Dorico 5 Most Wanted

Ooh didn’t see that in the release notes - I’ll check it out

That happened some time ago, with the introduction of a second Tenor instrument’ that sings/plays at pitch, when combined with the Notation Option to ‘respect’ ottava clefs.

Top 5 here.

True black-listing of physical MIDI ports (not taking control of it and merely muting it). There is hardware that I want Dorico to TOTALY IGNORE, PERIOD. Don’t even sniff it! Yet, if stuff gets launched in the wrong order, it grabs every MIDI port on the system, every time, so other stuff cannot access it if it happens to use generic windows USB>MIDI drivers.

Ability to set "Expression map switches AFTER notes - ticks’ please. Many pedal effects (legato-portamento) need to happen shortly AFTER the slur phrase begins, but let up before or at the same time as the last note-off in the phrase.

Access and docs to the LUA backend. Then we users can make all sorts of features and functions ourselves. Hopefully it’d include access to both display and playback elements for a stave/track. Hopefully it can also insert events into any stave/track at will (arbitrarily created by the script, or copied/transformed/pasted from other staves/tracks).

Ability to bring audio inputs off our audio interface into the mixer. Obviously these cannot ‘quick render’ into audio exports…mix downs would have to be done ‘in real time’ when making use of these, but they sure would be nice to have for those of us with external gear at hand to incorporate into the mix.

Tempo, time-signature, and song position reported to plugins. We could make much smarter/musical instruments if we had these VST parameters registered and reported to plugins (Assuming Dorico 4 doesn’t do this yet. I haven’t checked).

Ya only asked for 5, but I’ll throw in one more that we can’t already get with third party plugins and such. Ability to add more FX buses (like the current reverb fader) and send stuff to them independently (Aux Sends).

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That wasn’t the problem - the problem is that if you split a Bass (Tenor and Bass condensed) into divisi of Tenor and Bass, you have to change the bass to a tenor clef (to give SATB), and that tenor clef appears on the bass staff previous.

Ah: that’s the old ‘hide cautionaries’ issue again. You can fix it with a Coda.

I’ll admit that one of my requests is a property for the indent on each coda, so that real Codas can be indented and fake codas can not.

The trouble there is the “fake” bit - neither of those functions are fulfilling their jobs properly, which in a semantic system is quite unsatisfactory. I’d like to do choral divisi please, not just trick a system into looking like it does it…

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Yes, please! I have some libraries where things like falls have to be triggered during the note so some way to trigger the effect after the note begins would be very welcome.

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Dorico 4 does not support correct playback of these things, does it?

  • 1st X Only
  • 2nd X Only
  • Last X Only
  • Play on D.S.
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The ability to show or hide key signatures and cautionary key signatures whenever desired is probably still one of my most wanted features, and certainly would be very useful with etudes, educational exercises and handouts. None of the following are new requests and are all known to the developers but I’d still love to see 'em:

  • A fully featured Instrument Designer to add instruments, with the ability to specify instrument family, transposition, number of staff lines, etc
  • Flexibility to add custom chord symbols to a library that can then simply be input by typing in via the popover.
  • Some sort of way to organize Expression Maps. I have over 100 now.
  • A way to enter octave transposing instruments at written pitch. Other transposing instruments can be input at written pitch, why not octave transposing? It’s annoying when inputting bass parts for example.
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I’m not clear if this would help you or not, but I use a software MIDI Router so multiple MIDI ports can access MIDI data simultaneously. I have this in Bome:
MIDIRouter

… and then this in Dorico:
DoricoMIDI

That way the signal can still be sent to many devices and Dorico doesn’t monopolize the MIDI path. Perhaps that’s not as helpful with many physical MIDI ports instead of software though.

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My wishlist for 5 mostly comes from another one of our wish lists here: Choral Particularities

Pretty sure everything I said there still applies (I haven’t yet had a chance to explore D4, but just from watching all the YouTube videos, I think these are all still relevant), but here are the sparknotes.

