Welcome to the forum — and Dorico, @double8range. If you continue to make use of the forum, you will come to find that it’s filled with many knowledgable users including members of the Dorico team itself. (Incidentally, many of us are also highly capable musicians, even including pianists and other keyboard performers in our midst.)
If you pause for a moment to ask whether any commercial software on the market (for eight years, as it happens) could possibly not offer basic MIDI keyboard input, the obvious answer might lead you towards greater curiosity, search effort, and a default position of giving the software (and its developers!) the benefit of the doubt.
As it turns out, Dorico actually has input features that are quite powerful, including the ability to extend the note input caret across multiple staves and enter chords that are intelligently distributed across them. (Incidentally, if you ever are inputting with your computer keyboard instead, typing Q engages/disengages Chord mode, so you needn’t mouse-click the tool if you prefer not to.)
Speaking as someone who used Finale for 32 years before switching to Dorico, I sympathize with the disorientation that comes with the new UI. But with a bit of time and effort in studying, I’m confident you’ll find lots of high-level functionality and features.
Regarding your specific issue:
Here’s a very brief (2:10) video from Dorico’s YouTube channel about note input:
…which is a part of this note-input overview series:
Hi, first of all i’m using Finale since the early 90’ after using capella and the need to work with a music publisher. I hated Finale from the first Day, but i got used to it. In the last 30 years it tried out Sibelius, Notion, MuseScore til i found Dorico. Since 6 Years i’m using Dorico SE for Practise Sheets and Duet Music to learn it, because the Software is more stable and a printable Layout very easy to get.
The End of Finale is some kind of luck for me, because i could get Dorico Full for a very attractive price. And now i have a vacation and can try out many things in Dorico, and i love it.
Smooth Scrolling in all views
The whole World of VST Plugins
Easy set up my M-Audio Hammer Pro with transport section and pads for easy notation on my master keyboard without touching the mouse.
Easy setup for Textfonts
Easy Instrumentchanges
Everything is so much better now
I can’t understand why people have Installation Problems. Steinbergs Software is module based, you can use Groove Agent and Halion Sonic also in other Programs like Cubase and so maybe some people also have Halion Sonic or maybe other Instruments they like.
Download the Download Manager from Steinberg
Klick on Dorico 5
than klick on Install all
Done
There are plenty of possibilities in Notation and Workflow that Finale never could offer. Finale was a bunch of patches after years and years of being a buggy Software that no one wanted to rewrite.
Dorico is a Concept driven Software and it’s much more consistent than any other Notation Software.
If you need a smaller learning curve? Use MuseScore.
If you need a software that is similiar buggy like Finale? Use Sibelius
Or learn something new and exciting and use Dorico. There is always a Choice
Maybe Someday i can use the Faders from my Hammer Pro to change the mixer Faders in Dorico. But thats not so important its a notation Software
“Dorico” is made by a reasonably small team of dedicated professionals, myself included (I write the manual). You’ll often find some of us here – and this week, you’ll find me here quite a bit
The full Operation Manual talks about MIDI keyboard entry, but the First Steps guide doesn’t: it needed to be a single set of clear steps for people to follow, and not all users have a MIDI keyboard. I wouldn’t recommend that anybody considers First Steps to be a full instruction manual! It’s a beginner’s guide, to get you started. There’s way more to Dorico than could be covered in First Steps (and nor should it, as a number of people have already told me they think First Steps is too big already).
I’ve made a note to add to the full manual that when the caret is extended to multiple staves, playing chords on a MIDI keyboard results in those notes being auto-exploded across the caret’s staves. Not sure why that wasn’t already there, but I’ll get that added in the near future.
One final tip: you don’t need to press the Chords button to start/stop chord input. There’s a key command for that, like there is for many things in Dorico – and that’s Q (for qwords)
”Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!!”Fling the zing! (Tell us how you really feel, @Ralf_Otte_Otte…)
Welcome to the forum — and to Dorico, Ralf! I’m a 32-year Finale user as well, who switched two years ago to Dorico. I’m so glad to hear you’re enjoying “the ride” early on. If you have my experience, it keeps getting better as new capabilities become familiar.
I find the default note entry method much more efficient than Speedy ever was for me, because of the many additional things you can do with it.<
Could you elaborate on those additional things? (Daniel Spreadbury told me there was no advantage in using duration-before-pitch instead of pitch-before-duration) But if there are workflow advantages, I’d like to know about them before choosing my method.
luke,
my guess is, as the majority of Dorico enthusiasts came straight from using Sibelius, they kept note input mode as duration first, pitch second. This is also, what I use. Thinking about it (I never do), you can recognise a piece of music as dam da dam dam, as pure rhythm, without any defined pitch. Isn’t rhythm what drives the music and the melody sits on it? Can a melody exist, without a rhythm?
