The first one I’m not sure if it is indeed a bug but:
Ossia staves do not play back. Normal staff above/below work fine and if I click on a note in the Ossia it does indeed play the correct instrument. But when I press play it completely ignores it.
The Mute feature in the properties panel is erratic and often does not work. I have a few instruments with Expression maps assigned (dynamics controlled by CC11) and when I draw a line in the CC editor I can hear Dorico struggling to play both the drawn line and the dynamics in the score. Naturally I selected all dynamics and hairpins in the passage in question, clicked the Mute slider and ticked the box Mute. When playing back it is about 50-50 i.e. it ignores the ‘muted’ setting and struggles to play both or sometimes it plays correctly.
Aha! Well that explains that… However, what is the point in having the CC editor if then that’s going to conflict with the dynamics on the score? Or do the dev team expect us to use the CC without an expression map? I’m OK with that, just asking…
Aha again! Shame though… I prefer them to staff below for keyswitches as they produce less clutter.
Greater CC control is in the works, as I recall. As Dorico is first and foremost a notation program, notational functionality has been the priority in regards to development.
There’s been quite a bit of discussion about expanding DAW-related functionality as well (a LOT of discussion). I’m sure more control features will happen “in the fullness of time,” as they say.
Ossia staves are not intended for keyswitches, but for editorial and optional notated passages.
For the record, I think the functionality you want is certainly reasonable, and we all look forward to Dorico’s continued development in this area.
I’m not sure I agree with this statement… That would have been my preferred approach to development and as far as I understand they are not the same people working on different areas, but the notation side is sorely missing crucial professional features: brass articulations, lines, etc. They could have made a real killing if they had sought some advisement from professional composers of a certain variety. Instead we have once again in history a software first designed to write music from the 19th century and then slowly adding features that are contemporary.
I’ve been pretty vocal about this so you might have read it, but I’m a pretty average working composer, which means I do a bit of orchestral/contemporary commissions, I do quite a bit of orchestrating and arranging for TV, musicals, big bands etc. and I occasionally write for media (so I need to produce playbacks rather than notation). I’ve owned Dorico since version 2 came out and I haven’t been able to produce a single piece of work on it. I’ve been working hard with the team tracing bugs (I even invested in a new hard drive just to test an annoying bug we never found) and I try to devote at least a couple of days a week to learning Dorico and/or tracing bugs (though it seems silly to have had to pay to be a bug tester for a mega corporation… Sigh!). So just to give you a quick rundown:
1.- A trumpet concerto where the commissioner needed a playback was impossible because Dorico doesn’t like VE Pro 5
2.- a small ensemble where the conductor asked me for playback and score was impossible because there are no methods to input contemporary markings such as pitch drift and no way to getting them to playback (no Pitch bend support yet).
3.- No big band arrangements because there are no brass articulations (except with a workaround, but who has the time?) and until recently couldn’t swing.
4.- No media production because the tools, as we’ve been talking about, are too basic.
So I’m not complaining and I know I should’ve tried the demo first, but in all honesty there’s no way I would’ve figured out how limited Dorico was on a 30 day trial. I have work to do. Anyway, I’m using up valuable forum space for a completely unrelated subject, but I don’t like it when people, that are not even employees, jump to the defence of a program owned by a mega corporation that is being sold with the label ‘pro’ when in fact it is ‘in development’.
I’m not “jumping to defend,” not am I saying that I agree with every development decision regarding priorities. I was intending to answer your question about forthcoming CC control, which I too am looking forward to. Feel free to disregard the other bit if you perceive it to be shilling.
I suspect they actually did just that. I don’t have any inside information, but from a business point of view, given the choice between selling a million licences to schools or a thousand licences to “professional composers of a certain variety”, the choice is a no-brainer - especially since those 1000 composers also want to use most of conventional 19th-century notation, to fill up the spaces between their own specialist symbols!
(I’m not an apologist for Dorico either - I’ve also got a long enough shopping list of things it can’t do yet, but it’s unlikely that any of the items on my list would also be on yours.)
Hmmm… Interesting assumption, but in my experience schools are unlikely to purchase software straight out the oven, most are still probably working with Win Xp and in terms of colleges they’re unlikely to purchase a new software that doesn’t have a market yet, they’ll stick to the most common denominator (e.g. Sibelius in Europe and Finale in the U.S.). I’ve had at least 4 colleagues now try the Dorico demo and they were not convinced, why, you may ask? Because they didn’t see any benefit in moving away from software they’ve known for years and know exactly how to work on it. The trick would’ve been to offer them something no other software could do, in my case I really liked the idea of not having to spend much time on layout and format, that’s what attracted me to Dorico, but I haven’t had much success because it makes a mess with the percussion parts and the already mentioned brass articulations which need to be manually placed. I think if you would’ve gotten a few big names on board it would trickle down to the rest of us peasants. Like I saw with Evan Evans and Overture, he got so excited he even made videos of it and probably got a lot of his fan base to purchase a copy.
Let’s consider that most people don’t like to have to learn a new thing, especially for work where you want the software to be invisible. Dorico is radically different from other programs in design and philosophy. I am fully committed to mastering it but I’m having a hellish time doing so, partly because of those damn bugs, but also because it’s a huge shift in procedure and a lot of things are just plain weird to my wiring (e.g. the fact Dorico doesn’t draw the rests just confuses me, that you can’t place dynamics where you want to, that you can’t move elements like text without altering your whole layout, etc). Now, I am making a big effort in adjusting, I think it’s good for my brain, and because I am very confident that this program will be (in the far future) a remarkable achievement. But you can’t ask that from everyone and as it stands it offers no real reward for the effort i.e. it’s not offering anything that can already be achieved with other, older programs… And many cases offers less.
