A Christmas "thank-you" from me

Dorico
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The past few weeks have been absolutely slammed for me: concerts with choir and orchestra, unnumbered Advent special arrangements, and – tonight, the final task I was dreading – I had to sit down and hammer out charts for our contemporary worship band on Christmas Eve. (We otherwise do classical repertory, but one of our 3 Christmas Eve services is with a praise band.) I’d been avoiding it, because the process of putting in chord symbols, plus grinding out piano and synth parts, slash notation for the guitar guys, lead sheets, etc… is so laborious, and like many church musicians I’m just dead-exhausted at this point.

So I poured a little glass of wine, sat down with a sigh of resignation, highlighted a large portion of one chart, but then suddenly – for the first time! – right-clicked on “Generate chord symbols from selection,” and BANG! – a series of very serviceable, and often excellently smooth, chord symbols appeared above the chart. I was astonished. So now that’s suddenly crossed off the list. I exhaled a bit.

I then highlighted the same area, and chose “Generate notes from chord symbols in a selection,” and watched in wonder as my synth part suddenly filled with playable notes. I made a few tweaks here and there, but otherwise extremely playable. And what would have meant several hours of drudgery with my previous notation software is suddenly off my plate. Along with all the orchestral scores and parts Dorico has faithfully churned out for me earlier this month. My church community has no idea what this program has done for them.

So, a heartfelt Christmas “thank you” from me, not just to the members of this forum, but also the software itself and the developers behind it. I can tell you that there hasn’t been a single calendar day in at least 4 months that I haven’t had Dorico open . It’s the unsung workhorse of my musical output. You probably don’t hear it enough, but your vision and labor is truly appreciated by many.

My best Christmas wishes to all. Hopefully everyone can catch up on some sleep soon.

Stephen Main

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Fabulous story, Stephen, like a little “Christmas miracle”! :sparkles::christmas_tree::hugs:
B.

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Yes, Stephen! I completely agree! Dorico is an incredible software. I open it every day on my desktop and save countless hours when composing. Thanks to its amazing functionalities and user-friendly interface, Dorico has made my life much easier. I want to extend my heartfelt congratulations to the Dorico team for their outstanding work over the past few years. I wish you all a joyous Christmas!

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Thanks for taking the time to write, Stephen. I’m so pleased to hear that Dorico is saving you time and helping you to get the music out onto the stands with less toil and trouble. I hope all your remaining musical commitments before Christmas go smoothly, and that you can enjoy a well-earned rest afterwards.

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Dorico

“Less time to make great-looking music, more time for that little glass of wine”

Thanks for sharing the great anecdote, @SteveMain, and glad to hear that your work went so smoothly!

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I just now tried generating chords in a piece I’m working on for Christmas Eve. Easy as pie. Amazing!

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I will admit to my dirty little secret that I do use that tool on occasion. I have to of course re-jig a few things afterwards; but when I use it, it does save me time! Sometimes, I prefer multi-staff entry, but there are occasions when score order gets in the way of that feature (although I will change that order temporarily on occasion to use multi staff entry more efficiently). All in all, with all of those tools, there is so much time that can be saved if used wisely.