🎬 This article is a transcription of one of the excellent video tutorials 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 Use the Caret and Grid in Dorico”…
Hi, I’m Anthony Hughes. I’m going to show you how to use the caret and rhythmic grid that appear during Note Input when using Steinberg’s new music notation software, Dorico.
The purpose of the input caret is to show you the current insertion point at which any new musical items will be created.
As you enter notes the caret advances to the next rhythmic position. And if you want to advance the caret without entering a note you can do that by pressing Space. This will advance the caret by the same rhythmic duration that is currently selected in the Notes panel. And because of this, I don’t actually need to input rests in Dorico.
For example, I can select a dotted crotchet or quarter note in the Notes panel and press Space to advance the caret. Now I can select a quaver or eighth note and continue to input music. You’ll notice that Dorico has padded out the rests for me automatically.
Other musical items are also created at the caret when you are in Note Input. I’m going to open the Dynamics panel
and input a forte.
You’ll notice that this does not advance the caret, so I am able to input other notations and then only when I input a note will the caret move on to the next rhythmic position.
The grid helpfully displays the rhythmic divisions of a bar for when you are inputting using the mouse and need to create a note at a specific position.
The arrow keys move the caret along the grid one step at a time and you can even use the up and down arrow keys to navigate to other staves.
Hold down Ctrl on Windows, or Cmd on Mac when using the left/right arrow keys and you will move in steps of a whole bar.
This control changes the resolution of the grid, so you can select, say, semiquavers or sixteenth notes for finer control when inputting with the mouse.
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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Hello Anthony, I’m a new user. Can you tell me how to prevent the caret from carrying a note when moving to a new location? I use the mouse to move it, but when I click to station the caret, of course the note is input. Thanks
Hi Dan, great to hear you’re using Dorico! You can disable using the mouse for note input by enabling the ‘Select’ tool, which is the last button in the Notes toolbox on the very left edge of the Dorico window. It has an arrow on the button.
When the Select button is enabled, you will no longer be able to input notes using the mouse, meaning you can double-click a new position in the score to move the caret to that place. Then you can input notes using your computer keyboard or a MIDI keyboard.
If you would rather still be able to use the mouse to input notes then you use either use the arrow keys and/or spacebar to move the caret, or leave note input by pressing Escape, and restart note input at the desired position.
There is an option to enable the select button by default for all scores. In Preferences under Note Input and Editing, uncheck “Enable note input using the mouse”.
I hope this helps, and have fun getting to know Dorico!
Thanks, Anthony
the question that remains unanswered is how does one input notes? use the caret. yes but how do you activate it? i dont know how to get the caret up. this program is the most convoluted confusing PoS.
Hi Carl,
You can start note input in any of the following ways:
Select the staff where you want to input notes and press Shift-N or Return.
or
Select the staff where you want to input notes and choose Write > Note Input.
or
Double-click the staff where you want to input notes.
Hope that helps.