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I am really trying to learn Dorico but at my age I just am not making any headway.   Will keep trying but it looks like when I cannot use Finale any longer I will have to give up on music notation unless I do it with paper and pencil.    The more I try to get a handle on new program the more I seem to not be able to get anywhere.  I mostly write out parts for my player at church and creating parts for about 8 players seems to be beyond me.  Hopefully I won't need to do this too much longer.  It is depression that what I have supported for such a long time is going away.  I started with Finale when it was on Floppies.   So that is a long time.  Hope I can figure this out at some point.   

 

John Guthans

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I wrote you a comment, but it disappeared when I clicked submit. I hope it will reappear later.

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@john, I feel your pain having also started with Finale many decades ago when it was still on floppy disks (I still have the box with the really nice printed manuals by David Pogue). But I've been able to compose two works (one for piano, one for two violins, both > 30 minutes in duration) pretty well in Dorico since I switched a few months ago after the announcement about Finale being end-of-lifed. It's not easy software, and unlike Finale, is more keyboard-centric as you've undoubtedly found. But at the same time, there are many features that I wish had been in Finale, as they made my notation much more problem-free. And yes, there are some things that were challenges, but as I've adapted, much more has gone smoothly than not.

I'd strongly recommend persisting. Yes, going, back to pencil and paper will always work, but it has all the limitations of pencil and paper that made me very happy to abandon that approach and use Finale in the first place. I still remember staying up late nights as a teenager copying my scrawl onto Aztec copy paper with an ink pen and using an electric eraser to try to remove my mistakes. And I'm not sure those pages have held up well since the late 70's. 

The user forum is very helpful. I post there all the time in search of answers and get a response (or several responses) very quickly, including from the developers at times. Keep trying; it will work out soon enough.

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I second the motion. Stay with it. Once I got my sea legs (about two weeks), Dorico suddenly became easy - and as David says, features we've wanted in Finale (and never got) simply work out of the box in Dorico. And instrumental parts? Painless.  

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I have been able to put notes into my piano line but when I try to bring it to lets say my Trumpet line I am lost.   I used to drag it to that staff.  Extracting I think I see how that is done.   I also have a player that reading the part is hard for him so I write the notes names using the lyric tool.  if I can get that worked out then I might try my keyboard. 

John

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I have been able to put notes into my piano line but when I try to bring it to lets say my Trumpet line I am lost.   I used to drag it to that staff.  Extracting I think I see how that is done.   I also have a player that reading the part is hard for him so I write the notes names using the lyric tool.  if I can get that worked out then I might try my keyboard. 

I gave up trying to consistently drag and drop selected measures/notes into other measures in Dorico-it's possible but I found it was a situation where I was forcing the application to work like Finale in terms of selecting notes and dragging them anywhere. That's not how Dorico functions; much more keyboard-centric. But copy/paste does work very well. You can also select one or more notes and just type R and it repeats. So if you copy notes and paste it into the Trumpet line that should work. 

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Opt-Cmd M or N to move selected notes up or down a staff. 

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I saw that, but I am having problems with copying the piano staff into the others.  Made some progress.  Thanks for getting back.  I plan to use what I know for a while.   I have not tired anything that would be like speedy entry.  No where close to that point.  Just doing as simple.  But getting around the print /pdf is quite different. 

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Actually, if you use their preferred and default duration before pitch method, it is speedy entry with the caps lock key down to enter a bunch of notes with the same duration.

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That is like Finale.  Going to keep at it for a few more weeks and see how it settles.  When I was band directing I used Finale a lot.  Now that I am retired, I mostly do things for church and we have a small group.  So mostly only arrange things for about 5 people.   Transposing parts is mostly it.   But if I can get this under my fingers I think I will be a happy camper.  Thank you so much.

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I also bought Dorico and find it difficult and very time consuming to try to create some simple scores quickly in Dorico like I'm used to do in Finale (for 24 years now). I'm already stuck when I try to make a custom template. I suppose there is no special manual/tutorial in the making to show how most standard operations Finale users know are done in Dorico? Life is to short for a +70 years old hobbyist to spend months in learning the strange ways of Dorico  on my own I'm afraid.

Using XML to transfer more the 2000 scores form Finale's format to Dorico has of course it's limits, as I found out some years ago when Finale launched new versions that could no longer read older scores made with Finale ...

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They really do a decent job of having entire tutorials aimed at us former finale users. Their online manual is not what I’d have wanted but the forum is amazing. Questions are nicely answered very quickly.

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how most standard operations Finale users know are done in Dorico

Dorico is a different animal, but as a 70+ using Finale since 1991 (floppies, incredible three-volume documentation) it can be done. I've actually moved over all my work because once I got there and finalized my preferences (including master pages), almost everything was easier and the results better. The main sticking point for most of us is entering music...I don't think Dorico discovered the creative ways you can use a mouse. Either qwerty or midi keyboard is your friend. There is that flow business...open layouts (cmd-shift-l (lowercase L)) and turn all flow headers off until you decide you want to see them. Set up all your page defaults while you're there. (page size: letter for me.)

Here's a useful 101, a swinging bunt that got me all the way to second base. Sibelius user, but macht nichts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9Cs8KsQV7E

You can buy master templates, though I got my own going pretty fast. It took me two weeks to get comfortable.

 

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John and Johan,

I agree that Dorico is a convoluted and not intuitive at all. Can you make a nice score using Dorico, of course you can but it won't come easily.  The best part of Dorico is the support and the worse part of Dorico is the support.  The support from Steinberg Itself is great if MM had done that we would probably not be seeing its demise. The users themselves get super defensive if you criticize it often offensive. 

Just because MM has sanctioned Dorico it may not be the best for Finale users to migrate to. Sibelius has the same crossgrade offer so I took advantage of it also. It took me two hours to get to the same level in Sibelius that it took me two weeks to get to in Dorico. I recommend you try it because they have a demo that is free. Sibelius is far more like Finale and a much easier transition for us. Their support isn't good but Finale users are used to that.

 

Now I am sure you are going to here from the Dorico fanboys because like I say they don't like criticism of Dorico one bit. But you owe it to yourself to investigate all resources in this situation. You can try MuseScore 4 too it is free.

 

As for XML, Sibelius is better there too. The one thing I recommend is to make your score in SIbelius before you do the import. In other words make a black score with all your instruments as they are in your Finale score. Do that first and you should get pretty decent results.

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Interesting. I'm on my third Dorico-notated composition currently since I switched in early Sept and if anything, my output has significantly increased since I'm not futzing with rests, dealing with all the chronic Finale bugs, having to mess with various plugins, constantly invoking cmd-4 to space the notes, etc. Now that I've gotten the hang of Dorico, it's been pretty smooth. It's easy to select several staves and input notes into all of them at once (rather than inputting them individually or using a split point plug-in to try to get the notes in the correct staves). I've never used Sibelius; I didn't think it was full-featured enough when it first came out and I was bombarded with ads in my mail about it. I'm sure it's now full-featured, but I only do subscriptions if absolutely necessary and just on that basis alone, would not use Sibelius. For much less than what I've paid into some Finale plug-ins and scripts, I have Dorico as a Finale competitive upgrade at half price, and it's well worth it. 

Full transparency: I'm hardly a "Dorico fanboy." I resisted switching until there was no rational alternative, and was pretty critical of some of the cult-like behavior on their forum (although it was nowhere near as cultish as the Trump crowd). But for the most part, the Dorico forum has been super helpful and largely nonjudgmental. They've been bombarded with us Finale expats, and I'm sure if a lot of them were to suddenly switch to Finale in some bizarro universe and flood this forum (and the unofficial Finale forum), there were be much more snark directed at them by members of the Finale cult. 

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Sibelius has the very same $149 crossgrade price for Finale users and they have a perpetual licence. I bought it.  So much for you knowing Sibelius, huh?

You are not only a fanboy you are the poster boy for Dorico!

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Dude, what is your problem?

I stated, literally, "I've never used Sibelius..."

I've been called far worse things, so BFD.

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Ernest,

 

I applauded your suggestion that folks try Sibelius, Muse Score, and Dorico to decide what their next notation software move should be, and I have no problem with those who, like you, decide to adopt Sibelius--or for that matter, Muse Score Studio. At the same time, you puzzle me when you seem determined to denigrate Dorico and its users repetitively.

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I read some of the comments and some are really very negative.   I think it will be best for me to drop away, from all of this.  My final comment is I plan to make a good effort to learn Dorico but I will wait after the Holidays when things slow down.  If I run into a problem I hope I will get some positive feed back on how to learn the program.  So far now I think I am going to drop off the site until later.   I hope all have a great Holiday and all the best.  

