Hearing the announcement about Make Music’s abandonment of Finale was a shock to so many of us last summer. I resolved to move on into Dorico immediately.
First Impressions
Courtesy of a seminar sponsored by Philip Rothman of NYC New York Music Services several years ago, I’d had a bit of exposure to Dorico. Then, during my new user trial period, I decided to stick with Finale for the time being because I was doing a lot of “sweeteningAn creating an instrumental arrangement overlaid on an existing track using orchestral instruments, sampled instruments, or synthesized sounds” work, and needed to load audio files into the project, and Dorico’s lack of support for audio files was a problem for me at that time, but I was also intrigued at its DAW-like MIDIA protocol for communicating musical information, such as notes and control signals, between electronic musical instruments and computers. editing interface, while Finale had abandoned development of its MIDI editing tools many years previously. Other aspects of Dorico were uncomfortable – in creating a new document I was met with a single barA line that separates measures in sheet music. with no time signatureA symbol written at the beginning of a piece of music indicating the number of beats in each measure and the type of note that receives one beat. or key signatureA set of symbols written at the beginning of a piece of music indicating the key in which the piece should be played. (this doesn’t happen if using the Hub and picking a starting template, which is not unlike Finale’s Setup Wizard). The concept of Flows was alien as well. In any event I was ready for an alternative to Finale and had the sense that Dorico was going to be it.
After the announcement, full-steam ahead into Dorico, it became obvious to me that Dorico was several generations ahead of Finale, having fundamentally rethought how music notationA system of symbols used to write down music. software should operate, and how it should be organized. Some of the Finale team had gone on to upstart Sibelius, then to the breakaway Dorico, knowing what they could have done better with each iteration.
Users who have made the transition know that Dorico is profoundly different, in many ways much more practical, faster and powerful than Finale, leading to higher productivity and more fun in the work. It’s a milestone in conceptual evolution.
Dorico’s Conceptual Foundation
In Finale, notes and rests are objects. The user is responsible for entering all these objects, and Finale does the math counting beats in a bar and scolds the user when they have too many.
In Dorico, entries are MIDI notes with defined durations, originating at a point in a grid, and it figures out the notation automatically according to rules set by default (and editable by the user). Once an entry is in the scoreA written representation of a piece of music, including the notation for all parts of an ensemble., it can be manipulated in any directionInstructions for an arranger or composer indicating style, instrumentation, mood, and purpose with the arrow keys and various modifiers, or via duration change commands. It can be moved up, down or sideways, or lengthened or shortened, and duplicated anywhere in the score by option/alt-click. If you expand a duration or move a notea symbol used to represent a specific pitch and duration into the space of another, Dorico just recalculates the new duration of the overwritten object and re-notates automatically. The power of this might take awhile to sink in for Finale users. It’s possible that a user might never have to create another restA symbol indicating a period of silence in a piece of music. or tieA curved line connecting two notes of the same pitch, indicating that they are to be played as a single, sustained note., because Dorico will do it automatically.
The Finale Emigrant Error
Finale users usually want to continue their habits of note entry (and everything else) when they start in Dorico, which inevitably leads to frustration. Finale users are used to having to enter rests and ties and find those tasks frustrating in Dorico. When they go online and complain, they hear “let Dorico be Dorico.” Dorico does have “Force Duration,” and “Explicit Rests” (vs the “Implicit Rests” it creates automatically) which may bring some comfort to some Finale users who insist on having it look “right” as they’re entering notes, but after a while it becomes apparent that they are rarely needed.
The Biggest Difference Between Finale and Dorico
Aside from the conceptual treatment of note entries and how notation principles are applied to them, the biggest difference between the 2 apps is that Finale is object-oriented, while Dorico is rules-based.
Object-orientation in Finale
In Finale, you can generally click and move things around on the page – what you’re looking at is close to the end result. If you enter a quarter note, it’s always a quarter note, and you can’t change it – it’s a fixed object. You can replace it, but you can’t change its duration. You can drag staves and other elements around freely, and resize things randomly. You can’t make non-contiguous selections in Finale.
