Alt-click is certainly useful, and the mouse is not without its uses generally.
But it’s slower if you’re crossing the screen to select the note value, then going back to the bar and taking time to get the right staff line. That’s slower than pressing two buttons.
I generally don’t change duration for sketching purposes. That happens later. But if I do, I’ll use the top row kbd numbers - so yes, I admit to ‘mixed mouse/kbd’ usage!
Using the mouse makes more sense for me when I am trying to compose interactively. Unfortunately it is rather cumbersome to use the mouse for note entry in dorico. That’s why we’re all trying to figure out some learned keyboard mode that works proficiently enough to live without poking notes in the screen with a mouse.
Part of the reason for liking the mouse for entry is because with the mouse you can look at the computer screen at the place where you are going to add a note and your hand takes the mouse right there without looking down, and you can easily select a pitch and duration with very little fuss by using QWERTY for duration and the mouse and your eyes for pitch and exact location where you want it. This would be very easy and intuitive though clearly not the fastest way to do copy work; but in dorico it’s worse then some other programs because dorico has note entry mode you go into with the caret, etc so this kind of interactive mouse based note entry is simply more cumbersome in dorico then some other programs.
One compelling thing about staffpad for me is that you can manage not only pitch and location while looking at the staff but can also specify duration, articulations and everything without remembering a single keyboard command nor having to look away from the staff at all or make sure your hands are hovering exactly over your learned and mastered key word commands. You look right at the screen and draw it in. No need to master some note entry QWERTY key command sequences to encode it in. The mind never leaves the actual music. It’s quite likely I will get that soon and just reserve dorico for copy work, which unfortunately I don’t do often enough to become proficient at it.
But I’m still interested in this discussion and I am still going to try to reserve a few hours per week to practice dorico entry in some fashion though it’s going to take me a long time to develop the right way that works for me. I appreciate all the ideas that are coming in.
“All”? That’s a questionable assumption. As this thread shows, people come at Dorico from many different directions.
Stephen Taylor, featured in Scoring Notes a few months ago, engraved the entire Rite of Spring using mostly QWERTY. I still find that hard to believe as I struggle to gain proficiency in note entry.
Sorry, I just don’t see the hangup. I can notate on QWERTY nearly as fast as I can make decisions about what note I want (for monophonic stuff), and plenty fast on MIDI.
I’ve mapped the +/- keys on my numeric keypad to shift octaves quickly. That’s a huge factor for me.
And Q opens the interval popover, not chord mode. Q, 3, Enter, easy.
Guys please don’t turn this into useless banter. I’m looking for suggestions and solutions, those of you that have a mastery over your keyboard encoding I’m happy for you. I’m not there yet and interested to hear details about how people are working through it.
It is a waste of time and energy if people are going to get defensive over this topic
It’s not useless banter: we’re discussing. Hearing many users say that a certain method worked for them with practice should certainly encourage other users to choose a method and stick to it. You can’t prevent users from sharing their opinions and experiences, even if they differ from yours. Glean from the discussion whatever is helpful to you, and ignore whatever isn’t helpful.
One thing I’ve been curious about is using pitch-before-duration and the arrow keys to change the greyed “ghost note” pitch so I can choose the pitch vertically and then press the number for the duration. This is typically how I worked in Finale’s Speedy Entry, and it really worked well. Can’t figure out a way to assign that to the up and down arrows.
I always input notes first pass, then go back and do dynamics, articulations, etc. I find it much faster. And the notes are the brain work… the articulations and dynamics require less mental effort, so I put them afterwards to avoid slowing my creative process.
Exactly the way I work as well. And the third pass is, where needed, positioning. For me that’s mostly text related.
I was contemplating last night some possible things to handle long ties and other things. Like that in some easier way.
I think I am genuinely faster using duration first. For me also I like that every once in a while while using duration first and the midi keyboard and then I can actually play the midi notes faster or slower according to the duration which makes no difference to the copying but just keeps my head in the music a bit somehow… when I use pitch before duration then I end up hearing each note twice and that is musically very distracting in the process. But it does have the advantage of when I’m using my 37 key midi controller I can fish around and make sure I’m going to enter the right note or chords, which is not fast at all but it gets done with less pitch mistakes
I’m trying to learn how to use just QWERTY also, I need to get better at knowing when the pitch By name will be adequate or when I have to adjust the octave and will have to keep memorize these key commands to be fast at all. But I think pure QWERTY is ultimately going to be the fastest way, if I can manage to really learn some typing long hand as second nature
If it helps, you can turn off note audition so you don’t hear the duplicate pitch.
Sure but then you don’t hear it one time either which is still useful. Right?
Here’s what I was referring to, by the way. I haven’t returned to Finale in ages, but I tried this out and remembered, again, how blazing fast it was for me. If there’s a way to move the ghost note using up and down arrows, this would become my preferred QWERTY method, hands-down.
Qwerty input is fast as long as you don’t have to input chords or intervals.
Dan, but isn’t G to C THREE up-arrow presses, compared to one if you just pressed C?
yea @dan_kreider I would like that method. I never got fast with Finale or Sibelius in the past, so I have very little experience with this whole keyboard-entry method. I once watched a colleague enter 4 bars of semi complicated music blindingly fast in Finale and I was blown away. He entered it in as fast as I typed this message.
It’s not about key presses, but brain effort. Up, down. Not pausing to think about the letter name.
PBD just uses the standard Raise/Lower Pitch by Step commands - Alt-Up and Alt-Down. You could always add extra shortcuts; I think I’d go for numpad minus for Up and numpad plus for Down (as I feel them; I don’t look at them!).
You’d be quicker than this, I’m sure, given this particular input method is alien to me.
@benwiggy, I tend to agree with that too…however… For one thing, my brain is still short circuiting when I try to use the letter names. I’ve been touch typing for 40 years and I can type sentences scarily fast. That’s great. My fingers know where the a key is, for example. yet somehow if I see or think of an A note, I have this pause where my brain goes, “oh yea, use the A key, where is the A key, oh yea the A key its right where its always been, use that one”. I mentally associate the A key with words lightening fast without even thinking about it…but associating it with a musical note has just not sunk in. Maybe it will…right now, its slow and my brain farts and literally can’t remember for a second where the A key is.
On top of that, I haven’t figured out exactly when the algorithm figures out to go up or down based on the letter, I’m assuming it goes in the closest direction, but what needs to happen to make this typing fast and smooth will need to be something along the mental lines of “the next note is an A, a 4th up, so just hit A”. But if its “the note is A a fifth up”, then my brain needs to remember to adjust the octave also. For now this process is not automatic so I have to look back and forth to see what happened, then decide “oh that was the wrong A”. And then “how do I move it”, oh yea that’s right…let’s move it one pitch at a time, but what’s the key for moving it an octave down…no wait…up…"…etc…
if this ever gets automatic, then yes I think pure QWERTY will be the fastest way to go…but I’m not there…
I tried those exact ones, but I couldn’t get Up and Down to bind to those commands. I assumed it was a limitation of the interface (that is, certain keystrokes are off-limits).
Also, @benwiggy it’s more in line with how we read music. We don’t think note names… we think intervals. 5-4-3-2-1 is a lot easier to think as a series of downward steps rather than G-F-E-D-C… especially since those letters are in the “wrong” order on the keypad!
Left hand on the numbers at the top… right hand on the up and down arrows. I’d put even money on this being the fastest QWERTY method for typical note entry, hands down.