Double Bass The end of Finale

[oren]

How different is the (MIDI) keyboard entry aspect of Dorico from that of Sibelius? By that I mean, I assume that you have one hand on the keyboard to enter the pitch, and the other on the keypad to enter the rhythm of the pitch. On Sibelius, this process was very easy since the designated keys were all bunched together in a logical layout.

I’ve seen students working with Musescore and there is a lot of clicking on icons for rhythm, which looks cumbersome…. But they may just be inexperienced and not have developed the chops to do it faster.

In Dorico you select the rhythmic duration of the note with numbers. 8 = whole note, 7 = half, 6 = quarter, etc. Type a period to get the note dotted. I haven’t used a midi keyboard with it, but assume that you should just be able to pick pitch by playing a note on the keyboard. With the computer keyboard you just type the letter of he note, and Dorico will pick an octave using its best guess based on preceding notes, so you may end up needing to shift octaves. I find it pretty easy.

 

[SteveCS]

In Dorico you select the rhythmic duration of the note with numbers. 8 = whole note, 7 = half, 6 = quarter, etc. Type a period to get the note dotted. I haven’t used a midi keyboard with it, but assume that you should just be able to pick pitch by playing a note on the keyboard. With the computer keyboard you just type the letter of he note, and Dorico will pick an octave using its best guess based on preceding notes, so you may end up needing to shift octaves. I find it pretty easy.

That is pretty much the Musescore workflow, but with different number assignments out of the box: 7=whole note, 6=½, 5=¼, etc. I don't know about Dorico, but with MuseScore it is possible to customise all keyboard shortcuts and create new ones for anything not already assigned, so aligning to the Dorico scheme would be trivial.

 

[Papageno]

I’ve seen students working with Musescore and there is a lot of clicking on icons for rhythm, which looks cumbersome…. But they may just be inexperienced and not have developed the chops to do it faster.

There are multiple ways of typing music into a Musescore.

One way is what you describe:
- click on the rhythm value you want to select (8th note, quarter note, doted half note, etc.)
- click on the staff to enter note where you want it to be.
- repeat... etc.
That is quite easy, but this is slow and by far not the most effective way to enter music into Musescore. Maybe your students are not very experienced.

One (among others) way that is much faster and more convenient is to type entirely from the keyboard (as you would do for text) without the need to select and click on things with the mouse:
- each note is a number (indicating its duration) and a letter (A, B, C, etc, or R for rest) indicating the pitch.
- for the duration, you type:
1 for a
2 for a
3 for a 16th note
4 for an 8th note
5 for a quarter note
6 for a half note
7 for a whole note
etc...
For a dotted note, just type in a dot "." after the duration number.
- you can raise or lower the note you just typed in using the up and down arrows (in half-step increments) or control-up arrow (down arrow) to raise or lower by an octave.
- to type in chords, you use the shift command to type in notes on top of the note you just typed in. With a minimal amount of pratice and not much memory efforts (e.g. to remember shortcuts), one can write sheet music in a very ergonomic and effective way.

EDIT: oups, I just noticed that essentially the same response was already given. Sorry...

 

[MonetBass]

After watching some YouTube videos of the latest releases of MuseScore, I'm going to give that a try since it looks like it will serve my needs and won't make me jump through a bunch of hoops to install it (looking at you, Steinberg).

 

[MuseChaser]

After watching some YouTube videos of the latest releases of MuseScore, I'm going to give that a try since it looks like it will serve my needs and won't make me jump through a bunch of hoops to install it (looking at you, Steinberg).

Installation is quite easy and good-proof. Just be aware that the forum/account/sharing sign up stuff is ENTIRELY optional, despite the way the official site presents it. Just download the program itself. I fell for it when I updated to 4.x a few weeks ago, then noticed that it was unnecessary.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

Chortle. I stepped off the overpriced software train when they discontinued Allegro, which was not too overpriced for the educational license making it available at the school I was working for at the time, where we had it on computers for students to write with. I think (haven't started it in a while, so computer may be dead now) I still have an old mac still running one copy of it in storage. The Path from that was "pay a ton of money for full Finale" and it was not an attractive path. MuseScore was kinda clunky at the time running those old computers with Allegro got difficult; but it's improved greatly.

