I switched to Dorico about 6 months ago and I am absolutely loving it. Once I started feeling “fluent” in using Dorico, I started writing down the things that repeatedly slow me down or frustrate me. If options for dealing with these problems could be added I would greatly appreciate it! Of course, if any of these are currently fixable please let me know!
Note: Solved issues will be put at the bottom, that’s why the numbers are out of order
2 - Related to the last one, in piano and guitar parts I often switch back and forth between slashes with stems (a “slash” voice) and regular notes. Whenever I switch the type of note I’m inputting, it adds rests for the “voice” I’m not using. This would be helpful if I was ever inputting overlapping slashes and regular notes, but I never do. I’d love an option where rests only appear if there’s a point where they overlap. Even if rests appeared when slashes and regular notes appeared in the same bar, that’d be preferred to selecting all the auto-generated rests and going to Edit > Remove Rests. (When this results in bars being empty is when I really get annoyed at it)
4 - Another one that’s not a huge deal: if I type “Swing q=120” into the tempo popover, Dorico nicely has the tempo marking say “Swing",” but the audio playback doesn’t actually swing unless I again type "Swing” into a tempo popover and select a swing option. If possible, I’d love for typing “Swing” into the first tempo popover to automatically activate swing in the playback.
6 - The bulk of my complaints: SLASH REGIONS! In jazz, slash regions are used ALL THE TIME to indicate comping/”time” for rhythm section players, and are used for any instrument to indicate an improvised solo. I have many issues with how these work in Dorico.
6C. If you add a measure of music after the last bar of a slash region, it’ll extend the slash region into the newly added bar. I almost never want this to be the case, and it’s especially annoying because of the previously mentioned issue. I have to now drag each extended slash region back to where I meant for it to end, which due to the first mentioned issue is annoyingly difficult.
6D. Often when I have a long duration of slashes in a rhythm section part, I’ll use cues to indicate what’s going on in the piece and give the performer more information than just slashes. However, these bits of information are often 1-2 bars long, and Dorico gives cues for the whole duration of the slash region. I’d love to be able to select 2 bars of a slash region and only put cues on the region I’ve selected.
6E. I don’t know why it’s possible to create two overlapping slash regions. What I mean by this is if I have two neighboring slash regions, I can extend the first one to overlap the second one, and Dorico will show 2 slashes on each beat instead of 1. Maybe some people appreciate this feature, but it’d be nice for me to have the option to disable this. I’d love to just drag my mouse all the way to the right and have Dorico automatically stop this extension at the start of the next slash region.
Workarounds found:
1 - I regularly use slashes with stems in drum set parts to notate big hits, and the standard is these are notated on the middle line of the staff. This works fine when in Notation Options > Voicing for drum set kit presentation: is set to “Use voicing defined in kit editor,” but when it’s set to “Use single voice” (my preferred way of notating things) the slashes show up as regular quarter notes set on the middle line. I don’t know if there’s a reason for this being this way or if it’s just a bug but either way I’d love to be able to “use single voice” and still have slashes with stems.
SOLVED:
3 - Another tiny issue with drum set note input. I use note names on a treble clef staff to input my notes, and an issue I run into is if I type F to add a kick drum note, then type G to add a hihat note, typing F again will create a ride cymbal note. This makes logical sense because it does the nearest “F” to the “G” I just inputted, but it’s not what I want. As far as I know, there’s no way to force dorico to input down another octave. In this case I’m forced to use mouse input, which is significantly slower for me.
5 - I’d love for cues to be either rhythmic or melodic. Many percussionists I know like when a cue is shown melodically on their part rather than just seeing the rhythm notated above the staff. However, I don’t know a way to achieve this on percussion parts. On the opposite end, there have been times where I’d like to show the rhythm of something on top of a horn player’s part, but I don’t know how to achieve this on non-percussion parts.
6A. These are difficult to extend or truncate because the handle to drag is tiny and often it feels like they sometimes just don’t want to go where you’re pulling the mouse. I almost always have them fill entire bars and getting it to cover the last beat of the bar feels especially difficult.
6B. It’s impossible to delete anything in the middle of a slash region. I get that Dorico processes a slash region as one unit, but for example if I want to notate a sudden beat of silence, I have to delete the whole slash region and create 2 new ones before and after this beat of silence.
That’s everything I’ve written down! If all of these were fixed I would be that much more thrilled to be a Dorico user, and I could compose/arrange for jazz ensembles even faster. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this!
