# Notation software "analysis paralysis"



## Peter Klein

I'm in "Analysis Paralysis" about notation software. I need to make a decision soon. I'm a recently retired computer and network professional with a double major in theater and music from the 1970s, and a bassoon I play actively. I still have some music in me, and now I finally have time to write it.

Over the years, I've tried numerous programs. I've actually used Music Printer Plus (for DOS!) and Sibelius for real work. A few years ago, I paid Avid $89 to upgrade from Sib 5 to an early version 8.x, simply to stay in their game. But I couldn't bring myself to continue with renting software and supporting a predatory company. So I've pretty much dumped Sibelius. Since then I've fooled with Notion and MuseScore.

I haven't used Sibelius much for years, due to the all-consuming nature of my old day job. So the field is wide open. I plan on writing chamber music, choral music and songs for real people to perform. So while I need a reasonably good-looking score output, I am not an engraving freak. I don't do avant-garde stuff, but I do change meter. I also understand that any computer audio output is "reasonable facsimile thereof," not the Berlin Philharmonic. 

At this point, my main concern is ease of use in note entry and editing. I want decent playback for aural proofing, and print output that musicians will be OK with. Of particular concern: I had a carpal-tunnel type injury in 1990. I recovered after hand surgery, and have been very ergonomically-minded ever since. I use an ergonomic keyboard (by Kinesis) that doesn't have a numeric keypad. I want to be able to notate and edit with the least amount of wear and tear on my hands, especially re. too much mousing. I don't want to endlessly tweak spacing--that's what computers are for.

I'm currently leaning towards Notion for its ease of use. Although it seems like in order to change a note's duration in the middle of a measure, you have to pretty much re-notate the entire measure. I also keep hearing disparaging remarks to the effect that Notion is not really ready for prime time, isn't "professional," etc. I hear similar things about MuseScore, which seems to me to be much more keystroke/mouse intensive than Sibelius or Notion.

Dorico is a wildcard. I've not tried it. I could crossgrade from Sibelius. I see that some people swear by it, and some people swear *at* it. What's the consensus today?

I just want to make the right decision today and stick with it, rather than bouncing from program to program, learning more software and writing less music.

Thanks for any advice.


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## pinki

I use Notion having dumped Sibelius many years ago due to its stupid complexity and unreliability on Mac. It was one of the most badly designed programmes I ever purchased. But...it’s engraving is way better than Notion.

Notion. It’s just so under the radar! It’s so intuitive and stable it’s crazy. I have used it for many years now and am very happy with the ios app too which has handwriting that works and the integration with the desktop Notion is seamless. 
And now, with the release of Studio One 5, you can send the score to Studio One and develop with libraries of your choosing. But the Daw like aspect of Notion is excellent and works well with vst’s and you can script articulations though it’s a bit fiddly but works.

Dorico..I didn’t really get on with it. The printed score looks great thogh.

Hope that helps.


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## BlackDorito

Peter Klein said:


> At this point, my main concern is ease of use in note entry and editing. I want decent playback for aural proofing, and print output that musicians will be OK with.


If you are OK with entering each individual note with a mouse, Sibelius 8 should do the trick. I did the very same upgrade you did - but I wanted the VI-library linkages that Sib 8 supplied because I use it as a DAW. Before that I used Notion and was happy with it. Notion can give you the aural proofing just fine but does have some engraving limitations. I can't speak to how Sib, Notion, Finale or Dorico compare for ease of use re. carpal tunnel.


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## gyprock

There is only one future for notation and that is Dorico. Get the free version to try it out. The best combination of playback/speed at the moment is with Noteperformer although many are making expression maps for their libraries. Each Dorico release introduces more playback features so within a year or so I think it will have all the necessary hooks to handle any type of "performance" or "programmer" based sample library. VSL has just released a full suite of maps (with a dedicated installer) for their SE vols 1 -7.

There are other notation solutions including StaffPad and Studio One with (or without) Notion. StaffPad is great to do a serious sketch with great playback but once you want to do large scale editing e.g. exploding, reducing, condensing etc, you need a more formidable chunk of software. In my opinion most notation software enables you to get the notes into the software or tablet. It is at the editing stage where one will shine more than the other.

Sibelius is still a great piece of software but it hasn't been rewritten from scratch like Dorico, hence my claim that the future of notation is Dorico simply because of it's structural base which acts as an enabler for future and continued development. The existing solutions (aside from StaffPad) are long in the tooth and have probably reached their technology limit.


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## mducharme

One thing about Dorico is it is extremely keyboard oriented. They have keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything, so it works best if you like to use the keyboard for most tasks instead of the mouse. Dorico doesn't use the number pad, really.


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## Dewdman42

MuseScore is free. Start there.


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## giwro

I’ve tried ‘em all. Was a Finale user since 1994, but frustrated with the code bloat and some bugs that never got fixed (even after years and years....) couple of years ago I tried Dorico - at that point it wasn’t quite where it needed to be, but I saw great promise.

