from its very beginning Dorico could fill music space with bars without tricking it (hiding barlines,in sibelius having large bars to appear unmeasured and hiding rests to make it look like it wasn’t being measured, or whatever), in having meters on separate staves, unmetered as above and metered on separate staves and of course flows, allowing sections, movts or whatever to be set in separate containers and reordered as desired (a factor very important to me at the moment). Where was San Andreas Press’ Score (developed by Leland Smith at Stanford before many of you were even born), Graphire Press program, Music Printer Plus, and of course, sibelius and finale beginning their second yr? how much did you wind up eventually paying for one of these with the updates until you got it to where you could use it and how long did it take and how long did you wait and not use the magic hidden in the up and coming new programs?
dorico is a whole different way of thinking about music composition and music notation and I hope steinberg doesn’t decide it isn’t worth the investment.there is so much missing and I am holding my breath, but I have no problem using it for contemporary music composition NOW. there are many programs to choose from if the you are using something straight ahead and predictable in its nature.
I believe it is a case of the market they know versus the market they don’t know and don’t really understand. I assume just about everybody on the Dorico team is very experienced in notation. And many of these folks could well be the products of university institutions that are always looking for ways to invent more and more esoteric notation. It is a matter of self-preservation for the university programs. It is a culture. And even if the development team doesn’t have such a background, they must be heavily influenced by that.
I am not saying this is wrong. The universities might spend a little money, but mainly they are seen as thought leaders, and therefore it is an attractive proposition for a notation product to position itself as the vanguard of future composition and notation. And that is really a linear extension of the Sibelius plan, so nobody should be surprised by that. Indeed, it might be the smartest and most profitable strategy.
BUT … there are a great many people who deeply understand the power of DAW technology and find that is at the center of their composition and production activities. Some subset of those DAW-savvy people have every intention of producing high quality engravings, and indeed may prefer to compose in notation at least part of the time. This is the market we don’t know and therefore have not awarded priority in the Dorico plans. That does seem more than a little ironic considering that Cubase is a market leader (if not THE market leader) in the DAW space.
So I remain optimistic and not scratching my head. I understand that there is a need for first things first. Without a basic notation capability that is reasonably full-featured, reliable, and productive, there really is no product at all. It is very sensible that the development team has not given priority to playback and other points of DAW integration. However, if we find that same situation a year from now, something will be seriously wrong, IMHO.
I am a recent convert from SONAR to Cubase. I am still using Finale, which seems practically dead in the water. It makes sense for me to switch to Dorico, but I will probably wait until the DAW integration part of the picture comes into better focus. I also use Studio One. Presonus has at least recognized the opportunity of DAW-notation integration. While Notion is not as advanced as Dorico, it is entirely possible that a year from now Notion could do more of the things I value than Dorico. So I see no sense in jumping in to Dorico at 1.2.
Maybe this won’t go anywhere, as usual, but you seem sensible, so amuse me for a second. I’m seriously trying to engage in dialog:
Dorico categorically can’t tackle the kinds of notations you’re thinking about in your prejudices against universities, whatever that may be, so what makes you think that you’re getting the short end of the stick?
(that ‘you’ should be read as the plural second person, even though I’m trying to strike up a conversation with you specifically right now)
Why assume that a team, working under the same banner that, by your own admission, produced the flagship DAW and that touches base with some of the top professionals in every related field would just have this tremendous blind spot — or worse, that they started implementing an actual DAW-like environment just to mess with potential users?
You said it yourself, “it is very sensible that the development team has not given priority to playback and other points of DAW integration”. These are (and the team should feel free to correct me) a wholly different set of challenges. Unlike the notation features, these aren’t self-contained routines and/or comparably small extensions on the groundwork that’s been laid, but rather profound interventions on the software’s underlying architecture that interact with every moving part in it. And it should be clear to everyone — it should be everyone’s desire — that nothing should be half-baked into the program. It seems reasonable to think that playback features can hardly trickle gradually, no?
It sincerely eludes me why on earth anyone would spin these kinds of tall tales (on a tone bordering on prejudice or conspiracy theory) when we all had three (more?) years of clear — and unfiltered by marketing — communication of what the software would be. And for those who didn’t keep up before launch, you have the team on these forums every day, reading and replying. Paul himself, the man responsible for Dorico’s playback capabilities, has been here, day in day ou. Whenever someone suggests a feature, they usually get a clear reply, complete with the information of whether this is feasible in the short-term or not. You’re optimistic, but most are downright accusatory. Why? How?
You are accusing me if some kind of prejudice when I speak about the esoterics of notation, often encouraged by the universities. I don’t think that is a prejudice. I think it is a simple statement of fact. Universities are businesses, not unlike other manufacturing operations. They manufacture a mostly intangible product (students receiving diplomas), so they always are on the lookout for ways to make themselves more tangible. This comes in many forms: by writing books, by appearing on industry committees, and by inventing new terminology that they hope to force upon the lay community. In the case of notation, many of the academics are attracted to unconventional symbology. You state that Dorico isn’t particularly strong in this area. I’ll have to take your word for that. It simply isn’t anything I would ever have a use for, as the last 500 years of notation convention is more than adequate for what I do.
But I do find your view of the DAW world a little amusing. DAWs are quite sophisticated products these days and the practitioners range from casual or lightweight users to the most pioneering sound engineers ever. Loading a DAW onto one’s computer hardly makes one an expert or even a little accomplished in the field. Without spending thousands of hours in the discipline of sound engineering, one really cannot have much appreciation for the scope of the technology.
So I mean no disrespect to you or to the Dorico development team when I suggest that they are not very knowledgeable in the field and so far, have demonstrated no appreciation for how deep that field goes. Judging from the feature list in Dorico so far, I think it is fair to surmise that none of that is a priority for the Dorico team today. And further I would suggest if they really did have a deep understanding of the field, they would have a better appreciation of the value of synergy between the two worlds. It is barely mentioned anywhere in any of the documentation, blogs, marketing materials, etc. I am hopeful that the basic notation product will meet with sufficient success that the Dorico team will be able to bring on board some people who really do “get it” so to speak. One step at a time.
On this point, I think you’re majorly under-estimating, timewise. It’s taken five years to get Dorico to where it is now, and it took four years to get Dorico to a point at which it had no chord symbols, no repeat structures, no cues, no system dividers, no control over brackets and braces, no “lines” etc.
From a notation point of view, Dorico is utterly brilliant, but it still has a long way to go. Let them focus on the jobs in hand!
You’ve kind of reinforced my point here. If you want wine, don’t go to a brewery! Though the DAW side of things is clearly on the roadmap, the team have never advertised Dorico as a DAW. The splash screen tells you it’s an Advanced Notation System. At the point that there’s more than a mock-up of the rudimentary Play tab on the website, THEN you can grumble about Dorico not being a full-blown DAW, but it’s very very clearly marketed as notation software with some DAW functionality.
I did not express any view of the “DAW world”, to borrow your expression. The closest thing would be me stating that the team has been and still is in direct contact with seasoned professionals from all kinds of musical practices, working under all kinds of assumptions, traditions and workflows. Your reply to a claim that your arguments are sustained by easily falsifiable speculation is to reply to a point I categorically did not even approach making in my post. If this isn’t a cue for me to exit stage left, I don’t know what is.
If there was any doubt before, the OP and others sympathetic to his concerns now know exactly where we stand…the foundation of the house has been built. Years down the road it allows for a later functional room addition to house guests (OP and his ilk), but the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms, and den are occupied by the family (engravers) and must first be touched up. The house is, after all, built for the family. Do not expect the family to have any concern at all for the well-being of guests, they are an annoyance that distracts from the real family issues. It is hard to draw any other conclusion from this thread.
I find this very disrespectful to the team. You do not know anything about us. A good proportion of the team have also been DAW users for many years. I’ve been using Cubase for about 25 years. The team includes performing, recording and producing musicians.
Dorico is not a DAW, but has some DAW-like features. Over time it will have more, where they make sense. Do not make any assumptions about future features of Dorico based on what is in the first version. Playback is a very important area, but Dorico is foremost a notation application, and so that will guide the design of playback-oriented features in the future.
I don’t mind shelling out $50 or so per year for .5 upgrades. It’s not out of line with competing systems that get continual development and support. Sometimes we can even skip an upgrade cycle if we don’t require whatever fixes and features come with the deal.
