Now that I’ve scanned all 365 posts in this topic so far (and even read several) I want to thank the Dorico staff and users for their patience and helpfulness in the face of all us desperate Finale users, even, alas, when some fell into nastiness. Such steadfast help is a big plus as I work through what comes after Finale. Thank you.
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I’ve followed your thread here because I’m hoping to achieve the same outcome: something close to Finale’s Speedy Entry with MIDI keyboard for pitch and number pad for durations. Rests are tripping me up. If you work out a system that works, could you share?
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You know that you don’t need to enter rests for the most part, right?
Just enter the notes and Dorico will fill in the rests. Much faster.
Jesper
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Rests are automatic for the most part. Inserting, deleting, or modifying notes will cause rests to be added/removed/adjusted as needed. When entering notes, you can press the space bar or arrow key to advance the caret, and a rest will be inserted. (I like to think of it as a space if I were typing words.) You can always map a key command for “Advance Caret” to whichever key suits you.
A post was split to a new topic: How to get Dorico installed
Hey Luke,
Unfortunately I haven’t found a way to get a 1-to-1 replication of Speedy. The intention is that you don’t put rests in, so there isn’t any built in functionality to do that. I thought that mapping the left and right arrows to 8 and 9 respectively would at least be enough to start practicing, but you have to also adjust the rhythmic grid using Alt + [ and ] in order to progress the caret by the “amount of rest” required. I’m sure I can fiddle with the shortcuts to keep my left from having to move quite as much, but I’m quickly running out of num pad real estate lol.
We understand this point- I think the misunderstanding is that some of us Speedy users want to be able to input the rests. I know that runs counter to Dorico’s design philosophy and it’s nice that the devs will consider how to incorporate it in spite of this.
In the absence of such an addition, though, I think what would be helpful to me at least is to see footage of someone’s hands composing in real time? I understand the workflow in theory, but I’m just not seeing how this method is faster than Speedy given how much more active your numpad hand has to be in order to input notes, advance caret AND adjust the grid when needed.
It’s also possible that I’m missing something or not being efficient enough in Dorico yet. Let’s say I’m trying to input a quarter note > dotted quarter rest > quarter note > quarter rest. From my experience in Dorico so far, it looks like that process would be (after Shift+N to go into Note Input):
- Play note on keyboard, desired pitch appears as quarter note.
- Alt+ [ (or ]) until you arrive to desired rhythmic grid adjustment.
- Right arrow over the desired amount of spots.
- Input next note, appears as quarter note.
- Adjust rhythmic grid again
- Right arrow over desired spaces again.
Whereas in Speedy in Finale, the steps look like this:
- Hold desired pitch on MIDI keyboard, press 5 on numpad, note appears as quarter.
- Remove hand from MIDI keyboard, press 5, quarter rest appears. Then press . turns into dotted quarter rest.
- Repeat step 1.
- Remove hand from MIDI keyboard, press 5, quarter rest appears.
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Well, that’s great for you. However, many of us cannot even contact Steinberg AT ALL.
When I go to My Steinberg/Support/Create support request, I am greeted with the following message:
Individual support for you is provided by one of our Steinberg distributors. Please find a list of distributors on this page:
And when I navigate to “that page”, I see that Steinberg distributor for my country is Yamaha Music Europe GmbH. But of course, I can’t contact them directly either. I have to go through local resellers. According to Yamaha’s site, there are two resellers that I can contact for Steinberg support. One is a seller of professional video equipment and another is a is a music store (an official Yamaha dealer). But I bought software, not hardware and I bought it directly from Steinberg, online. So, why I cannot send supports tickets directly to them?! That’s beyond bad and extremely discriminatory. Treating software customers differently because they live in different countries?!
Will a digital piano seller really be able to help me with creating a remote script in Cubase or the audio engine deadlocking main thread in Dorico? Of course not, and they know it.
This doesn’t really affect Dorico because we have this wonderful team that talks to us directly and respects us, but it does affect every other Steinberg product. Dorico team is not obliged to do what they do and most Steinberg developers and managers couldn’t care less about writing on this forum.
What a shame, really… I can understand bugs. Software is very hard. I can’t understand discrimination of your own customers who payed exactly the same as those others who are not discriminated because they are lucky to be living in a privileged country.
Sorry it’s been rough for you. Perhaps a good approach for users like yourself would be to browse the forums and figure out who the Team Leaders are for each product. If they don’t see/answer your general threads in the forum, try sending an IM to them here through the forum.
Seems like some of the better times to get their attention is shortly ‘after’ a big release. The worst times to get their attention is shortly before a big release.
I’ve gotten most of my help though this forum. I.E. I once posted a bug report on the HALion forum. It was pretty detailed, and a day or so later I got an IM from the HALion Team Leader (I guess what Daniel is for Dorico?), who walked me through a process to help him ‘duplicate’ my issue. It was fixed in the very next maintenance release.
