Dorico Impressions

Dorico
1

Hi,

After trying Dorico for the last 2 weeks, I think I’ve gotten a good idea of what it can/can’t do
and where the program is headed with future updates. I’ve been a professional Sibelius user for the last 10 years and heading into Dorico with that mindset, I quickly learned that would not be the best approach.

To learn Dorico I chose to re-create Rachmaninoff’s Etude Tableau Op.39, No. 5, a piece which I knew would require much more than what I would normally need on my usual engraving/copying jobs. It’s safe to say that Dorico handled it very well. The default input looks great, and Dorico had the options to tweak pretty much every little detail. It’s clear that there’s been a lot of though put into this program.

Below is an attachment of my results. I was able to get it extremely close to the book’s version (International Music Company), with only very small details that I couldn’t achieve (or didn’t know how). Example on the last page, third system, there was collision between the voices which I couldn’t fix with the “Voice Column Index” in Engraving Mode. Maybe the fix was to change the stem direction but I wanted to try to recreate exactly what was in my book.

I’m very impressed with Dorico, and look forward to it’s development to be a fully featured scoring program.

Features I’d like to see:

  • Add a Flip Stem option in addition to Force Stem Up/Down. It would mean one keyboard shortcut instead of two.
  • Editing of ties/slurs. When editing the placement of a slur, I have to move square by square, no way yet of selecting two or more of those square to make broader edits. (not a big deal, but would be nice)
  • Be able to see hidden rests/time-signatures (like hidden signposts). Once I removed or hid a rest, it was difficult to get them back into the system. I found no way of resetting the view of time-signatures once hidden.
  • After a two meter changes in a row, the remaining measures will be split in half, resulting in a struggle with the program to get the full measure back together. (maybe there’s already an easy way to do this).
  • Clearer distinction between writing in voices. Should be partially fixed once we have a switch voices option.
  • Copy voices to another measure, without conflicting with what’s there already.


    Keep up the amazing work!

Best,

Juan
Etude-Tableau No5_Full score.zip (229 KB)

2

Looks very nice!

3

We don’t plan to add a “flip stem” command in the near future. If you want to move an entire slur or tie, you can select its main body (so that none of the handles are selected) and then move the whole line up or down using Alt+up/down arrow; we do not plan to make it possible to select more than one handle of the same slur or tie at once (though if you have handles showing for unselected items in Engrave mode, you can select the same handle on multiple slurs or ties to edit them at the same time). If you hide a time signature using the ‘Hide time signature’ property, it will show a signpost: you have presumably switched off View > Signposts > Time Signatures if you are not seeing them.