Rules in Dorico
In Dorico, you can change the duration of notes without causing error messages. You can make non-contiguous selections.You don’t need to enter ties or rests. Ties are created incidentally as the result of a duration crossing over a beat or bar, but there are rules that govern where ties appear, and how durations are represented. The most challenging thing is that more often than not, finding the thing that changesJazz shorthand for Chord Changes; the chord progression what you’re looking at means looking somewhere else, usually in one of the many Options menus, where there are hundreds of Options governing rules that apply globally (or to to a particular Layout). It can be challenging to find them, to learn the different terms, and to remember where they were the next time you need to change something. Dorico has the Jump Bar to help find things, and you can create KeyThe group of pitches, or tonality, that a piece of music is centered around. Commands, and create Scripts to remember action sequences – but unfortunately many items in the Options menus are beyond the reach of those tools.
Voices vs Layers
Finale uses Layers for alternate voices in the same bar.
Dorico uses Voices for alternate voices in the same bar.
Dorico is Fast, Fun and Cool to work with!
Note that in the following section, some actions are performed with programmed shortcuts or scripts.
Fun Features
You can make non-contiguous selections in Dorico.
You can make a selection and alt/opt-click it anywhere else in the score, which overwrites whatever’s already there.
You can create chordTwo or more notes played simultaneously; a group of three or more notes played or sung at the same time to create harmony. symbols automatically by having Dorico analyze the score and generate them
You can bulk-edit durations – turn a whole note into a string of quarters, eighths, sixteenths, and
you can dot any note pair, or turn a string of quarters into dotted eighth-sixteenth patterns (just one example)
You can create an entire score from just one note entry, and
you can enter pitches with the computer keyboard easily
You can create voicings from a single pitchThe perceived highness or lowness of a sound, determined by the frequency of the sound wave. with the Note (Interval- describes the distance between notes, either melodically (in sequence) or harmonically (sounding at the same time, with a resultant sonority)) tool
You can enter music into multiple staves simultaneously
You can apply dynamicsThe relative loudness or softness of an element of piece of music, indicated by symbols, or controlled by MIDI values and articulations to stack, or non-contiguous selections, and
You can apply slurs and dynamics to different bars containing different durations all at once
You can merge pedal markings to a continuous line with lift marks
Et cetera….
- You can generate Harp pedal marks automatically
- You can control dynamic and duration interpretation numerically – like having complete control over Human Playback.
- You can set sixteenths to swing without having to edit the time signature
- You can do cross-staff notation with a shortcut
- You can paste any content into a Slash Voice, and play it back or not
- Chord symbols are global – write once, show everywhere (according to rules) – or local.
- Repeat marks play back the referenced bar(s)
- You can style chord symbols without having to create a custom chord library.
- You can edit pitches in the Key Editor (like a DAWDigital Audio Workstation. Some are: Ableton Live, FL Studio, Logic Pro X, Cubase, Pro Tools, Studio One, Reason, Reaper, Digital Performer, Bitwig Studio, Samplitude Pro X, GarageBand (Mac), Cakewalk by BandLab, Presonus Studio One, Tracktion Waveform piano roll) to affect playback, and have them either update the score or not.
- Dorico “knows” the fingerings for all instruments, and has tools to specify alternates.
- You can move any voice to any other voice.
- You can control beaming with a context menu.
- You can add Text Frames, change the size of Music Frames, and then add another Music Frame and assign it to the same Frame Chain to resume music flow after a Text Frame.
- You can add sounds from any VST Library to a drum kit, and it can coexist with other libraries.
- And on and on. There are hundreds more things like this.
And so…
In Finale, some of these things were possible with the aid of plugins or scripting and external apps, but in Dorico, these are all built-in functions. Dorico is just awesome. If you’re hesitating, don’t. You’ll be glad you switched.
– Jon Burr
Proprietor, arrangerforhire.com, finaleclasses.com and doricotuts.com
Veteran bassist, arranger and composer
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