  1. Option to automatically fit very long single-note lyrics (usually for chanting) within the barline.
    1a. Not mentioned in the other thread, but I dare say, maybe even the ability to put a line break in a single lyric, again for chanting, but chanting with paragraphs :slight_smile:
  2. A small overhaul on mensurstriche. It’s great, but throw anything slightly non-standard at it, and it quickly becomes not sufficient (e.g. double choir should not have barlines connecting the two choirs, only barlines within choirs. Not currently possible). See the other thread for the full skinny on mensurstriche.
  3. Reordering instruments on a per-flow (or even mid-flow) basis.
  4. Linked asterisks/footnotes that automatically stay on the correct page.
  5. This one’s hard to know how to summarize it, because it could be tremendously generalizable, but my particular need is very specific. Sometimes I need to attach extra characters to verse numbers, as is commonly done in hymnals (e.g. a big underline to make a visual separation between every third verse). See the other thread for pics. Though, more broadly speaking I’d be just as happy with a very general feature that allowed you to attach any arbitrary thing to any other arbitrary thing (e.g. click on any element in engrave mode, and from there open up the symbol editor for that specific instance of that item. That’s not a thing already, right?).

There are a few things not in my list in the other thread, but they’re also on my wish list:

  1. Playback scrubbing
  2. Cutaway score support. (and/or any other functionality from F*****'s Staff Styles feature worth stealing)
  3. (native) Box notation, with all the trimmings.
  4. A simple in-program design-your-own symbol editor (vector graphics)
  5. Along the lines of my #4 above, I’d love to be able to attach master page overrides to certain musical locations (like the beginning or end of a flow for instance) instead of having to go by page number, which can easily change. For instance, say I need a big dedicated title page for Act II of an opera. It should go at the end of the last flow of Act I or at the beginning of the first of Act II. Right now, if I add or subtract from Act I, the title page doesn’t automatically move accordingly.

I’ve got some other little nitpicks here and there, but they’re mostly minor and mostly things that I’ve really only ever had come up once or twice. Maybe one day when all the big stuff’s tackled (i.e. when my colleagues can no longer avoid my Dorico evangelism by saying “well there’s just a few big things that I need that F*****/S******* can do that Dorico can’t.”), maybe then I’ll dig out that list :laughing:

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One more, just for good measure (though I suppose I could easily wait til D5.5 or D6 for this):

  1. Hierarchical flow organization or something addressing the organizational problems that arise with high-flow-count files. Most of my projects are small and only have one flow, maybe two or three sometimes. Fine. But the few times I’ve done operas or musicals, I found myself really wishing I could group flows by act or scene or whatever. Like, maybe each act has 5-7 scenes and each scene has 1-3 numbers, and maybe occasionally a number has more than one flow associated with it. I don’t know what the best solution for organizing that would be, but I know that having all the flows just one after another in a 1-dimensional line can be tough.
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As part of that excellent suggestion (number 11) I ask the Dorico team to recognise the current tension in respect of flows - that they can currently potentially be used by the user to achieve any of the following three things (and probably have been used for all three):

  • performance breaks (numbers in a musical, movements in a symphony etc)

  • formatting breaks (pages restarting - titles having new content and style)

  • compositional segments which can be rearranged - allowing flexibility during the composing or arranging process.

My view is that the final possible purpose is as things stand at tension with the first two - there are times when the user would benefit if they could use flows as compositional blocks without each block having to have its own formatting settings. Why not have all flows have two tick boxes - one which allows the user to say whether the flow restarts bar numbering and another which allows the user to say whether the flow should have its own formatting settings or get its settings from the first flow to its left which has formatting settings?

As part of this work I suggest that you also have a place to park unused flows - which may have imported music in them - or ideas that never made it to prime time.

