Condensing Demo for Folks Considering Dorico

Hello, All,

For anyone who writes large ensemble music and is considering purchasing or trying out Dorico 3, I thought you might like to see a real world example of how much of the score layout work Dorico does for you. I just finished a full-instrumentation concert band composition, a tuba solo with wind accompaniment. I’m attaching two images showing letters K through L of that piece, one in the original uncondensed score, the other in the condensed score form, with multiple instruments condensed into single staves where possible, to save paper and make our publishers happy.

Note that _both versions are laid out as Dorico laid them out, no tweak_s. You’ll see there are some that need to be made, but you’ll also note that they are far fewer of them than one would need in either Sibelius or Finale on a first pass. And that doesn’t take into account the work to produce a condensed score.

Before Dorico’s condensing feature, it would have taken me 3-4 hours to manually combine two each flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons, alto saxophones, trumpets, horns, and trombones into one staff each, as is the case in this example. By contrast, this untweaked condensed score, as you see it now, took around 20 seconds for Dorico to do its magic.

Add in another 20 minutes of cosmetic tweaking, depending, obviously, on the length of the piece (this one’s 153 bars), and the whole process takes maybe 25 minutes for Dorico 3 vs. 3-4 hours doing it manually. It isn’t yet perfect, but it’s already amazingly elegant, and it will only get better.

But again, the main takeaway from this should be that the two images you are looking at are untouched; this is Dorico’s first pass at laying them out, leaving maybe a half hour’s finishing work. With this one feature, Dorico is now, IMHO, the best software available for large ensemble scoring.

Here are the examples:


Congrats- looks like a great piece, and it’s a terrific demo!

Thx, Stephen. I’m an unapologetic fanboy. :blush: