Dorico 3.5 destroys Pitch Bend produced in Dorico 3.1.10

Dear developers,

Dorico 3.5 destroys Pitch Bend produced in Dorico 3.1.10.

The reason is as follows:

  1. Dorico 3.1.10 has only ‘Pitch Bend’.

  2. Dorico 3.5 has ‘Pitch Bend’ and ‘MIDI Pitch Bend’.

  3. However, the ‘MIDI Pitch Bend’ in Dorico 3.5 is not a new feature. It is the same one as the ‘Pitch Bend’ in Dorico 3.1.10. It was just renamed.

  4. The ‘Pitch Bend’ in Dorico 3.5 is a new feature and different one from the ‘Pitch Bend’ in Dorico 3.1.10.

  5. When Dorico 3.5 opens the Dorico project produced by Dorico 3.1.10, Dorico 3.5 does not move the ‘Pitch bend’ data generated by Dorico 3.0 into the ‘MIDI Pitch Data’.

  6. The old data which is not moved into ‘MIDI Pitch Bend’ pane is obsolete and works not correctly.

  7. I must re-edit all of the Data in Dorico 3.5 as follows:
    A. Erase the obsolete data in ‘Pitch Bend’ pane.
    B. Create new data in ‘MIDI Pitch Bend’ pane.
    C. In Dorico 3.5, we must create some points and select them to paste MIDI data after moving the caret to a correct position. It is very unproductive.

This is very bad and extremely annoying as well as time-consuming.
The new version of the software must not spoil the project produced by the old version of the software.
I think this is a fatal mistake of the developer team. Please fix this behaviour of conversion in the next update urgently.
I am very sorry for reporting it, but I have been exceptionally shocked by this.

Sorry for not responding to this post sooner. I have verified that there is indeed a problem with the interpretation of existing pitch bend data in projects created in Dorico 3.1 when first opened in Dorico 3.5, and I’ll talk to Paul about this. I’m sure we’ll be able to sort this out in due course.

Thank you for letting me know it!

Will this issue affect microtonal playback for custom tonality systems?

No, microtonal playback doesn’t use MIDI pitch bend.

I’ve discovered this issue only yesterday (but in Dorico 4.0.20). An old piece making massive use of pitch bend for detuning sounded completely out of tune.

Is there any hint on how to solve this? Or the only way is to rebuild the tuning event by event?

Paolo