To all Finale converts regarding Speed Entry in Dorico 5.1.60

Hi all, I hope you saw this in the new Dorico update.

Jesper

Info about speed entry

However, in light of the many new Dorico users who have come from Finale, we have introduced some new commands in Dorico 5.1.60 that will allow Speedy Entry aficionados to set things up such that the shadow note can be moved with the up/down arrow keys alone. Four new commands have been added to the Note Input category in the Key Commands page of Preferences: map Raise Shadow Note Pitch by Step to up arrow, and map Lower Shadow Note Pitch by Step to down arrow. We also recommend you map Move Up and Move Down (also in the Note Input category) to Alt+up arrow and Alt+down arrow respectively, so that it is still possible to move the caret to different staves. You may also wish to map Raise Shadow Note Pitch by Octave and Lower Shadow Note Pitch by Octave. Having made these changes, after activating note input with pitch before duration, you can use the up/down arrow keys to adjust the pitch of the shadow note.

Furthermore, a new option Play changes of shadow note pitch in pitch before duration input has been added to the Note Input and Editingpage of Preferences. If you prefer only to hear the pitch of the note when you commit it to the score by hitting a duration key, which is how Speedy Entry behaves in Finale, deactivate this option.

12 Likes

Marvelous! I already tried that and looks like working very fine! Thanks Dorico team!!

1 Like

This update, plus re-mapping the note input numbers (6 to 5 etc.) makes it feel like Finale Homecoming Day. Thank you.

::: Bill

2 Likes

Any chance this could be done for “duration before pitch” for us Simple Entry migrants?

4 Likes

“Give them a foot, they want a yard.
Give them a yard they want a pool in it.” :smirk:

Good to see you here, Mike. I expect before long you will be giving helpful advice as well as soliciting it. I always valued your comments on the Finale forum.

8 Likes

You can already do this via the Key Commands page of Preferences.

2 Likes

I did it! Yay, me!

Thanks for the help!

Where is the command to move the ghost note without using the mouse? That was one thing I couldn’t find in the Key Commands list.

1 Like

Here are the ones you want!

Screenshot 2024-10-09 at 2.55.42 PM

1 Like

Thank you! Much obliged.

1 Like

This is great! Hate to be nitpicky and punch a gift horse in the mouth, but I think also many of us are looking to have an option separate from this, to disable pitch at duration input:

In other words, we’d like to hear the pitch while moving the arrow keys around before commiting it, but not hear it a second time after input. With the menu preference unchecked, it makes it so you can’t hear it with arrow movements, but only after input. Which makes it a bit harder if you are looking to work out ideas by ear before commiting; whereas with this new preference checked, the doubled-note effect with this checked can be distracting as many users have complained.

3 Likes

Wonderful work, Dorico—really feeling welcomed by this improvement!

There seems to be an auditioning bug still (not surprising for this much work so fast) in the interaction between various ways of emulating Finale-Speedy.

With (Pitch Before Duration ON + Remapped Raise Shadow Arrows + Play Changes of Shadow Note Pitch OFF) we’re 90% of the way to Finale Speedy emulation (just with the duration row shifted by one; I can learn…). The next 9% comes from Force Durations + turning “Specify accidental, rhythm dot and articulations” to “After inputting note”. With that everything is great if I mute the sound. But with “Specify After inputting note” I now hear the last entered note every time I move the shadow note. (Interestingly, it does not play again when adding a dot; it does (as expected) when adding an accidental). That’s the only actual bug I’ve found so far; it does make using this combination with sound on basically unusable though.

Not exactly a bug, but probably not what I would expect: with Pitch Before Duration and Specify Dots before Notes, the dot is turned off after each note. It leads to the odd situation that the order for entering a series of dotted notes is: “Dot. Move to correct Pitch. Duration for pitch” → “Dot, Pitch, Duration” → “Dot, Pitch, Duration” as opposed to what I would find more logical for this state: “Turn on ‘dotted mode’ Pitch, Duration, Pitch, Duration, Pitch, Duration, Dotted-mode-off”

What would help is if the “Specify accidental, rhythm dot and articulations” Preferences Setting could be contextual → “After in Note before Duration; Before otherwise”. (I’m probably not the only Finale refugee legitimately trying to learn Dorico default paradigms, but needing for speed/learning curve to change a few things at a time, and spending a few hours each day in one world vs. another.)

1 Like

One other (bug? quirk that I can’t figure out?) regarding “Specify dot after” behavior comes in situations like the one below (12/8; assume Bass Clef). In Duration+Dots before, this can be entered as Dot-half-tie-E + Dot-quarter-tie-E + quarter-E (+eighth-B).