The one alleged feature that Allegro had I hope makes it into MuseScore eventually (don't know if it might be, I'm stuck on 3 due to old hardware right now) was notating from a microphone listening to a non-MIDI instrument. It didn't work all that well, though. But it was a good concept.

MuseScore to write music is free. Paying is to access music other people have written in MuseScore, which I don't need. I think that might also access PDF-> MuseScore transliteration, though my experience of how buggy that was on Allegro leads me to suspect that error checking it is about as much work as inputting from scratch.

When something is not clear about how to do a thing in MuseScore, it's usually faster to web search for it than to look through the documentation directly, since where and how things are documented can be a bit odd.

For really fast notation if you have a MIDI keyboard (need not be a fancy one) you can play stuff in (setting a minimum note value to reduce errant 128ths if your timing does not line up exactly with the computer's concept of time) if you're a good keyboard player, or do the note value by number and the keyboard for pitch if you can plonk a key but won't ever be asked to play keys in your band.

 

[MuseChaser]

Chortle. I stepped off the overpriced software train when they discontinued Allegro, which was not too overpriced for the educational license making it available at the school I was working for at the time, where we had it on computers for students to write with. I think (haven't started it in a while, so computer may be dead now) I still have an old mac still running one copy of it in storage. The Path from that was "pay a ton of money for full Finale" and it was not an attractive path. MuseScore was kinda clunky at the time running those old computers with Allegro got difficult; but it's improved greatly.

The one alleged feature that Allegro had I hope makes it into MuseScore eventually (don't know if it might be, I'm stuck on 3 due to old hardware right now) was notating from a microphone listening to a non-MIDI instrument. It didn't work all that well, though. But it was a good concept.

MuseScore to write music is free. Paying is to access music other people have written in MuseScore, which I don't need. I think that might also access PDF-> MuseScore transliteration, though my experience of how buggy that was on Allegro leads me to suspect that error checking it is about as much work as inputting from scratch.

When something is not clear about how to do a thing in MuseScore, it's usually faster to web search for it than to look through the documentation directly, since where and how things are documented can be a bit odd.

For really fast notation if you have a MIDI keyboard (need not be a fancy one) you can play stuff in (setting a minimum note value to reduce errant 128ths if your timing does not line up exactly with the computer's concept of time) if you're a good keyboard player, or do the note value by number and the keyboard for pitch if you can plonk a key but won't ever be asked to play keys in your band.

Just a quick note to verify an important point made above to anyone about to explore MuseScore....

The system requirements for MuseScore 4.x.x are MUCH greater than for 3.x.x and earlier. I made the mistake of installing 4.4.2 on my 2011 Gateway laptop and finished up a big band chart I'd been working on (in 3.5.2, I think) with the new version. Slow as all get out, hesitates sometimes for ten seconds before an input or command is recognized, and the playback stutters after a few seconds. To make matters worse, once the chart was converted into 4.x, there's no way (that works) to open it back up with 3.x.

My own fault...all of that is documented. MuseScore has always run so seamlessly on my old laptop I just figured 4.x would too. 4.x needs at least a quad processor, and an octacore is recommended. Ooops.

The pluses of 4.x include MUCH improved playback sounds and some changes to the input and editing interfaces. I was really comfortable and had a good established workflow for 3.x, so my initial reaction to 4.x (leaving out the semi-incompatibility with my "vintage" laptop) was slightly negative to the interface changes, but I'm beginning to see the pluses. The sounds are a significant improvement.

 

[T_Bone_TL]

On the Mac side 4.x won't even install on my old hardware. Which happens to also be 2011 era.

My 'New" home laptop is 2012, pulled out of the trash (literally) and runs one notch newer OS version than the 2011 hardware. I am the sort of computer nerd that hates spending money when the stuff I have works for what I do, though it's getting close to the end for this stuff now as websites stop working with the browsers they will run, etc...

I do like that the program works on Linux, as I've recovered many a "useless" old computer by installing Debian and a lightweight desktop, but I have not investigated 4 on that side (if even available yet - they are often behind Windows/Mac versions) as the incompatibility with 3 that I use on the (old) Mac makes it unattractive. It may finally be time to kiss MacOS goodbye and move to Debian exclusively (other than the work-only laptop running W10, due to braindead work software that "only works on Windows" and No thank you, I don't want "free" W11 "upgrade" with all it's "must use the MS cloud" junk and odds of making that computer worse.)