Dorico v Finale advice?

[David Ward]

Just a little update: I've decided to pull back from this plan, for now anyway: more in due course.

[Anders Hedelin]

Just a little update: I've decided to pull back from this plan, for now anyway: more in due course.

I remember when starting with Finale in the 80's, having no experience of any digital notation whatsoever, and not even access to a manual, but all the same starting with a rather demanding work of mine. I think what got me going was the thrill of seeing an advanced score being visualised in that excitingly new medium.

I recall asking a Czech composer for composition lessons many years ago. I showed him something which I thought was rather accomplished (still do), and in the first lesson he recommended me to start writing inventions in the style of Bach. There never was more than that one lesson.

The kind and considerate advice given here about to start with something easier is all very well, but it disregards the inspiration to be had from taking a plunge.

[John Ruggero]

I really relate to that, Anders, because that it is usually what I do with new software. Just dive in and learn as I go. Not much for tutorials and such. However, the thought of doing a large choral-orchestral work in Dorico with no previous experience does make me a little uneasy, to say the least. It is a different beast from Finale. People do get completely stuck at the beginning trying to do the simplest things. I did.

[benwiggy]

I remember when starting with Finale in the 80's, having no experience of any digital notation whatsoever, and not even access to a manual, but all the same starting with a rather demanding work of mine. I think what got me going was the thrill of seeing an advanced score being visualised in that excitingly new medium.

Well, I too learnt Finale 'on the job', with no manual: for a recently commissioned composition for the Cathedral Choir that I sang with. I had access to a Mac SE -- with a 9 inch screen! -- and I constantly had to search down all the 'rabbit holes' of nested dialogs to get to various functions. In fact, I couldn't work out how to use Speedy Entry at all, because I didn't have a MIDI keyboard, and "Use MIDI Device for Input" is on by default. (Took me several years to work that one out!)

I did each change of scoring (divisi, etc) as a separate document, because I didn't know how to hide staves. (That whole business of having to "optimize" staves before you could hide them was not something you could 'intuit'.) Needless to say, the result was awful.

Yes, technology was new and exciting; and the prospect of achieving any kind of result was thrilling. But now we demand much more; and time is a precious commodity.

I've similarly had to 'pick up' Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign; but I've learnt much more when people were able to show me how processes worked. (Again, it took me hours to work out in InDesign how to get text into a text frame that was in the Master template.)

[MichelRE]

there is a distinct difference between "start with Bach-style inventions", which implies a lack of basic craft and requires years of work to gain such,
and
"start with a smaller less-complex project", which implies a lack of basic familiarity with the particular software, and can take days, or weeks, or a few months at most, to gain.

I find nothing "exciting" about jumping in feet first, and then realizing a month later that everything you've done in that month could have been done in days, minus any frustration, in a more efficient manner, and that you actually have to redo your work because you've taken the wrong approach to various technical hurdles.

I started in Dorico with a simple transcription, a concerto for violin and strings. I already had the score done in Finale, and used the PDF printout as my source for note input into Dorico.
Yes, there WERE a few things I approached incorrectly, needing to redo them after the fact.
But this ended up being simple since this was a far less ambitious project than say my viola concerto, or one of my first two symphonies, or even my clarinet quintet which contains very particular graphical hurdles which I KNOW will be problematic...

I'd even set aside some a capella songs as a "to do later" project since I had not worked with lyrics yet, and know that layout in a vocal score can be more finicky and tedious than in an orchestral score.

[Anders Hedelin]

there is a distinct difference between "start with Bach-style inventions", which implies a lack of basic craft and requires years of work to gain such,

It could also imply that the teacher giving such an advice was at a loss when meeting someone who was not sufficiently inferior to himself.

I worked as a teacher of harmony, counterpoint and composition for many years - long after my encounter with the snooty Czech composer - and I think I knew when it was appropriate to apply the "back to basics" method and when not.

[MichelRE]

you can take what you want from what that teacher said, but it's irrelevant to the discussion in question here.

you are comparing things that are not equivalent.

[Anders Hedelin]

you can take what you want from what that teacher said, but it's irrelevant to the discussion in question here.

you are comparing things that are not equivalent.

The discussion in itself might have become slightly irrelevant.

[MichelRE]

I feel that I should probably attempt to learn how to use Dorico, sooner rather than later.

David: Dorico staff have made some great videos ranging from very basic "what to do first" videos to ones covering more complex notation issues.

I have to admit that a FEW of their videos are a bit lacking since the employee in question tends to get distracted by user questions (most of these videos are "live" facebook feeds, recorded then left available for users) and tends to ramble a bit on tangents unrelated to the issue he was initially covering.

However, their start-up tutorials are very good and well-worth the tiny bit of time and effort.

The Dorico user forum (as well as the Facebook group, though honestly that one to a lesser extent) is an incredible resource, with actual Dorico staff answering questions alongside advanced users.

My recommendation remains, start with for example a single movement of an orchestral work of yours, preferably something with a limited amount of complex graphics involved.

This will get you used to the Dorico workflow, the keyboard shortcuts, the way Dorico prepares parts for you behind the scenes, and the FEW times you might need some sort of work-around.

And the Dorico staff are VERY amenable to suggestions to improve features or add them.

For example, I require - as part of the house style - for the word "violins" to be placed between the two violin staves, with each staff itself only numbered. This was not available in Dorico when I first purchased it. After mentioning that it was one of my feature requests I was very happy to see the capacity to achieve this result added in the very next update to Dorico!

one thing that is difficult (a bit) to get one's brain around is the need to NOT fuss with layout "from the start". Your score WILL begin NOT looking like you want it to, but resist the temptation to start tweaking things. You will only end up slowing the process down when you realize later on that Dorico handles much of these details by itself at the end of the note entry process.

[Fred G. Unn]

Dorico staff have made some great videos ranging from very basic "what to do first" videos to ones covering more complex notation issues.

I have to admit that a FEW of their videos are a bit lacking since the employee in question tends to get distracted by user questions (most of these videos are "live" facebook feeds, recorded then left available for users) and tends to ramble a bit on tangents unrelated to the issue he was initially covering.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I'm not particularly a fan of most of their videos. I think I'm just too impatient to sit through an hour long video to find the 30 seconds of relevant info, when I could have skimmed and read it in a tiny fraction of that time. At the very least, most of them on YouTube can be viewed at 1.5x speed or faster to save time.

I think their videos are best sort of at the extremes, when presenting really complicated info like Percussion Mapping, or Playback Templates, or really simple info like their Tips Tuesday series. I wish they hadn't discontinued the latter. I often found them either useful, a useful reminder of something I already knew, or at worst I only wasted 30 seconds of time.

However, their start-up tutorials are very good and well-worth the tiny bit of time and effort.

Agreed and I definitely always recommend working through their First Steps guide. I assume their new D5 tutorial videos are probably helpful too, although I haven't watched any of them.