It’s not unusual for a team to invest a lot of time and money just keeping a product working in whatever OS changes get pushed down the pipe-line. That’s not even counting implementation of ‘new features’.
With competing products, I ALSO pay X amount every so often to stay up to date, and some cycles in those particular products didn’t offer much in terms of ‘new features’ relevant to my daily workflow.
As for the maturity of Dorico 1.x vs everything else I’ve ever used (since the mid 1980s) at version 1 of a first commercial release…all I’ve got to say that I’m pretty impressed thus far. The ‘engine’ in this program truly is setting a ‘gold standard’.
Playback abilities and features will come (we’re not even scratching the surface of what the HALion engine is capable of), but not without some pay-days for the people who have to build them. Dorico has already well earned my .5 upgrade fee, and I don’t even know what’s on the board for that release yet.
I would say it is more like a word processor without a spell checker or grammar checker. Playback is an important part of the editing process. For many people and projects (probably the vast majority of projects actually), the ultimate objective is the performance of the music, not the publication of it. Many of us find it a basic requirement to be able to hear a realistic rendition of the music as part of the composition and editing process.
The world has changed a lot in the last 25 years. 25 years ago, it was expected that a new arrangement would contain some errors that would slow down the first rehearsal considerably. Today, I expect to be able to produce essentially error-free arrangements that can be read correctly at the first rehearsal, and I often produce scores that are sight-read live in a performance. For me, that level of accuracy is only possible with a very good playback system.
I realize there are many advances in the notation side of Dorico that will be helpful in delivering very legible music for that first reading. But I consider clarity of playback every bit as important as clarity of notation. I doubt that I am alone in this priority system.
I think it’s a terrible analogy. Dorico has playback features in it, and the development team have stressed that it’s an important part of the package, one that simply takes a back seat to notation. Playback has been a major component of music notation packages for decades, now. I can’t say the same for reading back text in word processors. (Some of them can do that, but it’s not a major feature.)
In particular, the notion that “it says ‘notation’ on the box” is absurd. That’s like saying that, in 2018, a phone is primarily a PHONE. That’s what it says on the box, “phone.” All of that other crap – navigation, games, text messaging, taking photos, shooting video, e-mailing, online banking, web browsing, playing music, etc. – that’s not really what you should expect when you get a phone, that should be considered just extra stuff. It’s for MAKING CALLS. Because, you know, word connotations never change, ever. 100 years form now, a notation package will still mean what it meant with the first release of Finale. You want playback, hire a g-damn orchestra.
I have a tremendous amount of respect and admiration for Dorico’s developers, so I remain very optimistic about its future, and I will happily continue to spend money on the product, even though it isn’t really much more useful than Sibelius for me at this time (because playback sucks, frankly). That’s just the way I work, I’m a 21st century kind of guy. I expect that playback will finally come around within the next year or two, and I’m fine with that; realistically, that’s all I can hope for, since the music composition industry hasn’t yet had its Steve Jobs to bring all of the Luddites out of the 20th century, and show the community of crusty old composers what one can do with these computer contraptions.
In THIS day and age, notation software can manage both excellent engraving AND DAW-like operations. “Overture”, “Notion” comes to mind!
Dorico is already using the famed CUBASE audio engine. It should not take YEARS just to enhance the “Play” tab to only add a few more functionality, like drawing curves, envelopes, volumes, panning lines and velocity lines. That is about all we need. Reverbs and EQ etc are already available. It is a matter of creating the interface to draw lines and “hooking” those properties into CUBASE’S AUDIO DLLs etc!
I think I can speak for most of us (considering Sibelius users purchasing NotePerformer by the thousands as they require good playback), that Audio enhancement should be a HIGH priority in the next few updates/upgrades. We want ENGRAVING AND GOOD SOUND.
I really, like this chap on top, want to TOTALLY wean off from Sibelius, but currently, I can’t as Dorico just does not create good “mock-ups”!
I mean…Dorico DOES entice people with THESE words o their website’s homepage:
What is Dorico?
Dorico is the scoring software for the 21st century. It helps you write music notation, producing printed results of exceptional quality – andplays it with breath-taking realism.
Not YET!..
I love Dorico, but THIS baby needs to grow…because “other kids” are also growing…and quite fast!
