And while I’m here :
+1
I’m quite disappointed, that choral condensing still hasn’t been adressed.
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A year and a half ago I reported some suggestions (repeated at the end of this post) believing they were important for everyone, but evidently I was wrong because in the updates of Dorico 4 and Dorico 5 there is no trace! Yet I was told that they were on the radar! By the way (but I’m not a programmer) they didn’t seem so complicated to implement.
In Dorico 5, when I saw the possibility of editing a new instrument, I was sure to find at the bottom of the page the possibility of combining it with the favorite sound for which we all spend a lot of time programming with the Expression map; what a disappointment not to see it!! That is, I can save the EndPointConfigs, but I can’t recall them when I need them? what does it mean? Is it really only useful for me? Is it really any more useless than needlessly inserting Groove Agent into Dorico??
I will upgrade to Dorico 5 anyway because I know how hard you work! But I have the feeling (and I hope I’m wrong) that we are looking more at the market than at the real needs of composer-musicians. I don’t know who the interlocutors you are dealing with are, in any case tell them that the music must be created and not copied from the patterns taken from Groove Agent.
Thanks anyway for the work you produce!
(Requests from a year and a half ago that are probably only of interest to me!):
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It would be very useful if you could import every single EndPointConfig instance previously saved for each instrument, rather than just the VST, directly into the Playback page without having to go through the Playback Template.
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It would be very useful, when loading the Playback Template, to recognize the double instruments: for example, if I have two Alto Saxes, two Tenors, two Violins I, it recognizes only the first instruments, despite having saved, inside of the Playback Templete the double instruments.
Point 2 would be less of a problem if point 1 could be done! Instead, you have to reprogram the double tools all over again, even though you have already saved them as EndPointConfig. (I have is there any function that I don’t know yet ??). -
It would be useful to be able to create personal menus, in the execution techniques, in addition to the default ones (Common, Wind, Brass, etc.)
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It would be useful to also be able to establish the position of the glyphs with respect to the notehead, when creating a new playing technique.
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I have to go out for the evening now to direct my choir (one of the fun things about releasing on a Wednesday is that I get an enforced break for a few hours while I travel to, direct, and return from my rehearsal), and I’m sure there will be many more posts from disappointed people added to the end of this thread by the time I get back in several hours.
Naturally we anticipate that people will be disappointed when items from their own wish lists are not addressed in a major release. I wrote about this specifically in the blog post I wrote today (but it was right at the end, so I understand why you not have made it that far):
You should know by now that a major release like Dorico 5.0 is only the beginning of the story. Looking back at the release of Dorico 4.0 in January 2022, it was followed by no fewer than 10 releases over the following 15 months, each of which added useful new functionality along with other improvements. You can expect future Dorico 5.x releases to follow. For starters, we expect the instrument editor to evolve, and we are working on further ideas to improve the expressiveness of playback, and we have something exciting up our sleeves for the second half of this year.
We hope that you will find lots of valuable and enjoyable new features in this update. We have worked very hard over the past several months to build these features for you, and almost all of them have been implemented in response to requests from our users. We know that for every request we have met in this release, many more are going unmet – but rest assured that they are not ignored. If your own specific wishes have not been addressed in Dorico 5.0, we hope that you will nevertheless find many of the improvements that we have delivered to be useful, even if at first glance you think they aren’t for you.
If you’re not sure whether Dorico 5 offers enough of what you’re looking for in this current release, please feel free to wait and see what the coming updates bring. A trial version will be available in a few weeks to allow you to try out all of the features of Dorico Pro for yourself, and in the meantime you can always try out Dorico SE to get something of a flavour of the new features. There’s no obligation to buy the update today, though to those of you that do, you have our gratitude. And please continue to spread the good word about Dorico to everybody you know – word of mouth recommendation is the most powerful tool we have for reaching new Dorico users.
The features that we’ve added in Dorico 5 were almost without exception highly requested by users. But of course there are thousands of other feature requests that are also highly requested that we weren’t able to address in this release. The factors that go into determining what we can work on in any particular version are many and varied, but they include things like the fact that we have a fixed number of developers, there are only so many hours in the day, some developers are more naturally suited to work on certain parts of the application than others (either due to interest, expertise, or having worked on that part of the software before), some developers are unavailable for some or all of the time due to the demands of other projects, there are time constraints on when we need to release in order to meet business objectives, there are broader strategic concerns for the direction of the product line, and so on, and so on.
You can be certain that there will be further updates this year, and that in those updates, items from many users’ wish lists will be addressed. You can be equally certain that many others will find items remain on their wish lists. Such is the way of things.
If you don’t feel that Dorico 5.0 delivers $100 worth of value at first glance, don’t buy it yet. Wait and see whether you feel differently once you’re able to try it all out for yourself when the trial arrives. Or wait for future updates and see what they bring.
Please rest assured that we are listening to all our users, and doing our best to chart a course between the almost infinite range of competing demands that you all have.
Now you can all go back to expressing how disappointed you are, and I’ll catch up in a few hours. Tschüss!
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Before others start complaining, I just want to say thank you for all you and the rest of the Development Team have done and continue to do to bring us this amazing software.
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exactly, playback in Dorico is getting much closer to ‘as good as it should be’ IMHO
Besides which a lot of composers don’t/can’t read music (cough much of Hollywood cough), they like their DAW’s and mixing is what they do best
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lol … a complaint is just an expression of endearment in another form (Honey, I love you but I wish you’d just …)
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Firstly, congrats to the team on Dorico 5. I know a lot of work went into this, even if most of the new features don’t fill primary needs for me. Of my “wish list”, I only got the adjustable alignment of chords on systems with some slash chords. Otherwise, my wish list is the same. I’m going to share it here, in hopes that when Daniel and team collate requests from this thread, they’ll add these too. I did buy the update anyway, to show support and appreciation for the team’s hard work. They are always ready to answer questions, which is amazing, especially in this day of increasingly automated and delayed technical support. Thanks team Dorico!
Of the ones already listed in this thread, I’d love the following:
-Ties into second endings (and parenthesized ties into the 1st bar of a repeated section).
-Ability to add customized chord symbols into the library for use in other projects. In my case, the addition of a “sus4-3” suffix to the library would mitigate this.
-Stop receiving input from MIDI keyboard when Dorico is in the background. I frequently need ti switch back and forth between audio I’m transcribing and Dorico and I’d like to be able to work out a phrase on my MIDI keyboard w/o it going into Dorico. (And no, I don’t want to switch to “pitch first” input).
- Alternate chord symbols for lead sheets. I’d like to be able to follow the approach in books like The New Jazz Real Book with a line of alternate changes enclosed in parentheses (the whole line, not each individual chord).
Additionally, I’d like to see the following improvements or additions.
- I spend a fair amount of time moving rehearsal letters, segno, and coda signs around. It would be great if the Coda would just appear in proper position (see page 239 in Gould) and if there was a way to avoid the weird vertical spacing that happens when a segno and rehearsal mark and possibly text are assigned to the same barline. A way to turn off the automatic vertical spacing adjustments that happen then would be great. The algorithm appears to take text into account in moving rehearsal letters up vertically, even when the “align with system start” is turned on and the text is now completely out of the way of the rehearsal mark.
-Hyphens. This one comes up fairly often for me. I’d like to see hyphens allowed on the last word of a song (as when there’s a D.S. or D.C.). I’m currently faking these with system text, but it’s not ideal and leads to issues when I transpose the chart or adjust layout etc. (I know about alt-hyphen, but that one is too long, it should be the same size as all the other lyrics hyphens.) I’d also like better handling of hyphens at end of 1st endings; instead of extending into 2nd ending. I’d like the option of turning off these extended hyphens locally. Also, I’m still occasionally having the hyphens at the end/beginning of a system clashing with the lyric for no seeming reason.
-Rulers. The crosshairs are a nice start, but I’d like something that lets me place things consistently the same distance from the staff for consistency across multiple charts/Dorico files in a given project.
-I’d also love if chord symbol entry would recognize upper/lower case distinctions so that the same shorthand for key signatures where lower case = minor worked for chord symbols. (e,g. type lower case a for an Am).
-I’d also love it if we could lose the redundant button and check box to “align with system start” when engraving text. Either one of those alone should suffice. I understand “why” Dorico wants me to do this, but it seems to me that it is an unnecessary extra step, at least in my usage.
-On “bordered” text, the crosshairs measure from the letters, not the border, when you manually move it. I’d think the crosshair alignment should be with the edge of the item.
-Feature request: Can we get a list of popover commands for each mode by right-clicking on the icons on the right-hand side?
-Hebrew punctuation still doesn’t display properly in Print mode, although it does in Write and Engrave modes and also prints correctly. In print mode parenthesis and other punctuation is reversed/misplaced.
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I’d love for frequently used fonts to pop up in font selector at top of list ala the way they do in programs like Apple Pages. Also, I’d like to be able to find and replace to switch fonts on some things only, like commas only in Adobe Hebrew.
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I’d like lyrics to move with the note when I adjust a note’s length.
-I’d like to be able to bold the text in lines, useful for marking rhythm section breaks in lead sheets, for example.
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delighted that in due course this will be added. In fact I upgraded Cubase from Elements to Artist partly because the MIDI logical editor was present and in rare cases can be helpful in sorting out nonsense especially in imported files
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In any case, I am one of those who would like to thank you very much for the sophisticated and successful integration of midi pattern (e.g. Groove Agent) This alone is worth the cost to me.
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Use the “edit single lyric” option. Add as many hyphens as your heart can handle. Easy.
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uh… we still can’t have grace notes both before and after the same barline …
and xml imported (from Finale) triplet 8ths - with two 16ths in the middle - still convert erroneously… which doesn’t happen in any other notation app I know of… go figure…
I can sympathize with those who feel notation issues have taken a back seat to DAW-like features, but if the Dorico team had only catered for the notation elite, they probably would have been out of business by now.
For me, being a jack of all trades, D5 is a major achievement, and almost every new feature and improvement will make my life a lot easier and more enjoyable. THANK YOU!!
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Criticisms that become complaints, and observations that become disappointments are not, I think, a good sign.
I find it fair that you don’t follow through on all requests, I think your customers are smarter than that thinking.
Rather, I believe that you should be interested in the fact that each of your customers can offer you feedback to understand which aspects Dorico is still lacking “for most of them” and then summarize the main aspects.
Speaking of which, I’d be curious to know how many of your customers have asked you to implement Groove Agent, just out of curiosity. Personally I find that it is certainly one more possibility for a notation program, but after a myriad of other much more essential things that are still missing (that’s why I was talking about the market!).
In any case, your customers, including myself, support you with every new release because they know how much work is behind it! Let them express themselves, and listen to them, don’t get defensive because nobody is attacking you (after all, everyone makes mistakes, you could do it too sometimes… or not?)! Let them hope that the team isn’t going the wrong way…it’s their dream!
Still good work!
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Don’t even need to do that. Just use non-breaking spaces and non-breaking hyphens.
I am one of those who were a little disappointed by the developments on the notational part.
However, I purchased the upgrade without hesitation, and without any regrets!
I see now that the possibility of LUA scripts is made explicit.
An important function that is missing, in my opinion, is the lack to restate accidentals for tied notes at the start of a new system/page. Such verification work takes time and is prone to errors, especially for large-scale scores.
I only have really basic programming knowledge so perhaps someone more experienced can give me an answer. Would such an event be manageable by a LUA script?
Since you are asking about key editor stuff, I think the lowest hanging fruit is how in Cubase you can have multiple windows open. I usually have my key editor open on a second monitor and it’s big enough that it’s much faster to work in than Doricos editor.
They are two different programs, but I really wish the dorico and Cubase team could work together to integrate all of the mixer capabilities that already exist in Cubase and all of the midi editing capabilities (MLE, and PLE). Either that or a way of linking the two programs, but at this point it seems like dorico is far down the path of doing its own thing so that seems less and less likely.
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Go figure… I’ve never heard of non-breaking hyphens. I use the NB space so much I have re-configured my left space bar to do that automatically, so that’s a thoughtless maneuver for me. But in all this time I’ve never come across NB hyphens.
You do know you can have multiple windows open in Dorico?
B.
I’m pretty far in the notation camp, but I bought the upgrade immediately, if for no other reason than to support the Dorico team’s ongoing mission, because I think what this small team is doing is the best thing that’s happening anywhere in the world of music notation software, and I want to see all that they can achieve.
I understand there is a broad range of Dorico users with different needs and wants, and many of them use the software very differently from me. And I understand the importance of continuing to broaden the user base. So I’m not complaining, but I will say, just so you know I’m here, that I’m one of those who do hope to see more notation-focused updates as D5 development continues.
Thanks for all your hard work, and I hope by the time you read this, you’ve had a great rehearsal.
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I’m talking about the key editor itself. Even if the Play window is open on it’s own window, the key editor is still just a portion of that. In cubase, you can explode the key editor out on it’s own.