CC's & Dorico's Dynamic Behavior

Dorico
21

I’m not here to placate, I’m here to help and offer insight as far as I am able. I’m not support, I’m the developer of Dorico’s playback features. I was the developer of most of Sibelius’s too.

As Daniel has said here many times, developing quality features takes time, and we want to take the time to do things that really elevates Dorico above the other notation packages (see cues, chords, lyrics, page layout, piano pedalling, percussion…). Playback is very much in its infancy compared to the engraving features, and we’re aware that it hasn’t developed as quickly as many users would like. We hope to devote more time to playback features, but we can’t commit to saying what will or won’t be in the next version because we don’t yet know how long any particular will take to develop. Daniel will occasionally share details on the blog as soon as there is anything that’s far enough advanced that we can talk about.

22

For me playback is the MOST important thing in Dorico, and it was the worst surprise when I bought Dorico the first day, more than a year ago. Right now, I’m still not using Dorico because I can’t correctly use Spitfire or other libraries.

I’ve been even tempted to start a crowdfunding to get money for Steinberg to add playback developers to the team. One developer to handle all the playback issues seems absolutely insufficient.

23

Robby hello,
Yes, probably Overture isn’t the best for engraving, and it’s on the 4th place behind Sibelius, Finale and Dorico, but still the scores look enough good to be given to an orchestra, which is enough for me, I’m not engraver. The most important part is the software to be very intuitive and easy to use notation DAW, in which I can use my virtual instrument libraries and at the same time to produce nice looking scores which I can give to an orchestra or band musicians, if needed.
In case someone wants to publish my scores I prefer to export MusicXML and to ask people like you to make them looking great for publishing. :slight_smile:
Greetings :slight_smile:

24

Sean,

“Encouraging me to avoid this thread is quite a ridiculous notion.”

Not if you try to derail or delay my feature requests. You say I assumed you or others are anti-MIDI and that I should focus on productive commentary instead. Yet you first made it clear you’d rather Dorico develop for notation needs first. And that shouldn’t translate as me getting asked to take a back seat to you?

Fine, I’ll bite. You aren’t ANTI midi. But I’m asking the waiter for a specific entree and for the meat to be cooked a certain way. You’re telling the waiter “I’d rather you prepare my meal first cause I don’t need what he’s having”. It may not be asking them to stop cooking my meal. But it’s asking to be placed first in line. It’s at least discourteous, if not unprofessional. I can’t even use Dorico right now. It’s just an icon on my taskbar. As paying customers, we’re all entitled to place an order. But what amazes me is that you want your dessert before I can have even get the appetizer I payed for. Not to mention you own Sibelius too. I’m still waiting… 20 years of waiting.

I’ll met your request though. I’ll absolutely only focus on commentary that’s helpful. I’ll discontinue discussing my feature requests with you and I’ll be sure to hire someone else to engrave my music as I need it.

Best to you,
-Sean

25

Alroli,

You’re after my heart. :wink:

Paul,

I know who you are. You’re my only hope at Steinberg (in my eyes). You’re my Obiwan. lol

-Sean

26

Paul, I do understand that nobody in the team wants to commit to any specific dates for certain features.
But one thing I would really like to see from the team is that you in turn understand that statements like “we hope we will be able to get this in the future” don’t deliver any information to your users. I have to admit that when I read sentences like this, what I think has changed from “Oh, great, let’s hope we get it very soon!” to “Well, too bad, let’s wait for another year or two or even longer, we will never know…”.

We know that development takes time, and that the team can’t focus on everything at the same time. I really hope the marketing department will allow you to eventually publish at least a list of version numbers and proposed major features, so people will know if Dorico is “for them” anytime soon.

27

I thought that I would reply to this conversation. First I would like to thank the passion and vision of our the Dorico community. Ideas, like scoredfilms and others on the forums should be treated with respect. People making requests, or offering thoughts and ideas are only there because users believe in the team and product. I would also like to thank the Dorico team for being such visionaries. Dorico is a bold product, and has already shown this with how amazing its engraving engine is. How stunning it looks when in completed form. The fact that Daniel and Paul and others also want to make this a composers dream tool makes it so much more powerful.

Products like Sibelius and Finale and others have attempted this with some success and failures. I applaud and encourage innovation. I am also one of those guys that does not post on a feature that I do not use and because I do not use it, discourage anyone else from using it or adding to it. It is not constructive for the developers vision or the users. If you are an engraver, that is awesome. If you are a composer, that is awesome. In this day of media, its important to have tools capable to do the job and function in the way you want them.

I work in media and films as do others on the forum. Yes, there is a DAW, and yes it can do what we want it to do and we have been using that for ages to get the job done. But it was never and has never been in the medium of a composer. We think in notes, parts, dynamics, instruments, orchestration. There are many of us out there I would assume that the DAW has brought the level of musical knowledge of orchestration, part writing, and I will even say quality of ideas to a crawl. More and more, we see composers use tools that take all thought of orchestration and writing or any creative thought process at all, and at a few keystrokes you have an automatically generated Hollywood (bombastic sounding) recording.

I look at Dorico as not only a tool, but a saving grace to musicians. I hope that it kills the DAW for film orchestral mock ups, and it allows composers to think and write in notation while giving the director, or whoever the person is paying for the music a chance to listen to it so the composer can better pitch their ideas.