John

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At the same time, you puzzle me when you seem determined to denigrate Dorico and its users repetitively.

Not at all. I just want other folks to know the shortcomings when some people claim such high praise on Dorico. Especially when it is not warranted. My goal is to tell the truth about it. Can you make a nice score in Dorico, obviously yes you can. Is it as great as the responder above implies, definitely not. I spent a lot of time with the Dorico folks which are fantastic BTW and IMHO the best part of Dorico. My conclusion is for a Finale user Dorico wil be a challenge to migrate to. They will struggle. That is one reason Steinberg changed the way they did note entry. Convoluted and confusing menus not in just one place but three places. It favors keyboard entry preferably a midi keyboard but a computer keyboard works too over a mouse. No drop down contextual menus. No drag and drop, etc.

 

Sibelius on the other hand is a more gentle transition. It is more Finale like. However, Sibelius' ability to import XML is horrible unless you do as I suggested and make a blank score exactly like what you are trying to import. If you do that Sibelius gets it pretty much spot on. Still somewhat let's say different menus but ones that you can navigate more easily. Magnetic Layout works to a degree but is not perfect. It's not Perfect Layout by any means.

 

MuseScore 4 is not ready for prime time yet. But they promise a big upgrade in MuseScore 5.

 

Lilly Pond and a few others are a joke.

 

Again, it took me two hours to get to the same level in Sibelius as it took me two weeks to get to with Dorico and that is with all the great support from the Steinberg team. BTW, Sibelius has support but it only lasts for one year if you buy the software. After the year is up you can purchase more support if you choose to. I have gotten so many private emails from, yeah for sure more older Finale users that are giving up writing music after trying Dorico it is so frustrating. Finale is/was the standard of the music industry. Almost every movie or Broadway musical or TV jingle, on and on, are/were done with Finale. Not Sibelius and certainly not Dorico. It will be interesting to see where that all finally plays out.

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If I have to go with Dorico, I will. Yes, it has some nice features and I suspect SIbelius is in nearly the same boat as Finale and is also sinking. It is very old code and support is lacking and new features are nonexistent. Bug swats not so much either. Sound familiar? 

I did this score in Dorico so I do know of what I speak.

 

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I stated, literally, "I've never used Sibelius..."

Yet you can say Dorico is the better go. Yeah we'll all fall for that one. I also suspect you never tried MuseScore either?

I've been called far worse things, so BFD.

I'll bet you have been. Look fanboy is not meant, at least by me, to be a derogatory term it is a definition. A person that bashes a certain person, place or thing in this case Finale while bragging up another person, place or thing in this case Dorico is by definition a fanboy. That's all. Nothing more or less.

 

I still urge all Finale users to try all three of these mega hitters and decide for yourselves. I bought Sibelius and Dorico and MuseScore 4 is free but you don't have to. They all have free to try demos and MuseScore 4 is still free. Most of all don't put too much store in Dorico fanboys.

 

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Not to keep feeding the monkey, since one user has already been discouraged from posting further here in this thread, but no, I've not tried Sibelius nor Musescore. Some of us have day jobs (mine is more like a day and night job) and very limited time to play around with different programs. Sibelius is old; you even admit it, and likely eventually to fall to the same forces as Finale. Its interface, from what I've seen displayed, is old and tired, uses a subscription model (it costs to get support, right?) and Dorico is clearly the most compelling option for me if I had to make a choice. I made that clear even when I was still defending Finale to the death; I stated more than once that new users should likely adopt Dorico, not Finale. Musescore? My son tried that and even he thought it was underfeatured. So for me, it was a choice to use Dorico and the most compelling one given limited time and resources. You're a Finale fanboy, BTW; let's be clear. But I'm not a member of what you've described as "the Dorico cult," to also be clear. I like what I see of Dorico and it's worked well for me, but certainly am not of the opinion it's perfect. But way better than Finale at this point, given that Finale is...dead essentially.

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So, I have finally crawled to that precipice of moving on to the next stage in music notation.

I do not like the options, but I realize I will have to make do and hope for upgrades in the alternative software.

One concern I have is finding software that would--even to a minor degree--also work on iPad.
I recently started using forScore just as a PDF reader for performance (I am aware it is not a notation program, but apparently accepts limited note entry), but I would like to find a somewhat advanced notation app that will allow for import and export of musicxml files, multiple staves, Apple Pencil compatibility, etc.