Fast-forward to Dorico 3 (and recently 3.5) and it does nearly everything I need. I’d say 90% of my work is in Dorico now, and even after only a year of using it seriously, I am faster with it than I ever was with Finale... amazing.

The workflow is a bit different, but watch some tutorials and learn the basic concepts, and you’ll be off and running. Plus, there’s a very active and helpful Dorico section on the Steinberg forums and an active official Facebook page - both places see regular participation by various members of the Dorico development team.... I’m very impressed.


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## JT

Just pick something and take the time to learn it. The biggest mistake with notation software I see is people trying to get decent notation without putting the time in to learn it. All notation apps can produce good notation and crap. It's just up to the user, no apps are perfect.


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## Saxer

+1 for Dorico.

A bit steep at the beginning, you have to know some shortcuts to even get a time signature and a few empty bars to enter the first note. But if you get over that it's a really good program. Especially the layout is rather complete without doing anything. And Dorico has a future. A very active developer team and a helpful forum.


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## joebaggan

Whatever tool you choose, I'd look into the StreamDeck XL for faster entry. Having tried a few of the major notation packages over the years, all of them can be a slow PITA for entering a score so this helps speed up the workflow. I currently use Dorico with NotePerformer and Stream Deck, and that works pretty well. But I've never found a notation package that was designed first and foremost for the composer. Most notation software is built for engravers first, and honestly I couldn't care less about 90% of those features. I'm most interested in a fast workflow and to compose in notation, and also have access to good sample libraries/output and midi editing without having to go to a DAW.


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## Babe

Dorico for sure. The developers are improving it on a decent time line and their support on their forum is fantastic. The condensing feature is one feature that no one else has. If you do orchestral scores, you'd want this feature. It is far from perfect, but since it's implication, there has been many improvements which I am confident that the improvements will continue.


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## Peter Klein

Big thank-you to all who have replied so far. Here's a specific feature that's *very* desirable for me: Alternating meters.

Example: The second movement of Ravel's String Quartet. The time signature is marked 6/8 (3/4). The music freely alternates between the two signatures. The beaming tells the player how the accents go, and all's well. Some programs are very fussy about this kind of thing--they will want an explicit meter change every bar, and we might even have to specify 8th=8th or dotted quarter=quarter at each change. Not fun.

Or, say I have a rhythmic pattern in 2/4 + 6/8 that goes on for a while: 1-2 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3, etc. A piece I wrote years ago with pen and paper has a section where the meter alternates between 2/4 and 3/8. I'm not sure if Notion can do this. In trying to re-notate these pieces in Notion, I ran into some issues even copying measures, or copying notes between measures that have different time signatures. 

I want my notation software to handle such things without my having to fight it at every barline. I remember that years ago, the issue of alternating or interchangeable meters was a major can of worms in Sibelius, with people having to resort to plugins, entering signatures in every measure and the hiding them, etc. 

Can Dorico do this reasonably?


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## Saxer

Peter Klein said:


> Can Dorico do this reasonably?


Yepp


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## DaddyO

As others have said above, the future is Dorico. 

I will add that in most respects the now is also Dorico. Working with it can take some getting used to, but once you get the swing of it you can work a lot faster than any other notation product I have used. The most satisfying purchasing choices I have made are the ones that stand the test of time. Take your time deciding. It is an investment in the future. When you invest your money in a pro product you yourself become invested in it. Changing afterwards will become more difficult.

Also as others have said, the Dorico team designed their product to be best used with key commands rather than mouse. It took me a bit to get used to it, but once I did it became an ingrained habit that greatly increased entry speed.

One final piece of advice if you get Dorico. Given the key command orientation, stay with the factory key command presets and learn them first. You can of course change the key assignments and add custom commands and assignments. But if you stay with the factory ones you don't have to worry about maintaining your custom work, and assignments square with the documentation.

One final thought. You could start with something like Notion, which is more intuitive for getting started, and then crossgrade to Dorico later.


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## Bollen

I think everything that I could say has been said however, you should look at it in terms of balance. You really only have two options:

Musescore, the devil you know and it's free, albeit limited.

Dorico, steep learning curve but a no-brainer, there's nothing like it.

As someone that also suffers from repetitive strain injury I implore you to get a small MIDI keyboard you can put on your desk and seriously consider the Streamdeck mentioned above.


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## Leigh

One huge plus for me with Dorico is parts.

I dreaded doing the parts in Sibelius. I am not ashamed to hand the default Dorico parts to musicians if I have to because of time constraints.

**Leigh


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## Antkn33

I absolutely LOVE Dorico. It’s so intuitive and has many great features that enhance usabilit, such as popovers. 
Plus their support is outstanding. They also publish a ton of very helpful videos.


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## oooooooooooooooooh

I used Finale for nine years before trying Dorico, now I can never go back. Take a few days to get used to it, learn the shortcuts (most of which are very intuitive), and you'll move very quickly. I switched from DP to Cubase a few months prior as well and I'm hoping they'll integrate the two pieces of software a bit better with Dorico 4, though there's no guarantee they will.