I guess way to boil it down is do you need to touch your MIDI keyboard for non-input purposes during input or not? If you are only inputting straight copy jobs, then sure, duration-first is probably faster. If you need to use your MIDI keyboard to compose while inputting, then I certainly think pitch-first is the far superior method. Both are available in Dorico now though, so pick whichever workflow works for you.
@FredGUnn’s point (which others have made as well in workflow discussion threads), as I understand it, is that for copying/engraving work (i.e., you already have all of the music in front of you) duration before pitchmight be a bit quicker, depending on what entry technique is more comfortable. (I don’t really do any “straight-up” copying work, so don’t really have an opinion.)
When composing, he, I know, likes to be free to “noodle around” and try things on the MIDI (playing a piano sound) before deciding what he likes and committing to notation by entering the duration.
I use both modes for composing. In some cases I’ve already decided what note(s) I intend, so I’ll choose the duration then play it/them on my mini MIDI keyboard. At other times I’ll want to explore and try things first before committing. (And sometimes I’m doing that exploring on my full digital piano that happens to face in the opposite direction from my computer, only to turn around to see many measures of gibberish because I forgot to change modes…)
I’d say spend a bit of time trying both and see which “clicks” for you when. After all, switching modes is a simple K away!
So… trying really hard to adjust to learning a new notation program after a couple of decades of using Finale. Dorico looks AMAZING. I am very excited to learn…however, the learning curve is pretty overwhelming in some areas. I have been binging for hours and hours on Dorico YouTube tutorials… and many are just excellent!.
So I sat down today and attempted to write my first lead sheet on Dorico. It was going along basically pretty well by following the youtube instructions…… but then ran into some basic challenges! I am looking for just a couple of quick and most likely easy answers to a few basic issues I am having while getting started today.
Entering with Midi and QWERTY notation (aka Finale Speedy Entry) was always such a quick and accurate methodology. I sort of have it on Dorico… but not really. I definitely would like to be Pitch before Note Duration… where do you find that eating please? Also, how do you simply enter rests and dotted notes. How do you change a different note value of a note already entered.(yes, it is also challenging with “#6” being the quarter note instead of “#5” what a mind trick.
The Midi Direct recording input is a bit tricky… I am a pianist and like to see exactly what I am playing. You can’t see the notes as you are playing them until you stop playing… sort of weird…but will keep practicing to get it . Any tips?
Slash Bar Gremlins: Somehow I have two layers of Slash notation bars on a few measures and cannot get rid of the double slash notations? Not sure how I even did that.
This is my first day trying out Doric and I know I will be on this Forum website quite often in days, months and years to come!!
I noticed someone else doing this when I was helping them. What they were doing is double clicking in the slash region intending to start note input and instead it opened the repeats popover with the word “slash” already in there. When they clicked somewhere else on the screen intending to make the popover go away, it took this similarly to if they had pressed ENTER/RETURN and follows the command in the repeats popover and creates a slash region, which gives you a second slash region on top of the first.
The solution is that if you need to double click to enter note input mode in a slash region, double click on a spot a hair above or a hair below the staff and not inside it, that way you won’t accidentally activate the popover. If you do activate the popover, press the ESCAPE key on your keyboard as that seems to cancel out of the popover without adding a second slash region.
Pitch before duration and Duration before pitch are toggled with K or
You don’t need to enter rests! But you can if you want to (during note entry , (comma) toggles rests. If it is activated, press any note and a rest of the current duration will be added (but the screen will not update).
Dotted notes: either double-click the note duration, or use note duration and dot.
Select it and change the duration (hit a different number)
[Please experiment with Insert mode (I) to see the effect of changing duration with and without]
Welcome to the forum [_ and Finale] — and Dorico, @thepianolady! I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying the learning process even if it is…a process.
Typing K toggles between Pitch before durationand Duration before pitch input modes.
Dots are entered with.
Rests are interesting in Dorico. Unlike in Finale, where they are actual things, in Dorico they’re the absence of notes. It’s definitely one of the fundamental design principles that takes getting used to!
Dear Ms. Harris:
Thanks for your message. I saw a Dorico tutorial on the internet RE chord entry was turned off by the fact that it seemed that ALL chord entry must be done note-by-note. A member of the chat room explained to me that this is not so. I’ve tried it myself, and indeed it’s true. However, the tutorial almost scared me away from buying. Perhaps it might be a good idea to redo it? It certainly almost scared me off.
Dear LAE,
Thanks again. I got a very nice e-mail from Miss Harris this morning. I certainly don’t expect personalized attention, but the chord issue is important to me because a great deal of the work I do is transposing songs for singers, which, of course, involves a piano part.
MY wife found a copy of the DORICO manual online this morning. I’m undecided as to whether to read it cover-to-cover, or should I wait for the TV mini-series?–JOKE! JOKE!
Fling the zing! (Tell us how you really feel, 
)
)
what a mind trick.
Any tips?
