A romantic piece made with Dorico

Dorico
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Made with Dorico 6.1. I am delighted to share this piece to all of you.

This piece, along with my many other works, were originally written with Sibelius. I import these works into Dorico and revise to see how much I could gain with Dorico. The road was not easy, there are learning curves and MusicXML import issues, but it is worthwhile for me to switch over to Dorico. My earliest Dorico project was written in Dorico 3.5. Now, I have no hesitation to transfer or start my work in Dorico 6.1.

My primary goal is to produce the audio sounding what I want, in the same file of the printing score, without using a DAW. Dorico is really out of my expectation - overwhelming good! The CC editor, custom playing techniques, channel switching and delay compensation controls are complete. There are still rooms to improve, comparing with DAW, but it is adequate for me to produce such audio. I could never achieve such quality in Sibelius. Dorico also allows me to write the actual sounding and the display stuff in two staffs for only some bars, and only show one staff. It was unimaginable until I have done it. It is really flexible! So, I have one file for both audio production and score printing now. You may not agree with my taste of the sounds and musical expressions (especially the drum kit), but I am really happy to hear and share the resulting audio.

My another goal is to engrave the score in a similar quality to my original score. Dorico, in this aspect, is also out of my expectation - most of the complicated components could be rendered, in a more logical way. In my old days with Sibelius, I “draw” these on the score, so making changes to the score often breaks something. In Dorico, the alignment are automatic that fully supporting my use cases without too much hacky workaround. I can also create custom stuffs, which is easier than in Sibelius, to support my use cases. There are some basic stuffs, however, such as note spacing, I am still learning. For divisi, I am notating manually, but I know Dorico has some better way to do it. I am still on the learning road, with the help from this forum and the documentation, but I am already satisfy with the current resulting scores.

Talking too much. Here is the audio and the score. It’d be great if you could provide some feedback! Happy Valentine’s!

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This is a very interesting piece!

  1. What VST instruments do we hear here? I really like most of them.

  2. Some tiny criticism: I do struggle a bit with bar number 2, as this cord progressions seems to be different form everything else in the piece. (Or, to put it differently: After hearing bars 1-3, I expected something else going forwared. I later realized that bar 2 might be the one that’s stnading out… :person_shrugging: )

  3. The drum set quite blew me away :joy: It seems to sound as if the bass drum was playing a concert drum somehow…

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  1. VSTs:
    String Ensemble: Performance Samples - Pacific Ensemble Strings
    Solo Cello: EastWest Hollywood Orchestra Opus
    Piano: Native Instruments - Claire
    Suspended Cymbal: Wavesfactory - Suspended Cymbals
    Drum Set: Native Instruments - Butch Vig Drums
    Alto & Tenor Saxophone: NotePerformer stock sounds
    Other Woodwinds, Brass, Percussion, Solo Violin: NotePerformer with Spitfire BBC Symphony Orchestra

  2. I admit the introduction was added in a hurry. :sweat_smile:

  3. In a concert performance of this piece, there was a very powerful drum set player, playing in an extent that the volume covers the full orchestra. I am greatly impressed by her performance, so I reproduce it in this audio. :grin: I tried to raise the drum set’s volume as much as possible, while not getting heart attacks during listening.

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