Best thing you can do is download a trial and work through a few tutorials to see how you like it. I have a Groove3 subscription and that's all I really needed aside from looking up occasional questions here and there as they came up.


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## Peter Klein

All the comments were making me feel very positive about Dorico. And then I watched this. "Tantacrul" had me laughing my head off. But FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) reared its head...


But hey, I play the bassoon. I know all about bad user interface design.


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## arjanm

If you haven't decided yet, Dorico is now 50% off until Dec 7th. 








Holiday Season Sale 2022


Huge savings on SpectraLayers, Groove Agent 5, Electric Bass, Vibrant, Cubasis, VST Connect and much more.




new.steinberg.net


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## DaddyO

arjanm said:


> If you haven't decided yet, Dorico is now 50% off until Dec 7th.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Holiday Season Sale 2022
> 
> 
> Huge savings on SpectraLayers, Groove Agent 5, Electric Bass, Vibrant, Cubasis, VST Connect and much more.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> new.steinberg.net



If you are considering Dorico, be aware that such a discount will not come around often.


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## Antkn33

50% on the competitive upgrade too... My advice is to check out Sweetwater.


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## giwro

Peter Klein said:


> All the comments were making me feel very positive about Dorico. And then I watched this. "Tantacrul" had me laughing my head off. But FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) reared its head...
> 
> 
> But hey, I play the bassoon. I know all about bad user interface design.




I honestly think this review is more humor than substance...

Best thing to do is try Dorico out on the free trial and see for yourself.


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## Bollen

giwro said:


> I honestly think this review is more humor than substance...
> 
> Best thing to do is try Dorico out on the free trial and see for yourself.


It was mostly true at the time it was made, but Dorico has already improved in many of the areas and it continues to do so... It is, however, a very idiosyncratic piece of software!


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## Thundercat

Peter Klein said:


> I'm in "Analysis Paralysis" about notation software. I need to make a decision soon. I'm a recently retired computer and network professional with a double major in theater and music from the 1970s, and a bassoon I play actively. I still have some music in me, and now I finally have time to write it.
> 
> Over the years, I've tried numerous programs. I've actually used Music Printer Plus (for DOS!) and Sibelius for real work. A few years ago, I paid Avid $89 to upgrade from Sib 5 to an early version 8.x, simply to stay in their game. But I couldn't bring myself to continue with renting software and supporting a predatory company. So I've pretty much dumped Sibelius. Since then I've fooled with Notion and MuseScore.
> 
> I haven't used Sibelius much for years, due to the all-consuming nature of my old day job. So the field is wide open. I plan on writing chamber music, choral music and songs for real people to perform. So while I need a reasonably good-looking score output, I am not an engraving freak. I don't do avant-garde stuff, but I do change meter. I also understand that any computer audio output is "reasonable facsimile thereof," not the Berlin Philharmonic.
> 
> At this point, my main concern is ease of use in note entry and editing. I want decent playback for aural proofing, and print output that musicians will be OK with. Of particular concern: I had a carpal-tunnel type injury in 1990. I recovered after hand surgery, and have been very ergonomically-minded ever since. I use an ergonomic keyboard (by Kinesis) that doesn't have a numeric keypad. I want to be able to notate and edit with the least amount of wear and tear on my hands, especially re. too much mousing. I don't want to endlessly tweak spacing--that's what computers are for.
> 
> I'm currently leaning towards Notion for its ease of use. Although it seems like in order to change a note's duration in the middle of a measure, you have to pretty much re-notate the entire measure. I also keep hearing disparaging remarks to the effect that Notion is not really ready for prime time, isn't "professional," etc. I hear similar things about MuseScore, which seems to me to be much more keystroke/mouse intensive than Sibelius or Notion.
> 
> Dorico is a wildcard. I've not tried it. I could crossgrade from Sibelius. I see that some people swear by it, and some people swear *at* it. What's the consensus today?
> 
> I just want to make the right decision today and stick with it, rather than bouncing from program to program, learning more software and writing less music.
> 
> Thanks for any advice.


I don't think the advice you're looking for is going to be found in a forum. I think you're going to have to download trials of each and just try them out for awhile. There are fanboys here of every software you mentioned, and then some, and they will all tell you "mine's the best" for xxx reasons.

You need to find your own xxx reasons.

Best we can tell is *our* experience, that may not translate into yours.

I personally still use Sibelius and have bumpily moved into using Dorico. I don't like either that much. Siblelius used to be great but after the developers jumped ship and they added that god-awful ribbon that disorganizes everything into chaos, I hate using it.

Dorico is a counterintuitive mess unless you're a keyboard maven for literally everything. Those that defend it will tell you "all you have to do is press SHIFT + XX key combo and then you're in!" It has no semblance of user friendliness with menus and dialog boxes. It's very much a case that they baked that cake too long and overthought everything to the point it's terrible from a usability standpoint. I have to google everything I do, and the menu system is a Machiavellian mess. I have used it on/off for 2-3 years now, and I teach computer software for a living - so - for me not to be able to remember how to do things is shocking. I normally recall all the little tricks. I just don't grok Dorico, although as many have stated it likely is the future. And yes I'm using the latest pro version.