All my work is arranging and Engraving. No audio mockups needed, ever. There isn’t anything notation-wise that I can’t do in Dorico, and I do way less tweaking than I ever did in Sibelius. Also, for the first time ever, I can have 150 page multi-movement works in one file, and the parts are all stitched together - not having to repaginate saves me hours on each project.
I came to terms with the issue of not having to type rests years ago; if you’re struggling then the chances are you’re fighting the software rather than working with it.
Bollen, I doubt sharing a list of features that I use frequently and benefit from would really serve any purpose here, although every feature that pianoleo mentioned, I echo.
I’m sorry to hear Dorico has been a frustration for you. But we live in a great era for computer-based music engraving. Just use whatever software best meets your professional needs.
Yes, that’s exactly the benefit I see in Dorico too, however I’m still having problems with complicated bits (as previously mentioned). But for the most part instruments with conventional notation seem to come out pretty sweet!
As for the rests thing, yes absolutely! As I said: I am making the effort and I understand the philosophy, it is not a complain, I know I am the one that needs to get used to it and I am trying.
Well Pianoleo managed fine, there’s no point making claims if you are not going to back them. You replied to my post where I explained that Dorico didn’t offer anything new by saying it works fine for you… That is not addressing the statement: What does it actually offer that’s better?
And the “Just use whatever software best meets your professional needs.” is most certainly not a useful thing to say in a forum on a post meant for feedback, I’ve seen you do this to several people over the last few months. It is a polite way to say sod-off we like it how it is don’t give your opinions here… The Program is in development and I have paid for it, it would be irresponsible to not let developers know what we professionals think.
I enjoy it when you contribute with useful advice and opinions, don’t get me wrong, but please don’t say things like “well it works fine for me”, it’s incredibly off-putting and the reason I left Overture behind. I don’t need to do this, I’m trying to help and spending valuable time here writing this to make the software better for everyone. This all started because of unjustified claims and we’ve (including me) have hijacked a post about a potential bug.
Ossia non-playback issue is obviously not a bug - it’s documented behaviour.
As for CC11, it only “conflicts with dynamics” if the expression maps (and presumably your sample library) use CC11 for dynamics! Many libraries do not. And if your library does use CC11 and you want to draw controller data, you can disable the (human-readable) dynamic marks in your score from affecting computer playback.
Just because you can use a pair of scissors to injure yourself, that isn’t a “bug” in the design of the scissors - it’s just using them in an inappropriate way.
cues, divisi, paste to new upstem voice, dynamics popover, parent font styles, master pages, alt-arrow to move notes non-destructively, and without any tweaking, almost nothing collides in the score. Not to mention the output just looks nicer: thicker, cleaner, etc. Oh, and frame chains. Brilliant, and a huge time-saver.
I can’t recall if I’ve said “use whichever program meets your needs” here before now, but it was in fact sincerely meant, not condescending. Dorico doesn’t yet do a handful of specific things I need for certain projects, so for those, I use another program. As someone who suffered through the awful lyrics tools of Finale 98, I have to say life is pretty good these days, regardless of which program I’m using. That’s all I meant.
I think the word “documented” is a bit of a stretch, I encourage you to try searching for ossia in Dorico’s “documentation” Dorico Help
Presumably by disabling it in the expression map? I haven’t found a setting anywhere else and if that’s the case that’s just not a good way since for example the VSL map has literally hundreds of techniques.
Language, language… Such an unnecessary comment, I clearly opened this post by saying I’m not sure this is indeed a bug… Sigh!
Thank you dank, I appreciate this and I will explore these specific features further on my next session. Personally I had a bad time with cues because I couldn’t put them on the percussionists (I know they said it’s coming). The divisi is nice and I hope they add separate MIDI playback in the future like Overture does. Dynamic popover not a huge fan, in fact not a huge fan of the popovers in general, too much to memorise. I was really hoping that they would have made more a typewriter approach with Dorico where you could have inputted every element of a bar at the same time, so for example typing G, 6, p, <, then 5, (:), E, F, A, ( B, < and f would give you this:
However, I do like the bars popover a lot! As for collisions… I get a lot! I know how to fix it now, but by default I almost always get collisions throughout the score. Just now I started writing a string quartet, I put non vib playing technique and another text above ‘pitch drift’ and now this second text is on top of the staff of the instrument above… Sigh! And the non vib is colliding with the barline. Now don’t get me wrong, this is way better than Overture, but not as good as Sibelius in some aspects. I need to study your suggestions and I’m sure I will agree with you that the majority of the features that are already in are very nice indeed. I mean after all, this is why we are here right? To support the development of hopefully the best notation program ever made.
and in terms of colleges they’re unlikely to purchase a new software that doesn’t have a market yet, they’ll stick to the most common denominator (e.g. Sibelius in Europe and Finale in the U.S.). I’ve had at least 4 colleagues now try the Dorico demo and they were not convinced, why, you may ask? Because they didn’t see any benefit in moving away from software they’ve known for years and know exactly how to work on it. The trick would’ve been to offer them something no other software could do, in my case I really liked the idea of not having to spend much time on layout and format, that’s what attracted me to Dorico, but I haven’t had much success because it makes a mess with the percussion parts and the already mentioned brass articulations which need to be manually placed. I think if you would’ve gotten a few big names on board it would trickle down to the rest of us peasants. Like I saw with Evan Evans and Overture, he got so excited he even made videos of it and probably got a lot of his fan base to purchase a copy.
B, < and f would give you this: