🎬 This article is a transcription of one of the excellent tutorial videos posted to the official Dorico YouTube channel.
Presented here in written form with the kind permission of its creator, Anthony Hughes, this tutorial is titled “How to Input Notes, Accidentals, Slurs and Basic Articulations in Dorico”…
Hi, I’m Anthony Hughes and in this video I will be showing you how to input notes, accidentals, slurs and basic articulations in Steinberg’s new music notation software, Dorico.
I’ve opened a new project for Piano and I want to start note input, so all I have to do is double-click at the beginning of this bar, or I could select the bar rest and press Enter.
Now that the input caret is showing, I select the note duration first by clicking on one of the buttons in the Notes palette here.
Or I can use the number keys along the top of my computer keyboard. In Dorico, a quarter-note or crotchet is the number 6 and the longer notes are the higher numbers (so 7 for a half-note, 8 for a whole-note and 9 for a double-whole note) and it may not surprise you that the shorter notes are the lower numbers (so 5 for an eighth-note, 4 for a sixteenth note and so on down to 1 for a 128th note).
And if you click at either end of this note palette then you get to see the whole range of note durations that Dorico has on offer.
So let’s enter some notes. I’d like to start with a quarter-note so I’m going to use the key command 6, and the letters A-G on my computer keyboard correspond to the note pitches, so I’ll press C to get my quarter-note C.
Next I’d like an eighth-note, so I’m going to press the 5 key followed by C again. And now I need a dotted quarter-note. So, I’ll press 6 and then come up to this dotted note button or I can use the key command period or full stop. I’ll press F to get my dotted quarter-note.
Incidentally, if I wanted to force the direction of the interval then I could hold down Ctrl+Alt on Windows while I press the note name (that would be just Ctrl on Mac) and that will input the note lower than the previous one. And I can hold down Shift+Alt that’s the same on both Windows and Mac—to force the next note higher.
Accidentals are input by either using the button on the panel,
or by using the last three buttons in the number row on the keyboard. That’s 0 for natural, minus for flat and equals for sharp.
To input a slur while typing, then click this button,
or press the key command S and the slur will extend as I type more notes, up until the point that I press the key command Shift+S.
Articulations are input by using the buttons at the bottom of the panel, or by using the four keys found to the left of the Enter key.
… on a laptop above and left of the return key, accent = [ , staccato = ] , tenuto = \ , and marcato = ‘ …
Holding down Shift with those keys gives you access to the other four articulations.
I’m going to press Escape and that leaves note input.
You can also add accidentals, slurs and articulations outside of note input, by making a selection and then using the same buttons and key commands.
I hope this has been helpful to you. Please subscribe to the Dorico Youtube channel to see more videos like this. I’m Anthony Hughes, thanks for watching.
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great thanks for that but how do I put in foreign accents when I write foreign lyrics?