That funny long YouTube review is absolutely spot-on, and I wish the developers would watch it and take notes. If they found a way to simplify and intuitify their menu system, they would have the winner. I don't want to have to remember a keyboard shortcut for everything.

Now did that help you? Doubt it. You might be one of those that takes to Dorico like a duck to water.

Just try out some packages and you'll figure out what you like. No shortcuts here.

Mike


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## Peter Klein

Wow, that 50% offer is tempting, and it does indeed seem to apply to a crossgrade. Looks like I'll spend the next week and a half re-notating an old piece or two from the pencil and paper era in Dorico trial version. I'll see how it goes. Keyboard commands are not a problem for me. In fact, I prefer keyboard commands for things I do all the time. Mouse menus are best for things one does occasionally. And one of the first computer programs I ever used was WordStar, almost 40 years ago.

The thing that concerns me is that the metaphors behind Dorico are quiet different from other programs. And they impose a level of complexity that may well serve a professional arranger who needs to make several versions of a piece for, say, full symphony orchestra, broadway band, rock band and piano plus peanut whistle. But if one is just writing a song or a string quartet, there may be more hoops than necessary to jump through. Hopefully, some of the things "Tantacrul" complained about have been addressed.

Again, big thanks to everyone who replied. It really helped to get a decent perspective on things.


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## Crowe

Peter Klein said:


> Wow, that 50% offer is tempting, and it does indeed seem to apply to a crossgrade. Looks like I'll spend the next week and a half re-notating an old piece or two from the pencil and paper era in Dorico trial version. I'll see how it goes. Keyboard commands are not a problem for me. In fact, I prefer keyboard commands for things I do all the time. Mouse menus are best for things one does occasionally. And one of the first computer programs I ever used was WordStar, almost 40 years ago.
> 
> The thing that concerns me is that the metaphors behind Dorico are quiet different from other programs. And they impose a level of complexity that may well serve a professional arranger who needs to make several versions of a piece for, say, full symphony orchestra, broadway band, rock band and piano plus peanut whistle. But if one is just writing a song or a string quartet, there may be more hoops than necessary to jump through. Hopefully, some of the things "Tantacrul" complained about have been addressed.
> 
> Again, big thanks to everyone who replied. It really helped to get a decent perspective on things.



Tantacrul has pretty defined ideas of what notation software should do. Basically what I took away from all my research was:

Dorico > Finale, Sibelius

Tantacrul doesn't much like Dorico

Tantacrul now works for Musescore

You're gonna have to go with Musescore.

Since we all kinda know that that flow of thought isn't really true I think Dorico is your best bet.


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## JohnG

I see a lot of love for Dorico. About a year ago I asked copyists I know (USA, London, and Bulgaria) about it and they all said, "not yet." Maybe that day has come now?

I'm using Sibelius and its magnetic spacing (so-called) works 99% of the time for me.

You wrote: 


Peter Klein said:


> while I need a reasonably good-looking score output, I am not an engraving freak.



Dorico does seem to appeal to my "engraving freak" pals, and to those who want to use it as a DAW / sequencer to some extent, but that's just based on what I've read.

Sibelius is pretty easy and makes parts fast, so I'm probably not switching; I don't need any fuss and it does the job for media music.

That said, I emailed a Well Known Orchestrator who may correct me.


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## ReleaseCandidate

giwro said:


> I honestly think this review is more humor than substance...



No, it actually the opposite . And also now (with quite some updates after the video) Dorico isn't the best notation software but the least bad that exists.



Shiirai said:


> Tantacrul has pretty defined ideas of what notation software should do. Basically what I took away from all my research was:
> 
> Dorico > Finale, Sibelius
> 
> Tantacrul doesn't much like Dorico



Actually, he liked Dorico more than Sibelius, but (at the time of the Dorico video) still used Sibelius, because Dorico lacked features.


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## ALittleNightMusic

Dorico. It’s great, it makes sense, it’s fast.

I tried installing Sibelius on my Mac and it doesn’t even open. Crash error on startup. No way around it. About what I expect from Avid these days.


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## JohnG

I used Sibelius for orchestrating and parts for about seven hours of orchestral music over the last 18 months and it worked just fine. Used copyists and orchestrators in USA, Japan, and Europe. They prefer Sibelius in London and Europe, from what the copyists there tell me. Finale seems to dominate especially in the middle of the USA.

My Well Known Orchestrator friend got back to me and says nobody he works with uses Dorico. That doesn't mean that anyone should not use Dorico, but if you're working with others it might be a good plan to check with them.

I used Finale for decades and am glad I switched.



ALittleNightMusic said:


> Dorico. It’s great, it makes sense, it’s fast.
> 
> I tried installing Sibelius on my Mac and it doesn’t even open. Crash error on startup. No way around it. About what I expect from Avid these days.



I'm no cheerleader for any of these programs, but one person having an install problem is obviously not predictive of anything.


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## ALittleNightMusic

JohnG said:


> I used Sibelius for orchestrating and parts for about seven hours of orchestral music over the last 18 months and it worked just fine. Used copyists and orchestrators in USA, Japan, and Europe. They prefer Sibelius in London and Europe, from what the copyists there tell me. Finale seems to dominate especially in the middle of the USA.
> 
> My Well Known Orchestrator friend got back to me and says nobody he works with uses Dorico. That doesn't mean that anyone should not use Dorico, but if you're working with others it might be a good plan to check with them.
> 
> I used Finale for decades and am glad I switched.
> 
> 
> 
> I'm no cheerleader for any of these programs, but one person having an install problem is obviously not predictive of anything.



Sibelius used to work on my old machine and I wanted to try it again, but it doesn’t even start, so not much I can do about that. Fresh install through Avid Link. Just conveying my experience - thankfully I didn’t buy it and was attempting to try Sibelius First.


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## Peter Klein

I recently upgraded my PC to a solid state drive and Windows 10. I was easily able to unlicense Sib 8 on the old hard drive and re-license it on the new one. But I could not find any way to do this for my old copy of Sib 5. Sure enough, it stopped working because the hard drive had changed. When I did some checking, I found that the Pre-Avid license server had been turned off, so there was no "official" way to re-license it. Perhaps Avid tech support has unofficial ways, but I decided not to bother.

I installed the trial version of Dorico this evening. I was able to import a MusicXML version of an old piece of mine that I'd half re-notated in Notion. Finishing it will be a good tryout.


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## MauroPantin

I just bought Dorico. 

Been using Sibelius for almost 10 years but pretty sure this is the beginning of the end as far as I'm concerned. The licensing proposition is just crazy. I wanted to catch up to the latest version (which consists of really minor improvements) and had to either crossgrade to a subscription from my perpetual license or buy a new perpetual at full price. Or do a workaround which was essentially 50% off: Buy Notion 6 and then hunt around for a reseller that still has a competitive crossgrade for a perpetual license available. Nuts. 

I love Sibelius despite some of it's quirks, so while I am excited to learn and master Dorico, I am not happy about feeling forced to switch because of things that are inherently unrelated to the quality of the software.

I'll continue to have Sib installed for as long as it works on my computer, I need that compatibility with some clients for the time being and I am super fast on it so it will still see work for some time. But I imagine clients will eventually run into this same conundrum themselves. AVID is literally pushing clients away, the guys at Steinberg must be having their casual fridays in full tux with champagne to celebrate their sweet revenge.


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## mducharme

Something to keep in mind with Tantacrul's video - he was trying to show the experience from the point of view of a user who only wants to use the mouse and never, ever even touch the keyboard. The problem is that in Dorico you are a second class citizen if you use only the mouse. It is so designed towards keyboard hotkeys. So many of his complaints have fixes that are so, so easy and quick (even faster than Sibelius) as long as you don't have some paranoid phobia of touching the keyboard.


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## giwro

mducharme said:


> Something to keep in mind with Tantacrul's video - he was trying to show the experience from the point of view of a user who only wants to use the mouse and never, ever even touch the keyboard. The problem is that in Dorico you are a second class citizen if you use only the mouse. It is so designed towards keyboard hotkeys. So many of his complaints have fixes that are so, so easy and quick (even faster than Sibelius) as long as you don't have some paranoid phobia of touching the keyboard.



I had an employee like that at work - she refused to learn kybd shortcuts in Office, insisted on doing everything with the mouse. She watched me do one of her tasks in about 1/10 the time and just sat there, mouth open in shock.

Learn the new conventions, take the time....


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## Thundercat

mducharme said:


> Something to keep in mind with Tantacrul's video - he was trying to show the experience from the point of view of a user who only wants to use the mouse and never, ever even touch the keyboard. The problem is that in Dorico you are a second class citizen if you use only the mouse. It is so designed towards keyboard hotkeys. So many of his complaints have fixes that are so, so easy and quick (even faster than Sibelius) as long as you don't have some paranoid phobia of touching the keyboard.


Agreed. But I don’t have a “phobia” of using hot keys. I can’t remember them all. And the Byzantine menu system makes it all but impossible to find what you need without google. Sad state of affairs really.


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## Leigh

A StreamDeck + Notation Express is a very elegant solution that makes it easy to find what you need. The combination is a huge time-saver. Notation Express is available for Dorico, Sibelius and Finale.

**Leigh


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## Peter Klein

Since I last posted, I've input a 3-minute piece with lots of meter changes into Dorico. So far, I'm really liking it. I am not at all afraid of keyboard shortcuts. In fact, I prefer them. I've always felt that keyboard commands are much better for things you do all the time, and menus are good for things you only do occasionally. The score "Setup" concepts are a bit daunting--when I read about them, they make sense, but when I stare at the Setup page, I get a little cross-eyed.

