I love everything in dorico and will never go back.
I wish in future versions of Dorico they implement the keyboard that was in sibelius.
It gives you the ability to look at all the notes in one glance and if there are any accidental mistakes in your score you could catch it immediately.
Dorico on the left Sibelius on the right.
We may well add on-screen keyboard and fretboard views in a future version of Dorico, but it’s not something we’re working on right now. Thanks for the feedback!
Thanks, Daniel YOU truly ROCK!
Up, it’s almost been a year, and Dorico still misses this basic feature!
It would make it far more accessible for people without a proper music education.
Then they’d get this education using a software as Dorico since it remains quite intuitive.
I don’t know if it is complicated to do, but I really wish it was available.
Welcome to the forum, @Bik. It’s still on our backlog of features we plan to add to the software in due course.
I’m not 100% sure of the use of this, but can’t you use something like VMPK?
I can more or less reproduce that image using it. I use it for the analysis class I have to teach over Zoom.
Thank you, I will check that out!
There are plenty of virtual keyboard apps, but the trouble is that if they have focus, then Dorico will take the MIDI input, but doesn’t take key commands for changing note duration, adding slurs, accents, etc.
Yeah, that’s why I wasn’t entirely sure how it would be used. It works great for virtual teaching though, you just need to route it through something like OBS. Unfortunately for me, the OBS software isn’t compatible with the FujiFilm software I use with my X-T4, so I have to use ManyCam. For my analysis class, VMPK is always visible at the bottom of my screen on Zoom, regardless of what other programs I’m using. Dorico can keep focus and work normally, and the students can always see the virtual MIDI keyboard, even if I can’t. I’m using a standalone piano VST, and have MIDI Thru turned off in Dorico, so anytime I ever touch my MIDI keyboard, the students can see the voicing and hear it as a piano sound.
Thank you for the answers, I just thought I might as well mention that it was actually for me, for my personal use and not for a class ^^’
I can’t read music… so it would have to be a virtual keyboard in Dorico to enable notation input through it in order to work. (I’m so jealous of people like you teaching classes by the way, sometimes I really wish I could read music by sightseeing…)
Why does it have to be virtual then? Why not use a physical MIDI keyboard? There are plenty of inexpensive MIDI controllers, and if connections are an issue, there are wireless Bluetooth keyboards or even MIDI to Bluetooth converters like this one.
Thanks for the quick response! I hadn’t really considered inputting directly with the MIDI controller because, without a virtual keyboard I can’t really “see” what’s been written.
For instance I come back to a piece after a week, impossible to know what I was playing.
So indeed maybe the VMPK player might be a solution but it seems slightly unhandy too: while composing, I would need to export first every time I want to check what I’ve been writing.
I feel a bit confused, I hope it still is clear to you and that it makes sense?
Sorry, I guess I don’t really understand your workflow. How would you use a virtual MIDI keyboard? With a touchscreen laptop? Mouse clicking? Dorico is notation software. I know you said you don’t read music, but the end result of working in Dorico is usually some sort of output of notation whether printed music, PDFs, etc. You said:
Typically in Dorico you would know what you were playing because you input it as notation. If you don’t often work with notation, you can still input notes using MIDI recording and save it that way.
If you aren’t interested in the notation aspect at all, frankly you are probably using the wrong program and should look at a DAW such as Cubase, Pro Tools, Logic, etc. I still am not really grasping what advantage a virtual keyboard would have over a physical one other than portability. If you frequently compose in transit on a bus/train/plane then sure, it might be a convenient feature to quickly jot down an idea, but for normal daily desktop use I’ve never once felt the need for a virtual keyboard to use for writing within Dorico. (Obviously I use a virtual keyboard for Zoom instruction as described above.)
Thank you for your concern!
I was looking for an alternative to the software I’ve been using to score music, and I have some good reasons to do so, but I don’t want to say negative things about a software that’s been a good companion for years : )
So the only “problem” I would have with Dorico is the following, let me try one last time to make it clear:
I can write music scores but never had a habit of reading, so it is really not worth the trouble, it really slows me down. I don’t have the time to train my reading ability too.
So
the only thing was that if a virtual keyboard existed within Dorico, it would have helped someone like me to be able to “read” what exact notes are being played which is very useful for both the playback and to score faster, more efficiently, or simply “learn” some piano piece I wrote for instance and improve it.
I may in the end stick to my old software, but the only barrier that I myself have with Dorico (and maybe other people too) is that you can only use it if you’re good at reading music.
It might sound stupid wanting to use such a software if I can’t read music, I understand that ^^
But regarding my workflow, for many years, it has been only “scoring”, not making any use of a daw.
And the direction my current software takes keeps making it less and less friendly for the use I have of it (it isn’t really dedicated to scoring).
Anyway thank you for your time and your suggestions : )
I will try to figure out what works best for me!
I don’t want to “spam” too much either this forum with this topic.
Best
I’m not sure you need to apologise for your question and what you are doing. There are many musicians who are blind and using various software to create music in various ways.
I presume you have looked at Dorico’s Play piano roll? This does not help you either?
Sorry for the late reply arco! The piano roll may help a little but it is quite unpractical so I don’t make use of it.
For that reason I don’t compose with Dorico. But nevermind that, I’ll wait for a future update! If I want to compose using my VST libraries I simply use Cubase, then export the track(s) as a midi file for a more beginner-friendly notation software if I want to work on that track.
There is one thing though I couldn’t find in Dorico. In the preferences for Note Input there is a feature saying play note with fixed volume, but, it isn’t the same as having a “fixed velocity” for when you use the midi keyboard in Cubase. There doesn’t seem to be such an option in Dorico yet?
Kind regards
Hi @Bik - this is a reply to your earlier rather than latest question, but since the previous discussion Dorico for iPad has been released, including a Keyboard panel in the lower zone - it may be of interest to you -
Thanks for letting me know Lillie!
However I’m more of a pc/laptop guy.
But no worries, I can wait for whenever the feature becomes available.
Kind regards
