Thank you.
I did try changing levels in the Dorico mixer, but Halion seemed to ignore them.
I have two days off now, so have the time to sit and RTFM, so hopefully it’ll start making some kind of sense very soon.
Five days of RTFM, and I’m done!
There is virtually nothing you can do in Dorico that doesn’t require you to second-guess some crazy User Interface design, try and find the relevant part of a 2000ish page manual, trawl through endless youtube videos or come here and ask for help.
Thinking of ‘Quord’ for the shortcut for chord isn’t an endearing solution, it’s just one mangled wheel in a trainwreck! Every time I go near Dorico I’m searching for help on really really simple stuff.
I’ve just re-watched ‘That Video’ on youtube from four or so years ago, and it’s as if nothing has been learned.
Dorico is obviously an extremely versatile piece of software that can be used to write amazing Stockhausen-inspired charts, but if it’s not possible for someone to write ‘Happy Birthday Mr President’ for solo Monroe without reading 2000 pages of manual then it is worse than useless!
This is nothing personal. Yes, I am annoyed at spending a week of pulling my hair out trying to re-learn software I’ve learnt twice before, and as I uninstall Dorico I really would still like to see this software (which I have supported financially since ‘The Avid Issue’) become the industry standard.
If this is to happen then I believe you need a ‘choose workspace’ button on install, with an option for ‘idiot-level user interface’, and that workspace needs to be designed by someone who is not a software engineer but someone who understands people and use-cases, different workflows and basic GUI design. You save face, but also massively improve new user experience, uptake and retention.
This is now a highly developed piece of software (behind the scenes at least). With the demise of Finale it is an opportunity to take over the music scoring world once and for all. Either that or pack your bags and let something such as MuseScore gradually take all but your die-hard fan-bois and girls.
Yamaha, Steinberg and Dorico, please please please appoint someone to oversee the total overhaul of this abominable user interface.
I’d like to say that it’s been a pleasure, but in reality the whole Dorico experience has just given me more grey hairs.
Rob, out!
Bob, if I may ask, what does this term mean?
Question from another user, without English as first language…
Read The Fabulous Manual 
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Ah, that makes sense, thank you Lillie.
Actually the F stands for a more vulgar term 
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Vadian, you could challenge the forum software by spelling out, what you have in mind?
That would be pretty insulting 
I am sure, Rob meant the Fabulous manual.
… well … he sure told us now, didn’t he!
Have any of those who complain about Dorico not being “intuitive” considered that plenty of users have had sufficient intuition to figure it out?
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I don’t understand. Honestly.
I switched, after 30 years of using Finale, to using Dorico. I was flying with it after a bit over a month.
This was with Dorico 3.5 I believe.
Then in came Dorico 4… and the transition was seamless.
And again, another transition, to Dorico 5… and I can honestly say I never noticed a difference other than new features that I simply added to my arsenal.
Are there really people who got so confused by the new versions that they could not find things when going from 3.5 to 4, or 4 to 5?
Or is it because I use Dorico upwards of 6 hours a day?
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The expression even made it into Wikipedia:
With regard to the topic: Unintuitive is sometimes confused with unfamiliar
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This is an understatement!
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Yes, that will definitely help.
It’s like with languages: Some languages are more complicated, have more quirks, more exceptions to the rules and so on. For native speakers (and you, using a software 6 hours a day, definitely are a Dorico native speaker in that sense) that might not be as abvious to see as for people who have to learn the language from scratch.
And though I’m working with Dorico more in the last weeks than before and quite confidently find my way around in Dorico, I still can wholeheartedly feel everyone who calls it “unintuitive” - because it is. Putting text into popovers simply can’t be intuitive: You would not know what to put there most of the time, and you would not have any idea that you would need to press Shift+B at all in the first place.
BUT: Dorico is - as I see it - not meant to be intuitive. It’s primarily meant to be used efficiently, and I like it. At the same time I can understand that this will scare away new users or users who are to deep into other software. Dorico’s approach is different, and transitioning to Dorico is less “find the new location of the button I’m searching for” but more more “remember the keys I need to press in order to do the same thing I previously had some nice UI for” - and this will spark discussions every so often.
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Intuitive as in look at the screen and guess how to do things and that’s how you do them (if you are lucky).
The times I have worked with that kind of software (and Finale was definitely not one of them, neither was Sibelius), I very quickly progress to the next phase of wanting to be efficient. And then I usually run into a roadblock and have to build external scripts etc (if I have the patience) to go where I want.
In the best of worlds we would have both sides – the elusive intuitivity, and the limitless power user efficiency.
Personally I consider the latter quality far more important.
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I always marvel at the willingness of some people to spend years learning to play an instrument and/or study composition, but their unwillingness to spend a few weeks learning to use a tool which will make their professional lives a lot easier.
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Have fun…
This video is kind of a mix between using the admittedly unintuitive popovers and the very intuitive and standardized tool palettes and double click mechanics that most professional software has used for the last 30 years or so.
Maybe Rob wants to reconsider and reinstall Dorico to give it one more chance?
Cheers,
Benji
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But the buttons are all there! 
It really is just a question to learn where to find them… As you know, you can really click your way through a score rather nicely now… 
Dorico has the most sensible shortcuts in any application I’ve used, sorry I fully disagree with you here. I’ve professionally worked with every software engineering IDE out there, all big the apps for art (Blender, PS, etc), music (all the big DAWs) and many more. Only Dorico has shortcuts that was thought out. IDE’s are the worst, they’re really a mess …
Now picking on ‘Q’ in particular is entirely unfair - yes it’s a little odd, and is basically the only one that doesn’t match the command. Maybe, just maybe, because ‘C’ was taken for something more important? I’ll bet anything Daniel sat down before any code was written and made a spreadsheet of all the future shortcuts, so chord mode ended up on q. Big deal.
IMO Dorico is the most intuitive app I’ve ever used. Serious thought was put into the UI.
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Thank you for the tutorial Benji. I appreciate the time and effort you put into it.
Just to re-cap:
To edit the time signature, I (very intuitively) double-click on it, then type “1/4,1” and then it displays “3/4(q+1+1)” to show erm… something.
But then when I want to change the “Mezzo-Soprano” to say “Marilyn” I don’t (very intuitively) double-click on it, but instead:
~ Click on the Setup tab
~ Double-click “Mezzo Soprano” (the first one, not the second one)
~ Change that to say “Marilyn”
~ Wonder for a bit why it didn’t change on the score (like you did)
~ Search the manual for “Change Instrument Name” (p195, sort of)
~ Click on “Library”
~ Click on “Layout Options”
~ Click on “I think, Staves and Systems”
~ Click on “Show player name instead of instrument name”
~ Click on “Apply”
~ Click on “Close”
Benji, can you answer me just two simple questions:
- How many hours do you think you have used Dorico in total?
- Why did you say “I think” Staves and Systems?