No. 1 - A switch for each track to toggle between this…
MIDI TRACK NAME DESTINATION INSTRUMENT
Violin - legato Violin 1
Violin - pizz Violin 2
Violin - con sord Violin 3
and to toggle between this
MIDI TRACK NAME DESTINATION INSTRUMENT
Violin - legato Violin 1
Violin - pizz Violin 1
Violin - con sord Violin 1
In the official video by Anthony at 3:38 min he does this by hand. Furthermore the second option could be the default choice by Dorico because I think most users specify different players themselves anyway.
No. 2 - Recognition of different kind of instruments inside a track
“2 Flutes + 2 Oboes” as a track name only recognizes the last instruments which are “Oboe, Oboe”. Another suggestion is to also accept different seperators such as “+”, “&”, etc.
No. 3 - Recognition of abbreviations
“2 bsn + 4 hn + 3 tp + xyl + vla” doesn’t get recognized because these are short instrument names. Only instrument names fully written out get automatically recognized. It would be nice to have an xml file accessible to see these rules.
No. 4 - Combining single players and section players in one track
Example: “2 Flute + Viola”
In “Instruments in track” when a track contains both Woodwinds and Strings, the user would expect “Flute” to be a single player type while at the same time having “Violin” assigned as a section player type. Once I adjust the Violin player type to “Section” this unfortunately gets set to all “Instruments in track” which creates new section players in “Players in Dorico project” for the former single players. We can’t have both, unfortunately.
No. 5 - Where are the “Players in Dorico project” to be found?
midiimportmemory.xml does not include “Players in Dorico project”. I’m not sure if this information gets stored at all. My question: Are the “Players in Dorico project” written into a tangible file or do these settings have to be set by hand for every import attempt?
No. 6 - Allow for reversible changes to an import attempt
Imagine to go through hundreds or thousands of tracks for every import attempt when just a small adjustment is to be made. Instead the user could go back and forth between the import workflow and the observation of the result.
Anthony shows in the official video that it’s possible to update the score instead of overwriting it. I think nobody uses this feature yet, at least not on purpose because it is not possible to go back and forth to revise the import settings. Instead the user probably imports midi into a new or empty flow or overwrites an existing one to feel safer. The way it is right now it requires new users to learn midi importing on smaller files so that it’s no pain in case something goes wrong. If you didn’t specify a rule before the importing process and notice a problem afterwards, a lot of time is wasted. A lot of trial and error is required.
No. 7 - The faster someones types into the instrument search field, the more confusing the suggestions
When typing…
“cont” Contrabassoon becomes visible
“contrab” Contrabassoon disappears and the strings Contrabass shows up
“contrabasso” Contrabassoon reappears
“bas” Bass only shows up
“basso” Bassoo Domra shows up
“bassoo” Bassoon and Contrabassoon finaly show up
I understand that Dorico tries to show only instruments of one category at once. Is this intentional? As far as I can see the logic in here, I think it would fit in to highlight multiple categories on the left side, so when typing “Contrabass” I would show both “Contrabassoon” and “Contrabass”. When typing fast its confusing to see the target instrument showing up, disappearing and showing up again. When typing fast it feels like making spelling mistakes. This wouldn’t slow down slowly typing users. But it slows downs fast typing users because they have to question their spelling.
No. 8 - Buttons to change the order of “Track settings - Instruments in track”
Exploding chords requires Dorcico to apply an order of instruments to which the notes get split up to. Amazingly Dorico is able to do that. In the midi import dialog for “Track settings - Instruments in track” Dorico takes the order into account. However there are no buttons to change it. Fortunately the order can already be changed in the file midiimportmemory.xml with a text editor. This important feature of Dorico comes close to the “Explosion Presets” I already requested here: Explosion Presets . In there I show the possibilities with visual orchestration text book examples.
QUESTIONS
Down below I have a few questions which depending on the answeres I’ll get, I might turn them into feature requests. But right now I lack the information to properly adress any issues.
No. 9 - Does restarting Dorico have an impact on the import process?
In setup mode I deleteted a lot of automatically created players, saved the same file, and started a new midi import without restarting Dorico and in “Players in Dorico project” there still are a lot of automatically created players to choose from. I don’t remember if I just deleted them so my question is: Would restarting Dorico help to get rid of those players?
No. 10 - The more flows, the more confusion?
Is it possible that the more flows there are the more confused the midi import algorithm gets with every new flow containing more players than the previous one?