A video tutorial series teaching a comprehensive understanding of Finale Music Notation Software
Finale to Dorico: Conquering the Transition
​​​This will be a short series of videos aimed at the Finale user attempting to make the transition to Dorico! Taught very much in the style of Conquering Finale, the videos will walk you through many of the similarities and differences between the two programs to help ease the transition.
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Index of Finale to Dorico videos
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Finale to Dorico #1
Learn the Concepts
This first video is an overview at the structure of Dorico and how it’s different from Finale. It will explore the 5 modes of Dorico, and show you generally how to get around the program including some different Viewing modes and some of the Options windows that exist to control the look of your scores.
Finale to Dorico #2
Setup Mode
This video will be an overview of Dorico’s Setup Mode. We’ll cover the difference between adding Instruments in Finale vs. adding Players in Dorico, and look at how the Players, Layouts and Flows all interact with each other in Setup Mode.
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Other helpful videos:
Finale to Dorico #3
Write Mode (Part 1)
In this tutorial, we’ll explore Dorico’s Write Mode. We’ll dive deep into using the left panel to add notes, slurs, and articulations and see how that compares to similar functions in Finale’s Simple and Speedy Entry, the Smart Shape Tool, and the Articulation Tool. We’ll also discuss the theory to Dorico’s duration-centric approach to notes and rests and how that relates to Play Mode and the Notation Options.
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Other helpful videos:
Finale to Dorico #4
Write Mode (Part 2)
In the second part of the Write Mode tutorials for Finale converts, we’re going to look at how the right panel tools and the associated Popovers work to add all kinds of items to your score. It’s a little similar to using the Tools and Metakeys in Finale, but the mechanics are a bit different. We’ll also start to explore the Properties Panel at the bottom of the screen a little bit.
Other helpful videos:
John Barron’s Discover Dorico series on Chords
Finale to Dorico #5
Engrave Mode (Part 1)
This is the first of two videos covering Dorico’s Engrave Mode and how the functions there differ to similar functions in Finale. We’ll discuss the 5 main tools in Engrave Mode: the Graphic Editing tool, the Frames tool, the Staff Spacing tool, the Note Spacing tool, and the Graphic Slices tool. In addition, we’ll take a little bit of a closer look at the Properties Panel.
Other helpful videos:
Finale to Dorico #6
Engrave Mode (Part 2)
In this second video on Dorico’s Engrave Mode, you’ll learn all about Pages, Page Templates and Paragraph Styles in Dorico. You’ll see how all of these things interact, to allow for extremely flexible functionality when designing titling in Dorico. The system is different to Finale's approach, so Jason goes into great depth exploring many aspects of Dorico's page template system.
Finale to Dorico #7
Dorico features not in Finale
This video will be a summary of many of the features in Dorico that don’t even exist in Finale. There’s a LOT, and I’ll do my best to give you the basics of all of them, but I’ll be sure to provide you with some resources for more details on everything. This will be essentially a video about everything that will be new to Finale users!
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Tips Tuesday: 10 Ways to Use Flows
Dorico Play Mode YouTube Playlist
Dorico Expression Maps
Discover Dorico with John Barron: Demystifying Condensing
Finale to Dorico #8
Converting MusicXML Files
Transferring existing music from Finale to Dorico requires the intermediate step of exporting the Finale files to the MusicXML format and then importing those MusicXML files into Dorico. There are a few ways to do this and there are a lot of options available for how the files get imported into Dorico. This video will cover a lot of what you need to know about this as well as what converts well and what may need to be adjusted on the Dorico side. In addition, we’ll take a look at Dorico’s Library Manager which can help make the appearance of several files more consistent.