So far, I'm finding that Dorico's printed output looks noticeably better than Notion 6, but Notion's sound output and interpretation of articulation marks in the score is quite a bit better than Dorico's. As for getting the notes and marks into the software, I think that both Notion and Dorico are easier than Sibelius. It's hard for me to whether Notion or Dorico is the "winner" for ease of entry, as I'm not fluent at either yet. But a gentleman I know who has used and taught every significant notation program ever created says that Notion is faster. Regardless, I'm leaning toward buying Dorico anyway, as it does appear to be the future. Might as well get it on super-discount this week.


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## ag75

Leigh said:


> A StreamDeck + Notation Express is a very elegant solution that makes it easy to find what you need. The combination is a huge time-saver. Notation Express is available for Dorico, Sibelius and Finale.
> 
> **Leigh


I use this combo and it’s been a lifesaver. I’m terrible with remembering hot keys and shortcuts.


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## Gerbil

ag75 said:


> I use this combo and it’s been a lifesaver. I’m terrible with remembering hot keys and shortcuts.


Me too. One of the best purchases I made this year.

I use Dorico and Sibelius but most of the scores I get sent are created on Sibelius so it gets the most use. They can both create excellent looking scores so just go with what feels the most natural to use.


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## ag75

Gerbil said:


> Me too. One of the best purchases I made this year.
> 
> I use Dorico and Sibelius but most of the scores I get sent are created on Sibelius so it gets the most use. They can both create excellent looking scores so just go with what feels the most natural to use.



Do you have the regular sized one or the XL?


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## cmillar

ag75 said:


> I use this combo and it’s been a lifesaver. I’m terrible with remembering hot keys and shortcuts.


Yes, and I love that I can customize the most-used commands by placing them in the easiest ‘finger pushes’ for my left hand when I have my right hand on the MIDI keyboard.

For example, place the key for ‘dot’ input wherever it feels most comfortable to you,or even making a hot key for entering/exiting note input mode and placing it in the most useful position.


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## JohnG

Peter Klein said:


> I'm leaning toward buying Dorico anyway, as it does appear to be the future.



It sounds great, Peter. I'm puzzled why none of the copyists have adopted it. Maybe because they don' wanna change the way they work -- that they know works -- when the people for whom they work have absolutely zero flexibility about deadlines?


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## Leigh

ag75 said:


> Do you have the regular sized one or the XL?



I have the regular one and I'm tempted to get the XL and use the regular one at home.

Another plus about StreamDeck is there's a phone app that models the physical device. Very handy, too.

**Leigh


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## MauroPantin

JohnG said:


> It sounds great, Peter. I'm puzzled why none of the copyists have adopted it. Maybe because they don' wanna change the way they work -- that they know works -- when the people for whom they work have absolutely zero flexibility about deadlines?



That was exactly what was holding me back. "If it ain't broken" and all that. Deadlines in this business are not only inflexible, but often times unreasonable. It is not a job where you can throw the dice on "I'll figure it out" by upgrading the software. Also, most copyist I know are (with all due respect) kinda old fashioned dudes. They don't want to mess around with new software, they don't care for it. Several I know are still on Sib 6.

For me, Sibelius works great, but the licensing just doesn't work for me anymore. I was hoping to stay up to date, but at the same time I'm not going to purchase it in full again, and renting the central piece of my livelihood makes me uneasy. Dorico seemed like the only recourse.


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## JohnG

MauroPantin said:


> most copyist I know are (with all due respect) kinda old fashioned dudes



So true; some of those guys practically wish for quill pens.

Naturally, one can understand their reticence. You really don't want to be the guy on the phone with your composer, explaining "well, yes, we would have gotten the brass parts ready but we used a new software program...."

I cut loose from the annual license fee on Sibelius and I have a pretty recent, perpetual license. I think you wrote that your perpetual license went away somehow? or something? That is an inflection point, for sure.

I downloaded Dorico's demo but never had the time to try it. Maybe 2021? A lot of people here seem to like it and another buddy of mine does. For now, sticking with the big S.


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## MauroPantin

JohnG said:


> I cut loose from the annual license fee on Sibelius and I have a pretty recent, perpetual license. I think you wrote that your perpetual license went away somehow? or something? That is an inflection point, for sure.



Sort of. The perpetual license does not expire per-se, you still own the software and can use it. But the "support" part of the license that brings about any updates that come out, that does expire.

Being that Sib is my main thing, I like to keep it updated. At the same time, the updates have been lackluster in the last couple of years IMO, so I naively decided to not continue the support until any significant changes were made, or at least some of the bug fixes and improvements I'd like to see come around (if they ever).

Thing is, once you're out of support AVID considers you SOL, you fell of the train and there's no easy way back in. You either crossgrade your perpetual into a subscription to get updates OR you get a new perpetual license to regain support. At full price, that is. To me, that's completely unacceptable. Long story short, if you want to stay up to date you are obligated to keep paying every year or every 2 years for the support plan.

This is just my take on it, but their business model feels wrong to me. It keeps users captive and provides no incentive for AVID to improve the software. I prefer the Steinberg model, which is the way it used to be with Sib and the way it is with Finale as well: simple paid upgrades. If they're worth it for you, you pay for them (just like any other product out there). And if not, you can safely skip and upgrade at another time. Maybe you upgrade at a higher price for skpping, but always in good faith.

