To the Dorico Team if you ever read these forums. Before you release Dorico 6 you need to do something to make the GUI and menus less confusing. The correct menu is too hard to find. Think of how many new folks and I know you have heard them said, it’s too confusing and too frustrating complaints. How many are lost because of that?
One responder in a recent reply said he wasn’t completely satisfied and comfortable using Dorico until after 2 years. That’s insane but it says volumes.
My suggestion of more right-click mouse and contextual drop down menus or something like that is just one suggestion. I am sure smart folks like you can come up with far better ideas.
Now the rumors are that MuseScore 5 is going to have a less confusing and more logical GUI. If that is true, which are people going to get the $?00 buck Dorico 6 or the free MuseScore?
This should be top drawer especially as Finale continues to fade away.
Hi Ernie, as you know very well already, the Dorico team reads every post on this forum. Some of us even do so on evenings and at weekends (such as now, as it’s a Friday evening in the UK).
You’ve shared a lot of feedback already, both recently and in your earlier time here.
I also spent a decent amount of time conversing with you privately a couple of months ago, in order to try to help you become familiar with working in Dorico.
We listen to all user feedback, and work pretty tirelessly to maintain and improve a notation software whose sophistication and capability we’re rather proud of. Still, we know it’s got room for improvement and have no intention of ceasing our efforts in this regard. Hopefully this is clear to you and all users who interact with us.
That said, please be understanding that we may not completely overhaul everything about how Dorico looks and behaves overnight, because we have many established users to consider as well, who work well and enjoyably with Dorico on a daily basis.
We’re proud that this forum remains on the whole a constructive and polite place, where most people respect the experience and insights of others and also of the care and attention offered by members of the development team.
Just to suggest a few ideas, I endorse the asking for more contextual drop-down menus, to speed up the workflow.
Also, I find a real time wasting having “Write” and “Engrave” different sections, and the need to switch all the time between them. For me, using a Music Notation Software means inputting music and formatting the score, all at the same time.
The lack of an almost omnipotent tool as the Selection tool in Finale I think after a few months of use that is also a decisive weakness in Dorico which slows the workflow. It seems that this stems from Dorico being a “keyboard oriented” software more than a “mouse oriented” one. This surely is related to the formatting options that in the Dorico documentation frustratingly appear as “This editing cannot be done (graphically) with the mouse”, having to use the keyboard.
As Dorico was officially offered as the lifesaver for old Finale users, these kind of requests are going to be expected from all of us (“refugees”) who decided to invest our money in Dorico instead of the only competence, Sibelius. Anyway, we must thank the positive tone of the Dorico team answering our messages, even though the line of work of the program seems quite well stablished.
Please invest in a second monitor, which would enable you to have both write and engrave modes open at the same time! That’s what I did, it’s a massive help with switching between modes…
B.
At first I was confused by the splitting of Write and Engrave, too. However, as a previous long-time Sibelius user, I reflected on the number of times I had been working on a layout issue, only to find that I had changed the pitch/rhythm input. This has allowed me more freedom to experiment with the layout, and to do so without fear that I would make inadvertent musical changes. Once that was clear in my mind, it became much easier in terms of workflow. At least I can this is now it has worked for me - I understand you may have a different viewpoint. Just stating that for some - well, at least me -like this separation of powers.
Just started using Dorico (migrating from Finale) and I understand things need improving, etc. My biggest concern is when I don’t understand something, I can’t get an easy to understand explanation. The manual assumes you already know terminology. (I don’t!) That leads to being clueless as to where functions are and how to access them. So my biggest ask is for more “easy to understand” instructions! Thanks!
If you search for the terms you’re used to from Finale, in most cases the manual will come up with what you need. The terms that Dorico uses are not plucked out of the air and made up to make life difficult, they’re just different from what Finale uses. I’m sure there were terms in Finale that you were unfamiliar with when you first started using it?
Anyhow, if there’s something you can find, please ask here, I’m sure someone would be glad to help…
This section in the manual is a quick read and introduces most of the core concepts and terminology that Dorico uses.
And if things are confusing, you can always ask here, using whatever terminology you like (many/most of us have used other notation programs as well, and are familiar with what they call things).
