  1. While there remains a learning curve, many things that were clunky, bug-ridden and onerous in Finale are just easier and more reliable with Dorico
  2. I really want to keep using Dorico and gain fluency, so there is an additional incentive to compose

Now, Dorico still can be challenging and some things (being able to select parts of measures and tied notes to drag them or copy them elsewhere) are more challenging or involved than with Finale. But overall it’s been more efficient and I’ve gotten the hang of it.

Glad I switched, finally.

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Congratulations, David. I’m glad you’ve been able to make Dorico work for you.

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@dtoub, with apologies for letting my editor’s reflexes getting the better of me: what’s the point of notating (often intricately precise) rhythmic positions for ending notes if the whole piece is with down-pressed pedal throughout?

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I came here to ask exactly the same thing.
And: As this piece is for piano solo, why notate on 4 staves?

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I had the same thought about ending points for notes but other than making every note extend to the next one over several measures, one has to cut their durations at some point. Feldman is one example where he did specify specific note ending points despite holding the sustain pedal the entire work (just take a look at p14 of For Bunita Marcus as one example).

Why four staves? I did the same in an earlier work that was recorded commercially (quartet for piano) in order to simplify some independent voices that were playing at different speeds. I mean, Feldman had as many as six staves going at one point in his 1977 work Piano and for very good reason. But in the end, sometimes it’s a choice and not everyone will agree with my choices. At least I avoid double flats and double sharps.

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