Welcome thread for Finale users

[judddanby]

@Mark_Johnson

I wish more Finale switchers would at least try a different way for a while, as in Dan’s suggestion #2 in post #3 of this thread. Insisting that nothing must change about your note input method makes you blind to the advantages. The Dorico team really did think hard about this design

I second this motion. As a Finale user for 32 years, I made a concerted effort to study and learn about Dorico when I switched two years ago. Early on I was frequently disoriented and made lots of “mistakes” rooted in Finale behaviors (like lots of manual positioning of systems ) — not in the sense of they didn’t manage to get me what I wanted, but because those mistakes ultimately wasted my time due to my own gaps in familiarity with Dorico. (This was especially true when trying to notate bigger pieces under deadlines.)

Those of us with the advantage of time and experience in learning Dorico certainly recognize that last week’s bomb-drop was cause for a kind of tension we didn’t have to live through. But, as @benwiggy pointed out early on, no one is really under the kind of do-it-NOW-or-never! pressure that the grief at Finale’s “passing” might inspire. It lingers on — as wraithware, to be sure, but functional — and there’s time for everyone to study Dorico from the ground up while exporting XMLs and even continuing to work in Finale on works with pressing deadlines.

More Thoughts on Using This Forum:

I would add — perhaps making few new friends in so doing, I realize — that it’s frankly also just kinda…well, rude to start demanding that software others have designed and developed for probably twelve years or more “should” do what any new user is already accustomed to in other software. It’s a bit like telling your hosts what dinner they should have prepared for you. (I use the analogy since, after all, Ben started this thread as a “Welcome!” I can already hear the “but this is different — I paid for this!” retorts. But I counter that consumerism doesn’t justify “demanderism.” If you decide (perhaps prematurely) that Dorico is unsatisfactory, you have other choices.)

I’ll also add that this forum is a truly special place filled with advice and wisdom, constructive debate and criticism when warranted, camaraderie, and even good humor. Those of us already here obviously have a connection to Dorico through our invested time and admiration for its functioning. But that doesn’t make us mindless shills. We regular users are just voluntarily pitching in to try and help each other and all of the new “Finale-refugee” members, and it should be self-evident that we won’t join in on the chorus when anyone starts singing variations on “this is terrible.”

I can’t speak to the Finale forum’s tone and how users there might have been acculturated, but I will say that I value being met here with respect, being incredibly supported, feeling welcome, looking forward to the responses and assistance I receive, and to giving back as I’m able.

I caution everyone new to the forum to be very mindful of not squandering the good will with which you will be met if you make some effort and a few simple gestures. “I tried looking for X, and haven’t found a way to do it; how does that work in Dorico?” will go a long way to guaranteeing that you get the help and answers you need.

ADDENDUM

Adopting a “we all work here” stance, I’d also like to share some thoughts on best practices for using the forum. (Full disclosure: I’m “just” a fellow user; I’ve learned these through being a member and observing the culture of the forum.)

Please:

• Search the forum and manual before posting if your question is focused; and please watch Dorico’s videos first as necessary if you have a broader question (such as “how do I enter notes?”).
• Search for an existing thread with your question already in it to avoid unnecessary duplication across threads, which only diffuses members’ efforts to respond and runs the risk of causing our eyes to glaze over and miss things while scrolling the forum if we see post after post that are essentially the same.
• In cases where’s there’s a clear solution (as opposed to threads that are more discussion-oriented), mark the so that the solution is shown at the top of the thread below the OP. That saves anyone else searching a lot of reading time. (It’s also a nice gesture to “share the love” with someone who helped, of course.)
• If a new thread is warranted, give it a clear and precise title. Something like “What’s Going On???” doesn’t tell the rest of us anything and requires us to click in to read it (or impels us to ignore it and keep scrolling…).
• Include pertinent details (OS/platform; forum tags identifying Dorico version and/or topic-area of post). It’s frustrating for each of us to, say, spend time reading a thread only to from from the OP-er in the seventh post that it’s about a version we’re not really in a position to help with.
• Once the initial Discourse limits on posting are removed, if you have a question that warrants detailed investigation, upload a copy of your file (following the procedure below) and/or — if images alone are truly sufficient to explain your problem/question — a screenshot(s) that will help everyone else know what problem you’re facing.

@dspreadbury

If you are having a problem with Dorico, the fastest way to get the help you need is to post the project, or a part of it, and not to post a screenshot. If you post a picture, you will almost certainly find that the first person to respond to your thread asks you to post the project. You may be concerned that the musical content of your project will be judged, or stolen. While we cannot guarantee that this will not happen, because of the supportive nature of the forum, this is vanishingly unlikely. There may be copyright or confidentiality restrictions that prevent you from posting the whole project. That’s fine! It’s always better in any case to cut the project down to a smaller size to attach it, particularly because there is a 4MB file size limit on attachments.

To cut down your project, first do File > Save As to save your project under a new name, to avoid making unwanted changes to your working project. If the project contains multiple flows, delete all flows except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the project contains multiple players, delete all players except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the problem is isolated to a particular bar or passage, then use the Shift+B popover to remove all other bars (e.g. select a note or rest in the bar after the problem passage, type Shift+B and enter a huge negative number like -9999 to delete all of the remaining bars in the flow).

Once you have cut down the project to the minimum scope that reproduces the problem, in Play mode choose Play > Playback Template and reapply the default playback template, or choose Silence. This dramatically reduces the file size of the project after you have deleted most of its musical material, because it removes the saved audio engine state.

Finally, attach the Dorico project it to your post.

If you want to add a picture as well (perhaps annotated to show where the problem exists), then by all means do so. But if your problem relates to a specific situation you’re experiencing in your project, you are guaranteed to get a more helpful answer more quickly when you include a suitable project file to reproduce the problem.