Not to delve in, but I get what Eboats is saying - I, too, have been in search of the “Holy Grail” of a program in which I could do “finished product” level output (as I currently do in Logic Pro) and also a beautiful score at the same time. I’ve tried (and quickly dismissed!) Logic’s own Score editor (which seemingly hasn’t seen a meaningful update since Logic 4.x), experimented with Overture (one of the first notation programs I recall to have a piano roll editor, despite it’s actual notation limitations), tried performance tweaks in Sibelius, and am now very excited by the prospects presented in Dorico. Most of my work is for television where deadlines are critical and it’s important to make clear one’s musical intent such that it sounds as close as possible to the final product (and, in some lower-budget cases, IS the final product). Up until now I’ve seen no single program that allows me to actually compose to this level and then also produce a final score in the same program. Dorico is exciting because it’s the first time to me I can see this on the horizon (once they add a click, realtime MIDI recording of notes/controller data, a bit more functionality to their Play Mode and - perhaps further down the line - some sort of audio syncing, perhaps via something similar to Rewire or a better solution). Until then, I will continue to have to split up the tasks: Logic for the “performance”; plus a notation program (which is fast becoming Dorico for me) for notation-only (after cleaning up/exporting the Logic midi file). So until this is 100% possible, Dorico will remain another program for the notation part, as Eboats suggests (albeit the best one!), with the performance/final musical product part done elsewhere (though I look forward to this changing soon!)
- D.D.