Hey all,
I boarded the Dorico train back with version 2, partly for ideological reasons, because of how a certain despicable company treated a team of developers most of us here hold in high regard. That said, I had developed a solid workflow in the developer team’s former scorewriter, which shall henceforth be called S. (y’all know what I’m talking about).
One thing I loved about S. was the mapping of the note durations to the number pad. Sadly, laptops with a dedicated number pad are a critically endangered species and even the option to turn a section of the basic keyboard into a makeshift number pad via the Fn-Key is all but gone now. What I loved about the number pad for selecting durations was that it’s 4x5 matrix (and even just 3x4 if you really just limit it to the durations) greatly helped to develop muscle memory, which allowed to select a certain duration without looking. That way, I could input music efficiently without moving my eyes away from the screen, sometimes even without even looking at the screen or the hands and instead focusing my eyes on a printed or handwritten original.
I am pretty certain that it is possible to develop a similar kind of single keyboard workflow in Dorico, but this will take time. Probably I just need to do much more note input while on the move without a MIDI keyboard at hand. On the other hand, on my desk I love using a MIDI keyboard to input pitches, but this forces me to switch between the MIDI keyboard and the computer keyboard to select durations from the latter. Combined with the number row’s much worse suitability to develop muscle memory (paired with the placement of the dot for dotted notes entirely elsewhere on the keyboard), this noticably impedes my note input workflow.
For this reason I have thought about getting an Arturia KeyLab or something similar, where there is a 4x4 pad matrix, which I intend to map all important duration tools to. I do not really want to mess with the computer keyboard mapping, although this is possible. Has anyone of you already used a MIDI controllers pad matrix for durations?
However, there are some aspects which leave me in doubt if this will really help me to achieve the desired workflow:
- A MIDI controllers pad matrix is usually placed toward the left or the right side of the device, not in the center, and there is always just one matrix. When using a MIDI keyboard, I prefer to input pitches with the hand that I would use on a piano for that particular part, so writing a bass line with the right hand feels super strange to me. After all, the left hand is used to play the typical physical and musical movements a bass part performs. I’d rather learn the 4x4 duration mapping in both hands to maintain that natural feel on the keys.
- The 4x4 matrix is usually used for drumset mapping as well and I do want to learn and use this. When I map the durations to the matrix, this would urge me to toggle between duration and sounds all the time.
So: Is there some way to map a single MIDI controller in such a way that its keyboard is reserved for pitches, its pad matrix for drums and other non pitched instruments and there still is a covenient way to quickly select the most important duration tools (note values from 64th to whole notes, (multiple) dots, ties and rests and maybe tuplets) in one hand that remains in one place? What are your preferred approaches to note input with a MIDI keyboard or any other single device?
Thank y’all in advance for your help!
in practise:
I am happy that you found 