Again, thank you Daniel and Team. I hope you read this and please thank all of the members for me for working hard on this. To some of us, its more then just software, its a hope at saving our craft and knowledge. I know this may sound strange or sentimental, but its the truth if you look at the world of music today. And a last note to those who bring discouragement to this or any forum, you should learn to support and contribute to the conversation. If you have nothing to add to the conversation, then saying nothing is better then saying anything because anything other then constructive is destructive.

Thanks for your time.

28

I really really don’t think that this is fair or helpful.

Engraving-focussed people have been struggling to do certain things in Sibelius and Finale for years, and audio-focussed people have been struggling to do certain things in Logic/Cubase/Notion for years, and now Dorico’s come along.

Dorico was available on a 30-day trial not actually on release day, but within a week or two of release day, and for that reason I have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who bought in under the expectation that it could do something crucial to them that it can’t do.

Outside of this thread there are people complaining hat they can’t possibly use Dorico without guitar tab or fingering notation, or multiple simultaneous chord tracks, or DS al coda structures that play back, or better control of where instrument changes happen, or proper automation of multiple flutes on one stave.

If we only read the threads that apply to us we start to believe that the development team are specifically ignoring OUR feature requests. In 99% of cases that’s simply not true.

Read the version history from the past year, and you’ll see what’s been achieved so far, and often in record time.

29

haidendvim,

Very well stated. Did I say well stated? Well stated. :slight_smile:

30

Well I at least tried to be helpful in starting this thread. I’m sorry I’m frustrated I can’t use Dorico right now. That frustration sounds like entitled whining to those who can use it, which I can actually understand in a way… but ultimately disagree with. If me complaining rubs you the wrong way, please add what you want to the thread and leave me out of it. I’ll just keep posting things I want and hope that in my lifetime half of them may actually happen.

Thank you
-Sean

31

I will add… in no way is giving a suggestion, making a request, mentioning how Dorico is not useful to you now, or asking about certain details frustrating to those on this forum. We are all here to help make Dorico the best it can be. It is important that the team see that there are some people who cannot use Dorico at the moment, with a proper explanation of why. Plain and simple, the frustration from many has to do with threats and comments that neither improve nor add to the environment: “If Dorico doesn’t do this… then I won’t do that”, and “Everyone wants this particular feature, I wonder why you the developers are leaving us behind on purpose.”

I never once argued that your suggestions were pointless or not necessary. However, I did say that the threatening tone does nothing. Sean, I even said you had some good ideas. It’s some of the pettiness in the wording that frustrates people. The development team did not in any way “trick” you into this software, and they are not purposefully holding back on giving you what you want. But when many people type things about “suggestions”, it’s often followed by some kind of threat. We went round and round with this before Dorico was even released when people were saying how the whole success of the software hinged on the ability to handle large time signatures for film scores (which Dorico still cannot do at the present). A lot of “Dorico will never succeed if this can’t be handled.” “Why would Dorico ship when it can’t do large time signatures?” And the, “what do the developers have against film score people to not include large time signatures at the release?” These comments don’t help, and they rather turn people off from paying attention to the serious request that someone might have.

If you want to paint me as somebody who is incredibly greedy only about my needs, so be it. I can wear that badge. It is a wrong assumption, but you can believe as you want. I do 99% percussion music (percussion publications and percussion arrangements). There were plenty of things at the release that Dorico could not do. Since version 1.2 I have had about 90% of my needs filled. But I still cannot do certain tasks, and it is something I have communicated with Daniel. Daniel has been honest and forthright. He said they will get to it when they can. To add to that, I use the Virtual Drumline VST for my arranging (before people agree to buy an arrangement or sign off on the final step they want to hear what it should sound like). There are many things in the expression maps that I need operational, in order to use the software to it’s fullest. At the moment I am somewhat stuck. This isn’t me complaining. This is me showing you that I, too, am missing some VERY key features and some of that pertains to playback.

I wish you will continue to add suggestions. Explaining what your needs are and what you need fulfilled to complete the jobs you want to do in Dorico. But from a constructive aspect. As I stated, some of your ideas were certainly worth someone looking at (such as the curve drawing for dynamics).

Robby

32

[Edit: I initially opted to back out of this thread (however ironic that is). I’ve instead opted for a new solution]

Robby (and anyone else who doesn’t have MIDI playback at the top of their priority list)…

I apologize. I shouldn’t have described your intentions as greedy. Perhaps we’re all just ignorant to each other as user types go. But that ignorance is why I don’t post on threads that are less significant to me. I’m not asking Steinberg to focus on MIDI Playback instead of Notation. I’m asking them to hire more people for MIDI Playback instead of having 1 guy do MIDI while a team of people do engraving and other features every day. I’ll still call it an objective fact that engraving features already have been getting much more attention from this development team for the past couple years and arguably decades. If I’m wrong, I don’t see it.

[If I suspect someone is trying to ask for their needs to come before mine, I’ll simply block your posts from my view. I have no hard feelings. But I value edification and optimism. I value building on ideas, not the contrary. So if I am ignoring you, please understand that it’s possible I overlooked your post or can’t see it… but it doesn’t mean your opinion has no value here because it’s not mine. We all ought to show kindness and consideration. Maybe I have to learn that better than others. For now, this I opt to part ways.]

Best wishes,

-Sean