If you do all this kind of work and it doesn’t create a huge additional burden I suggest providing the opportunity to have multiple versions of a piece or pieces (the versions being made from the range of available flows - in one version a flow might have its own formatting and bar renumbering and in another not). The user could choose whether to add double bar lines and end bar lines to the actual flow or only to the version. Or you could make all double bar and end bar lines version only.

In page view or galley view the user could choose whether to be in Version view (where one can view an entire version’s music) or Flow view (viewing just one flow) - in order to make quick viewing of flows - and copying between flows - and duplicating of flows - possible.

You could create a kind of arrange view which at its highest level arranges flows within a version - but when you drill into an individual flow the user then sees beams like a DAW arrange view for all entered music - allowing the user to do standard arrange view tasks like looping a beam - or copying - and grouping of beams so they act as one.

The team HAS acknowledged this from the beginning. That is why they deliberately chose the term “flow” which is free of any preconceived notions about what exactly that means. (As distinct from “movement” or “piece” etc.)

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Because audio export is only Flow-based, that’s how I sometimes end up conceiving of Flows. If it’s a chunk of music that I’d want to export as one audio file, that could be a Flow for me. That’s one reason that using a Flow as a workaround for hiding a cautionary key signature seems so odd to me. Structurally there might not be any musical reason to use a new Flow, but the “official” way to hide a cautionary is to use a new Flow. [yes, this subject has previously been discussed to death]

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Amusing to see this wishlist thread so early after D4 release!

Three things from me:

  • String instrument glissandi playback (pretty please?) And artificial harmoincs playback while we are there!
  • Ability to glue flows together, where it makes sense. E.g. I do long piano works in section flows, but purely just for housekeeping and other reasons, not musical reasons, and I always want to just butt joint them together, to use a woodworking term, when done.
  • Parenthesize articulations.
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Was in my most wanted for 4 list, now graduates to most wanted for 5. (Or six, or ??? someday!)

In score creation, an Option to treat Horns as a separate section: not part of brass, but between Woodwinds and Brass. Bracketed separately. Barlines cut accordingly. Etc. Yes, I know, I can achieve this with a lot of futzing around, but it would be very convenient if it could be semi-automatic. There are MANY, MANY nineteenth and early 20th century published scores that do this, so there is precedent, if that’s what’s needed.

(Glad to see the solo instrument for concertos problem fixed in 4. That was my other wish.)

In Setup mode, select the Horns and click the Add Group button.

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Yes, I do something similar with Bidule. It all works if I make sure to run this BEFORE anything Steinberg.

If I do an implementation that a user forgets and runs something Steinberg first, every MIDI device gets grabbed.

It’s mainly a problem for gear that doesn’t do custom USB>MIDI drivers, but instead use some ancient bog standard Microsoft Windows driver. AKAI MIDI controllers are a good example. Once a app grabs them they go into exclusive mode.

So yes, there are work arounds…but I’d like something more bullet proof. For most users it might never be a problem. They plug something like a key-board or wind jammer into a laptop, boot it up. It’s all they need. Try to implement Dorico into a custom Organ console with 5 keyboards, two pedal boards, continuious controllers, and banks and banks of switches or something though…and it can become a problem.

I’m reluctant to bundle and sell a custom system (I.E. A fancy custom Organ console for a church with something like Dorico built in) with issues like this. Too easy for an end user who typically just walks in, flips a switch, sits down to play can accidentally screw up and have no clue how to fix it. It’d also add the need for another $100+ of software. If the contractee can get a similar console that uses a Plogue Engine (which doesn’t touch hardware unless specifically asked to do so) for half a grand+ less (One of the problems with Dorico getting so good, is the others are forced to keep up, or drop their prices)…not knowing or caring about the many advantages of Dorico over say, Sibelius or Finale…well, a good 80% of bureaucratic committees being what they are…guess what they’re going to order?

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+1 for the glissando playback. Artificial harmonic playback is there already and has been for quite a while. With the note selected you define the harmonic (natural/artificial and plenty more options) in its properties menu. It does not work if you just input a two note “chord” and make the top one a diamond.