It’s true that the main website sends you on a wild goose chase if you are looking for a way to ‘contact’ a real person from Steinberg…but…
Only time I’ve had to file a ‘support ticket’ was quite a while back. I needed a special HALion 5 key for my dongle (to be able to roll back from H6). Things may have changed since then, but in those days if one went to his ‘My Steinberg Account’, a support ticket could be filed from there (I was under the impression we can still do this, if logged into My Steinberg). It was shortly after a big release, so the HALion ‘team’ was watching the forums and support lines pretty closely at the time. I got my key within’ 48 hours.
On the LUA Scripting end of things, some cats from Steinberg have been SUPER helpful on that front, and some of the users on there are even MORE helpful. Just gotta post in the forum and wait. If it doesn’t get attention after a few days, try ‘bumping’ the thread so it goes back to the top of the cue.
I’d like to see the video you described: someone’s hands using a MIDI keyboard for pitch, computer keyboard for durations. The idea of constantly adjusting the grid to get the correct rest duration seems cumbersome. I’ve been experimenting with switching to the rest on the palette (it was key command comma, I changed it to the zero on the number pad). So now I hit zero, then the rest duration I want, hit zero again to toggle off the rest selection, then continue on with pitches/durations on the number pad. This can input rests smaller than the grid setting.
You don’t need to select “rest”. Select the duration just as you would for a note and then press a key for caret advance (space, or arrow, or custom hotkey).
So for a quarter note, 8th rest, 8th note it would be:
6 (set 1/4 duration)
MIDI key (adds 1/4 note)
5 (set 1/8 duration)
[space (or whatever for caret advance)] (Adds 1/8 rest),
MIDI key (adds 1/8 note)
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What really does work is to post your questions HERE on the forum. Several Dorico team members read every post and give prompt feedback. As well, there are many very experienced and knowledgeable Dorico users who are very willing to help. For me, this forum is one of Dorico’s biggest advantages.
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This really doesn’t work so well with pitch before duration, though, which is what speedy entry is. Let’s say for instance you’ve just inputted a quarter note, and you want a 16th rest followed by some 16ths. There’s no way to change to 16ths and input a rest without either inputting a note, or hitting comma for rest input, or hitting K to get out of pitch before duration. Once you’ve entered a 16th rest you then need to hit a pitch to get back into entering 16th notes but seemingly it can’t be the same pitch you’d previously entered.
For those of us who usually use duration before pitch it’s hard to see the pitfalls that do currently exist within Dorico’s pitch before duration, but it really isn’t currently quite as slick as Finale’s speedy entry.
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You’ve much more eloquently articulated what I’ve been trying to convey, thanks so much!
If the answer I’m looking for is simply “It’s just not there yet,” then that’s cool, as it’s obviously something that’s being discussed in the dev room.
@luke.w With this in mind, I think the best thing for us (and any other Finale refugee with similar note entry challenges) right now is to stick with the ‘Pitch After Duration.’
The piece of this puzzle I’ve been missing until just now is the difference between using the arrow keys to advance along the grid vs. using the ‘Caret Advance’ function (mapped to the spacebar by default.) If you’re just using the arrow keys, you have to fiddle with the grid options on the bottom left or use the Alt + [ or ] shortcuts. The ‘Caret Advance’ function, however, will automatically advance your position on the grid by the duration you currently have enabled. While this isn’t inputting the rest per se, the end result is still effectively the same- rests will populate based on the space that you skipped.
As @pianoleo mentioned above, though, this approach really only works when doing Pitch After Duration, instead of Before. In the absence of tweaks to the latter, I’m finding that right now the former is much more manageable. Hope that helps!
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Yes, you certainly can.
@McHoss
Seconded. I want to input rests. 
I know, I know… it’s against the design philosophy of Dorico, etc. But i wish the feature was there. The first time I did notating, I was flummoxed for a good 15 mins before desperately looking around in forums. (“Where are the rests hidden???”)
@kelvynchin and @McHoss,
I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned before but I have created a duplicate key command for Advance Caret (Space bar) to the 0 on the Num Pad. I can’t remember what 0 does by default.
This way, as I’m entering things, I select my duration on the Num Pad and press 0 (with my thumb) to advance the caret by whatever duration I have selected, and Dorico fills in the rests once I continue adding pitches etc.
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That’s a great idea - I imagine that should take care of the “speedy entry” issues that people are having where things are slower. Because the “Advance Caret” advances it by the selected note duration rather than the selected grid resolution, it should work the same as if a rest was added. Unless that doesn’t work somehow when you’re using pitch-then-duration? It definitely works with duration-then-pitch.
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None of BIAB is Apple Silicon native.
It doesn’t do VST3 yet either. I’m on Windows, so I don’t know about a possible AU option in that host.
For that one, I use bidule to get HALion and Groove Agent working.
@ikos You are probably aware of the equivalent Cubase forum here at forums.steinberg… you could try there with your remote scripts.
I agree, not sure why they have the option for Steinberg support in that way.