In Specify dot/tie/etc. after mode, there’s a problem: entering E-half-dot-tie + E-quarter-dot… immediately creates a dotted whole note filling the bar (whether in Force Durations mode or not) – this seems like an artifact of Dorico’s “Time is filled or empty; representation is an implementation detail” philosophy. Once there’s a dotted half tied to a quarter, it can immediately be simplified internally to a whole note, and then the dot is applied to the whole note. I think this would be an incorrect interpretation of user intention, but it would be an understandable interpretation w/ Force Durations off, but with Force Durations on, it seems very wrong.

I tried creating the duration in several ways (the one that worked: write dotted half, dotted quarter, quarter, eighth; all untied, and then later select the dotted half and dotted quarter and click tie on it). One way I thought was to build up from smaller values first. This is the editor view after “E-quarter-dot-tie, E-half…” before adding the dot to the note.

(If you look carefully at the current state of the dot button, you can see impending doom…)

And here is the state after pressing dot:

Dorico has noticed that the tied duration is equivalent to a double-dotted half note, but obviously one would never write that in 12/8 so it represents it differently (w/o force durations on, it’ll now be a dotted half tied to eighth). Then the dot button is seen as toggling off both of the double dots, leaving a normal half note (which in 12/8 is represented as a dotted-quarter + eighth). It seems to me that with Force Durations On at least, the last engraved object (tied or not) is what intuitively determines dot status and dots should be toggled on that object, not on the tied note entry. Thanks!

This was a marvelous thing to add, THANK YOU STEINBERG!! I didn’t even use Finale before, but this change instantly provides a much more intuitive entry method with QWERTY and no midi keyboard around.

I’d love to see an ability to add key commands for up or down by other intervals besides step and octave. 3,4,5,6,7? or even if just 3 and 5, we can minimize some keystrokes if we are so inclined to map the keys for it.

But this change already is super super helpful. Thank you again.

2 Likes

Michael, please do a search of recent threads about “dots and ties”. This issue has been discussed nearly to death in the past 6 weeks.

1 Like

Thanks Mark – I’ve been reading every forum post I can (Difficulty with Inputting Tied Dotted Notes When Using the "After inputting note" Setting seems among the most relevant) but this case doesn’t seem anywhere there, and the case of Play Changes of Shadow Note Pitch Off + dot settings causing the previous note to play with every shadow cursor move seems to be a new 5.1.60 issue since the preference didn’t exist before last week. I cannot imagine that it’s intentional (but maybe it’s another part of Dorico culture we newbees don’t get).

New Finale migrant. I appreciate the Speedy Entry function. I found another little quirk. When inputting the pitches E or B natural using the up arrow, these two pitches become sharped. Not the case when using the down arrow.

I would love to see the following improvements to this new feature:

1 - in addition to raise by step and raise by octave, please also provide raise chromatic. Raise chromatic is provided by NoteEdit arrow keys, but as of now is not available for the grey notehead NoteEntry mode. Please add raise and lower chromatic so that we can use a different mapped key command to bump the pitch up chromatically instead of merely by diatonic step. This will match NoteEdit for one thing, but also makes it possible to audition the chromatic entry before committing it with a duration.

2 - Please display along with the grey notehead, the current articulations and if applicable, accidental that may actually end up applied when we finally press the duration key.

I’ll sum up here the problems I encoutered so far:

  1. In Pitch before Duration, the “Lower/Raise Pitch by Octave/Step/Chromatic Step” commands are not working. They should transpose, as elsewhere, any selected (orange) note accordingly, and instead they simply move the shadow note (and only diatonically).
    (If Chromatic Step lowering/raising in particular was working, it would be the most speedy/ergonomic way to input accidentals or chromatic music.)

  2. When Pitch before Duration and the Chords (Q) tool are on, I can’t add chord notes with the up/down arrows, unless I advance and recede the caret first at each note input.

  3. When note input is on with Pitch before Duration turned OFF, any selected (orange) note is diatonically transposed if I press up or down arrows alone. (Note: I have set “Lower/Raise Shadow Note by Step” to down/up arrows alone.)

(Again, a huge thanks for this speedy option!)

1 Like

yup, exactly.

From me, thanks for accomodating the speedy entry tragic. I have found also that re-mapping the number keypad to match the speedy entry allocation it is having a weird effect on accidentals. On input, notes are randomly changing. If I use the number row it seems to work correctly? Thanks