Is there such an app that can be installed on both Windows and Apple iPad?
I have gone online for MuseScore and eventually discovered the difference 'twixt the ".org" and ".com" sites.
Dorico/Steinberg: I'm still not sure what they offer in terms of compatibility and licensing.

Any ideas, comments... sympathy?
;-)
Thank you,
:-)
Vanessa

 

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Hi Vanessa! Good decision, challenging though it is. I've written three works now in Dorico, all in the past three months since the Finale deathwatch became official, and it's been rewarding overall despite the expected challenges. That said, some things have been much better than Finale, and that's made it easier for me to compose as I go, which is how I was able to increase my output so significantly. 

Dorico does have an iPad app. I have it-it's free but limited unless you purchase it. I'm not entirely thrilled with the iPad version since, while the interface is nearly entirely the same, there are some limitations and I don't want to overwrite my file if I make some mistakes on the iPad version of Dorico (which happened to me; this is why backups are helpful). But it is definitely a nice app and can handle note entry pretty much the same way as on my Mac (and it also is very much oriented towards Windows users).

You might want to try the free version of Dorico for iPad and Windows and see what you think. Again, it didn't take me too long to get pretty comfortable with Dorico on my Mac, and as I gain fluency with it, I'm annoyed at myself for not switching sooner. Good luck! 

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Nessa,

First off I hope all is well on your end and you have a happy enjoyable holiday season. I bought both Dorico 5 and Sibelius Ultimate I also got MuseScore 4. I am in MuseScore 4 testing currently.

 

My basic take is no software out there is going to do a 100% job of XML import. Another choice for that is not a notation program but is pretty good is Smartscore Pro. If you have reasonably good PDFs and not too complicated score it can make XML for you that the others will read. No software will open a MUS or MUSX file except Finale.

 

Right now if I had to make the switch it would be to Sibelius Ultimate as it is the most Finale like of the three. MuseScore and Dorico are almost clones or each other. And since MuseScore 4 is free I would probably choose it over Dorico. Dorico is brilliant software with insanity splattered through out. You will find the terminology different in both of them. One thing that makes them more difficult to unlearn Finale.

 

Sibelius is an old program just like Finale and support is spotty and only lasts for a year. You can buy more support if you choose to. Sibelius does everything almost but nothing does as as much as Finale does. Both Dorico and MuscScore are still under development so there is hope for the future. As of today 12/28/24 there isn't any reason to make the switch.

 

I am not interested in notation on an iPad but I think all three offer that. I was a beta tester for MM when they were trying out Finale for iPad. I didn't like it then and still don't but I know some of the kids at KU use it so I guess it is becoming more popular. I use a 34" monitor so perhaps that's why. The trend to iPad for musicians over sheet music is getting more and more all the time. About half the musicians in the symphony orchestra I play in use an iPad as does my son.

 

Look what you have to do is get all three Sibelius, Dorico and MuseScore and try them each for yourself. The first two have free demos and MuseScore is free all the time. The first two also have the very same crossgrade price offer. However as I said as of today there is no reason to make the switch especially if you are using a PC. Make sure you have PDF and XML of all your music. Let me know how it goes.

EB

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It has been posted that Finale will run on every Mac built between 2012 to 2025. Is there any reason to doubt that this is also true for Windows?

 

The Finale License Manager does not phone home except during a new installation. As long as the MakeMusic servers are running, new installations will continue to be possible. The only thing we know from MM is that they will remain on "indefinitely". 

 

Old installations are not affected at all.

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For those of us who have invested $'s after $ in Finale-MakeMusic-SmartMusic, plus the years of learning, promoting and evolving with the software since what I recall as 'Wenger Music Writer', even planning our retirements around writing with Finale, this is The Ultimate in Corporate Greed, Selfishness and Robbery against those of us who helped make their 'success' possible.  Please Don't Fight among ourselves as we react to this guillotine action for we have an even more looming concern of the end of democracy as well.  I do wonder if Make-Music or apparently their parent company, Alfred would be interested in selling off Finale to interested users. In an attempt to evolve, I did a 30-day sample subscription to the new MakeMusic-SmartMusic and received this wonderful, positive email from head of sales only to click on the first link which went no-where.  Then there is the maze of sites and requirements for entering all kinds of information in order to send a response to what is hopefully a real mail box/boxes.  Google is helping make all this much more complex than need be, but there is No Excuse for This Selfish Corporate Greed and Thoughtlessness! 