I will continue to use Sib because it will take me time to be as proficient with Dorico. But as soon as I am, Sib will go to the backseat along with Finale, which I rarely touch anymore.


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## JohnG

Thanks Mauro for your reply; I am a long-time Avid customer so I am familiar with that and certainly am not arguing with you. 

I'm rolling the dice on skipping potential improvements. Hope I don't regret it, but for Sibelius it's not that expensive. Quite another matter for Pro Tools, but I have a recent version and anyway, I use it most of the time as a big tape recorder that I pass on to an engineer.


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## JJP

JohnG said:


> It sounds great, Peter. I'm puzzled why none of the copyists have adopted it.



Some people are starting to use it a bit. There are still some things that aren't quite there for certain copyist needs, but it's getting better all the time. The devil is in the details that most other people never consider.

At my place we've tweaked the defaults and built so many libraries into our Finale template that it's usually easier for consistency to import whatever we get into our main tool and work from there. That's how we maintain a uniform look across all parts, especially when we have scores delivered in multiple file formats from different people on the same project.


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## mducharme

I've been using Dorico for everything for a few years now, and am happy. I can offer some specific details as to where certain things are lacking:

Jazz chord symbols - if fiddling with the options doesn't give you an appearance that you are 100% happy with, it ends up being a lot of work to customize the chord symbols as you need. One of the big issues is something like (#9)(b5) you can't customize on its own. You then end up making a custom C7(#9)(b5) and same for C#7(#9)(b5) and same for Db7(#9)(b5) etc. They do have tons of options for changing the default appearance of chord symbols without manual overrides, but there are some conventions they missed and so they don't always provide all options that are appropriate.

House Styles - they don't really support importing a house style at the moment. All you can really do is customize a blank file with the settings and use it as a template when you are engraving.

Collision Detection / Avoidance issues - Dorico is not nearly as good at this as Sibelius, IMO. The only things in Dorico that end up wasting time for me are in this area. First, there are not always options to turn off collision detection for particular items in the score. So Dorico can end up pushing things like bar numbers unacceptably far away because they are colliding, or Dorico thinks they are colliding. For instance if you have a low Tuba part, Dorico will often shove the bar numbers far below the staff. Last week I was working on a part and there were several systems of multirests with a random "Ob." text in the middle of the page. I finally figured out that it was for an Oboe cue at the top of the page and that the collision detect had decided to move it halfway down the page to avoid collisions. If you move stuff manually and then you make revisions to the notation, then they can go flying away again back to their default locations and you have to redo the spacing customization.

The other issue with collision detection and avoidance that I have is that it uses the *default* location of the item to determine the bounding box. This issue comes to play when you manually move something out of the way to avoid the collision. Dorico does not detect the collision is gone and still tries to prevent everything else from colliding with where that item originally was (not where it is now), so you can end up with things like extra vertical space between two staves for no good reason. This often happens when a rehearsal marker above the staff collides with a dynamic below the system just above - manually moving the rehearsal marker / dynamic to avoid collisions does not remove the extra vertical space Dorico added to get rid of the original collision. Again you can fix this by manually adjusting the staff spacing, but changing any notes later will cause the staff to reset to its default position and you end up with the extra vertical space again.

That big block of text above must really make it seem like I'm unhappy with it, but I'm not. It saves me time in so many other ways that I'm willing to deal with some of those things. But it doesn't surprise me that copyists are not wanting to jump onboard right away.


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## JT

JohnG said:


> So true; some of those guys practically wish for quill pens.


There is some truth to that statement. I'm a copyist and if I'm truthful with myself I have to admit I'm old fashioned in a number of ways. Finale is my workhorse because it works and it's the standard that most copyists use. We don't care what the new shiny toy is this week, but when Dorico starts to get a foothold in commercial usage, a lot of us will get on that boat.

As far as quill pens, I used a Pelikan 120 for many years. Had to manually fill it with ink. Used Judy Green onion skin paper. And I liked the "look" of it. I hate the handwritten fonts that notation programs use. But no way do I want to ever go back to the pen and ink days. 

I had a session where I copied a couple of songs in the 80's for a Streisand album. She hadn't decided on a specific key for the songs, so I was told to copy each chart out in 2 keys. This was for a full orchestra, a lot of paper and everything copied by hand. I would have killed for a computer program to do this for me. Never going back.


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## JohnG

JT said:


> As far as quill pens, I used a Pelikan 120 for many years. Had to manually fill it with ink. Used Judy Green onion skin paper. And I liked the "look" of it. I hate the handwritten fonts that notation programs use. But no way do I want to ever go back to the pen and ink days.



Same here, JT. There were some good things about the old days, including the AFM health care plan. As it once was.

Take care.



JT said:


> Never going back.



No. The computer eliminates so many errors and, as you pointed out, "new key? no problem."


