Recently, I have received several questions from former Finale users about the fact that there are fewer symbols in Dorico's articulation palette than in Finale.
Specifically, they asked me how to enter marcato staccato and tenuto accent in Dorico.
The way articulations are handled is slightly different between Finale and Dorico, so it will be easier to work in Dorico if you know about it.
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1. Differences between Finale and Dorico's definitions of articulations
If you look at the Dorico toolbox, you'll see that there are only a few basic types of articulations.
However, as you can see in the image above, some articulations, such as jazz articulations, are registered as ornaments in the right toolbox, because Dorico gives articulations a different definition than Finale does.
The Dorico user manual states the following:
In Dorico Pro, articulations are defined as something that alters the way a note is played, in a way that is consistent across all instruments. Because instructions like bowing directions, harmonics, or tonguing apply to different instrument groups, in Dorico Pro such directions are defined as playing techniques. (“Articulations”)
Jazz articulations in Dorico Pro cover a range of note ornamentations that are idiomatic to jazz music, and brass instruments in particular.
Although they are often known as jazz “articulations”, these techniques function more like ornaments than articulations because they change the pitch rather than the duration or attack of notes. For this reason, they are considered ornaments in Dorico Pro. They are found in the Ornaments panel, and you can also input them using the ornaments popover. (“Jazz articulations”)
Looking at Finale's “Articulation Selection Dialog Box” from this perspective, out of the 70+ symbols registered there, basically only 15 are articulations defined by Dorico, and there are many symbols which are out of Dorico’s “articulation” definition, such as finger numbers and piano pedal symbols.
It seems that Finale registers symbols to be added to specific notes in the “Articulation Selection Dialog Box”, so it may be that it classifies symbols for programmatic reasons rather than musical reasons.
This may be reasonable in the sense that symbols with similar input operations are not scattered all over the place like in Dorico, but I think that the fact that symbols that are not actually articulations are collectively called “articulations” can be difficult for beginners to understand.
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2. Basics of entering compound articulations
In Dorico, the basic approach to input marcato staccato and tenuto accent is to enter multiple articulations on the same note, such as marcato + staccato or tenuto + accent.
Dorico doesn't allow you to add tenuto and staccato to the same note for some reason, I guess this is why an independent symbol for tenuto staccato is provided at the bottom right.
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3. Using existing compound articulation glyphs
The relative positions of articulations to notes and the relative positions of multiple articulations can be set in the Engraving Options, but it can be difficult to find optimal settings for all symbols, and in that case you may end up having to rely on manual adjustments.
If you want to avoid such hassle and use marcato staccato and tenuto accents that are already combined into one, like Finale, you can register these symbols in the SMuFL font in the Edit Playing Techniques dialog box.
In this example, the articulations registered as playing techniques are indicated by red arrows. If you also register popover text, you can easily call them up by pressing Shift+P (tenuto accent).
However, when using these symbols in engraving, care must be taken because, as was the case with Finale, these symbols combine multiple symbols that are originally considered to have different appropriate positions into one glyph, which may result in expressions that are considered "incorrect" in engraving.
Large symbols such as accents are always placed outside the staff, while compact symbols such as tenuto are generally placed inside the staff if possible. In Dorico, there is an option in the Engraving Options to allow users to apply or not apply these rules.
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