(can someone please explain TG Tools, especially making a handbell assignment chart?)

David Woodard

MusicReadingforAll@gmail.com

MusicReadingforAll.org

ps: does anyone know the copyright ownership of 'Bless This House'  published by Boosey and Hawkes in 1927? YouTube is saying an 1950's Australian singing group owns it, but unless they bought the rights, it would seem their piece would be a violation if published in the 1950's.

MusicReadingforAll@gmail.com

 

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Finale runs perfectly on my PC as dose Finale 2014. I have no intention of switching until I am forced to do so but I want to know what is available and today 12/29/2024 that is not Dorico 5 Pro. If I was forced today it would be Sibelius Ultimate perpetual.

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I think no software is “perfect.” Certainly not Finale 27.4 nor F2014 (F2012 was perhaps as good as Finale ever got after Coda sold it to MM). Finale, over the last two years, required me to use a dense and cumbersome patchwork of plugins and .lua scripts just to keep the ship running and do things that MM never innovated or patched. I even had to use a script to more precisely select partial measures since Finale stymied that more often than not. Finale hasn’t been developed much in years. Even though it runs on my system, it’s a mess. Just try to audition different tempi in the playback window by using Reset or Use Current Settings; you can’t. That broke a few years ago and MM never fixed it. If I open a Finale file that has SMuFL fonts, the first system is empty of notes unless I zoom in and then they magically appear (which also means the resulting PDF created with the Graphics tool will lack notes in the first system unless zoomed out). And unlike MS Office and yes, unlike Dorico, if I merely open a file and close it without making a single change, Finale prompts me to save. It’s annoying. Dorico and many other music programs like Reason allow me to save even during playback. Why can’t Finale? And since it’s no longer developed, it never will.

Sure, Finale runs today, no doubt. Buggy, but it runs. And may “indefinitely”’for a very long time in a current system or even on macOS 25.x in 10 years. The HMS Titanic was doing fine for a bit outside the UK until…and yes, Finale is like the Titanic. Good luck with that. I would never recommend Finale to anyone starting out today nor anyone with serious composition needs. It is, as we say in medicine, circling the drain. Personally, I think it’s more along the lines of “it’s time to call the family in to say their goodbyes and then let’s start the morphine drip and end it.” It matters not to me what anyone chooses to use for music notation. But I could not in good conscience recommend the deadended Finale when other options abound. From what I saw when our son was playing with MuseScore and I tried it out, I was not impressed and didn’t think it was for serious composers. The ideal MS doesn’t yet exist nor is it guaranteed to exist. Sibelius seems so 90’s and is subscription-based. For me, no thank you. But Finale is especially not a serious option for anyone who is going to be composing beyond the next year or so. Again, too many bugs, too reliant on plugins to do what the app can’t without a ton of work by the user, and it’s become a slog in comparison to what I now can do with Dorico. Three new works in three months (nearly two hours of music) is not something I ever was able to do with Finale. It was too clunky and frustrating to get things done efficiently.

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@david wenger: I’m not a fan of corporations but am not sure this counts as corporate greed. Corporate greed would have been continuing to sell a buggy, poorly or insupported product for more $$ over additional years. They cut their losses; their user base was dwindling as most people I suspect realized Finale was not long for this world and jumped ship, which was rational. For at least a year or two I tried to convince myself that it was too hard to switch and that surely MM would continue to develop Finale or at least fix some of the bugs. The interview from NAMM I read convinced me they didn’t have a clue that most of us needed some real development and innovation. That’s when I pretty much knew it was over but still was in denial about the need to switch. Change is hard. But I did move once they announced the end of development for finale, as that was a big finger directed at all of us users. It was rational for them to stop development; the resources needed to do justice to Finale would be considerable. Which is also why having this open-sourced is not the way to go. The entire code base really would need to be rebuilt. The way finale was developed made sense for the 90’s but was not scalable for the future. I thought they had done a major rewrite many years ago but clearly that was not the case.

What they could perhaps do would be to issue a version that no longer requires authentication. But even that might require some serious development to make sure it doesn’t break various things that might be dependent upon authorization.

As far as TGTools; the developer is unresponsive; he hasn’t developed for at least 2-3 years, and except for a small number of things that I would rarely use, it ended up being just another poor investment in my $ for Finale, like some other plugins for which I paid a fair amount of money over the past two years with little benefit for my own use case.

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