To me the Jump Bar and Popovers are some of the greatest and most intuitive features ever added to any software. I am currently spending a bit more time in Cubase due to a specific project I’m working on, and constantly bemoan the absence of the jump bar to find anything. It’s amazing and more professional software should have something like this – it’s far superior to digging around in menus, whether at the top or right-click, because you release yourself of the cognitive burden of having to remember under what menu something lives and all the time it takes rooting around for it. I highly recommend getting to know these tools.
Thanks for the suggestion.
I already have a second monitor.
The idea of having the same score duplicated in two monitors for editing different things had never crossed my mind. I really do not find it logical nor economical. AS I said, I prefer to edit everything over the score, not in two places.
Thanks anyway for taking the time to answer.
The approach Dorico favors is to get all the music in before worrying about how it looks on the page. Dorico makes a distinction between musical content (Write) and page content (Engrave). This is most obvious in Galley view. Dorico has Layouts to represent an actual page. Notice how in page view you need to select a layout as without that selection, there is no page. I suspect many users never look at page view in Write mode, but that will be a matter of personal preference.
Another benefit of the mode split is in Engrave mode you can’t change the musical content, only its appearance. You can’t change a pitch or the existence of a slur, etc. Ultimately, I find this reduces the number of inadvertent errors. It’s very unnerving to hit up arrow and not see the expected result on the screen. Was it because something else was selected? Did I just change something? Will undo work in this situation, or was nothing actually selected, and I’ll undo the last legitimate action? In Engrave mode you can be certain you didn’t change a pitch or any other bit of musical content. At worst you may have nudged something.
This approach also reduces the potential for wasting time perfecting a bar or passage of music, only to have it all rendered moot because you realize you need to change something earlier in the piece and the waterfall effect moves bars to different systems.
The split is a foundational principle of Dorico, and I seriously doubt it would ever be changed.
I’m sorry, I don’t think I suggested the terminology was “plucked out of the air”, and I have tried to be creative in my search suggestions, even resorting to musical terms such as “creating multi measure rests”. And yes, that’s a Finale term, and it didn’t come up in the online search.
You’re correct, when I started using Finale there were terms I didn’t understand, which is why I searched and asked those more familiar with the program for help.
I also don’t recall intimating that Steinberg has tried to “make life difficult”. I happen to use other Steinberg products such as Cubase 13 every day, so I’m a supporter of the company.
It’s apparent as a newbie on the Forum that one must endure a certain amount of condescension from the experts in the crowd. I’m sorry I offended you and your sensibilities.
All I asked for is to make searching for instructions a tad easier for those of us new to the process.
I’ll make sure that I don’t trouble you for any advice.
Thank you! I have watched those videos, albeit very briefly.
As things would have it, of course you get a job that “needs to be done overnight” so you end up in crash course mode trying to learn everything about the program in one sitting. Obviously very difficult.
I appreciate the suggestions. I’m sure there is nothing wrong with the program, it’s just a matter of me learning the “language”.
I don’t think @Toaster1974 's post was meant to be condescending…and the important thing is what he says at the end: someone will be happy to help you here with any questions.
Any chance you could complete that job in Finale, if that’s what you’re more familiar with? Trying to do anything quickly in an application you’re not comfortable with is a recipe for frustration.
Sorry, I wasn’t for one second trying to be condescending, or unwelcoming to the Dorico workspace. It’s just that as people are leaving the Finale ship, there have been a tremendous amount of ‘unintuitive’ ‘unhelpful’ ‘in Finale it was easy’ ‘dorico people can’t take criticism of Dorico’ posts and it becomes a little difficult to not jump when they happen…
The fact is that pretty much all Dorico users have come from another notation program, myself included after 20 odd years with Sibelius, and we’ve all had to learn how Dorico works. We’ve done that with the help of the manual, and this forum and most of us have come to the conclusion that Dorico is hugely well thought out and easy to use. With it’s shortcomings, of course, all software has those. But there’s a reason that a lot of us are evangelical about Dorico and that is that it’s a huge amount more efficient and better thought out than most, if not all, other notation programs out there and once you’ve got your head around the different paradigms it’s pretty amazing. And worth the effort. Honest…