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## giwro

JT said:


> There is some truth to that statement. I'm a copyist and if I'm truthful with myself I have to admit I'm old fashioned in a number of ways. Finale is my workhorse because it works and it's the standard that most copyists use. We don't care what the new shiny toy is this week, but when Dorico starts to get a foothold in commercial usage, a lot of us will get on that boat.
> 
> As far as quill pens, I used a Pelikan 120 for many years. Had to manually fill it with ink. Used Judy Green onion skin paper. And I liked the "look" of it. I hate the handwritten fonts that notation programs use. But no way do I want to ever go back to the pen and ink days.
> 
> I had a session where I copied a couple of songs in the 80's for a Streisand album. She hadn't decided on a specific key for the songs, so I was told to copy each chart out in 2 keys. This was for a full orchestra, a lot of paper and everything copied by hand. I would have killed for a computer program to do this for me. Never going back.


Not to derail this thread, but how cool is it that we get to rub shoulders with someone who copied charts for a Streisand album?

(And, I suspect that there are quite a few folks here who have similar stories, and yet they quietly interact with us and keep it to themselves....)


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## Peter Klein

Well, I tried to buy Dorico Pro today. I was able to enter my email and address and coupon code for the 50% off sale. Then I had to submit a screen shot of my Sibelius registration for the additional 50%. The order screen showed the correct price for the double discount. At which point I was told that the verification could take 2 business days, and the transaction would not go any further. It did not give me the option to enter my credit card. 

Problem is, it's the evening of Dec. 3. Tomorrow is Friday. So if it really does take 2 business days to deal with, then that puts us into Monday Dec. 7. And the sale is only valid "until" Dec. 7, not "through" Dec. 7. If that happens, I hope they will still honor the sale. I sent a message to their customer service desk about it just in case, so they know that this wheel squeaks...


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## Daniel S.

Peter Klein said:


> Problem is, it's the evening of Dec. 3. Tomorrow is Friday. So if it really does take 2 business days to deal with, then that puts us into Monday Dec. 7. And the sale is only valid "until" Dec. 7, not "through" Dec. 7. If that happens, I hope they will still honor the sale. I sent a message to their customer service desk about it just in case, so they know that this wheel squeaks...



Don't worry, we'll certainly honour the sale. If you have any problems, please email me directly at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de and I'll take it up on your behalf. (I'd be surprised if you haven't already by now received confirmation that your eligibility has been verified anyway.)


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## Thundercat

Daniel S. said:


> Don't worry, we'll certainly honour the sale. If you have any problems, please email me directly at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de and I'll take it up on your behalf. (I'd be surprised if you haven't already by now received confirmation that your eligibility has been verified anyway.)


Welcome Daniel!! Love your work! I own every version of D. Hope the GUI can get some long attention re: Tantacrul video. Thanks for all you do!!!


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## Peter Klein

Daniel S. said:


> Don't worry, we'll certainly honour the sale. If you have any problems, please email me directly...



Thank you for the personal attention, Daniel. It's very much appreciated, and it speaks well for Dorico. Everything turned out all right today (Friday). I've made my purchase and joined the Dorico community.


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## Daniel S.

I'm pleased to hear it, Peter! And in case anybody else who reads this thread over the weekend of December 5/6 is worried about completing a crossgrade purchase successfully, if you submit your eligibility information over the weekend, our staff will get back to you on Monday morning German time, and you should have time to complete the purchase successfully before the end of Monday 7 December.

If you have any worries or concerns about your purchase, please feel free to drop me a line at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de and I'll be happy to help.


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## Daniel S.

Thundercat said:


> Welcome Daniel!! Love your work! I own every version of D. Hope the GUI can get some long attention re: Tantacrul video. Thanks for all you do!!!



If you have any specific feedback from your own perspective, I'm always open to it. I'm an easy man to find, and I'm always happy to discuss individual users' requirements and to take them on board.


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## Thundercat

Daniel S. said:


> If you have any specific feedback from your own perspective, I'm always open to it. I'm an easy man to find, and I'm always happy to discuss individual users' requirements and to take them on board.


Indeed you are amazing Daniel! I've been a fan since early S. days...thank-you. Beyond what Tantacrul raised in his video I think the program is amazing. But I would encourage the team to watch it with an open mind and take on board the many good points he raises. As much as he presents it as satire, which might be hard to watch, take the good and leave the bad. I know that D's emphasis is on keyboard shortcut efficiency, but the menu system/GUI should not be the Byzantine mess it is (sorry!)...love D.; just sayin'.

Thanks Daniel; D. is a great achievement and I buy every version and I'm a composer. Ta


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## Page Lyn Turner

Daniel S. said:


> I'm pleased to hear it, Peter! And in case anybody else who reads this thread over the weekend of December 5/6 is worried about completing a crossgrade purchase successfully, if you submit your eligibility information over the weekend, our staff will get back to you on Monday morning German time, and you should have time to complete the purchase successfully before the end of Monday 7 December.
> 
> If you have any worries or concerns about your purchase, please feel free to drop me a line at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de and I'll be happy to help.


That's great, I've just received the "Verification Request Pending" email, Monday then!


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