Feedback after two weeks of work (wishlist, bugs...)

Dorico
1

Hi!
Now I’ve finally worked with Dorico for two weeks on a couple of arrangements where I didn’t have any needs for chords, 1st and 2nd endings and all the other stuff that’s not implemented yet. The more I get used to it the more I like it and now it feels a bit sad going back to Sibelius again, waiting for the features I need for my work. I’m now almost as fast with note input as in Sibelius. Over all this feels very promising and I really like working with Dorico!

Even though I like it very much there are things that bother me a bit, so here is a long list with questions, feature wishes and also some potential bugs. I’m sorry if some of these things already are discussed here on the forum.

Setup Mode
• Setting up a Custom score order, like in this vocal score, doesn’t affect the score at all. Bug?

ScoreOrder.png
ScoreOrder.png698×522 36.5 KB

Write Mode
• How to achieve this with tempo text?
MetronomeMark.png
• How to setup how many times a repeat should be played?

Engrave Mode
• Working with the layout is a bit of a pain since it’s a pretty mouse heavy work. If the selection method in Engrave mode would work the same way as in Write mode things would be much easier. (e.g. Clicking an empty spot in the bar selects the whole bar, extend a selection with shift/cmd etc.)

• I’d love to see an option to define a basic format of the parts, like 4 bars/row. This is a timesaver when it comes to laying out parts for the rhythm section in a jazz group.

• The Copy part layout in Sibelius saves a lot of time, working with parts with similar content. (e.g. vln 1 & 2)

• The Sibelius feature ”Unlock format” is very good when I need to start all over with the layout of a part or score.

Signposts
• I’d like an option to toggle all the signposts on/off (i.e. the ones selected to be shown in the view-menu) The best way, in my opinion, would be to setup which signposts to show and then simply disable/activate that setting.

• When they appear at the same position as a text object, the text object is hidden behind the signpost. This is not very practical…

Note input
• The program is much quicker now than the initial release, but there is a big latency when inputting notes with a midi keyboard.

• I can’t find out how to split and reorganize beams manually, is it possible yet? (beams across barlines etc.)

• I guess this picture speaks for itself.
ShortLong.png
• Is it possible to change voice of an existing note?

Flows
• When working with a document containing more than one flow the navigation is a bit tricky. It’d be great if ”Home” would be at the start of the actual Flow I’m working with and not the beginning of the whole document. So when I’m working with one Flow I’d like, in some way, to see them as separate documents within the same document, if you understand what I mean. So that I’m always navigating within the actual Flow. Maybe an option like ”Go to flow” or something, would be great.

To be continued…

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Play Mode
• The play function is over all a bit unstable, a lot of weird things happens. Sometimes there is no sound at all and suddenly it just works. One strange thing is that Dorico, sort of adds extra instances on the same instrument. Look at this pic, where there are 7 (!!) instances on the soprano part. Is this a consequence of that the Aria player is not officially whitelisted?

Instances.png
Instances.png254×707 22.9 KB

• In an earlier thread (Sends & reverb in Play-mode - Dorico - Steinberg Forums) I mentioned that the reverb sends doesn’t work when using other sounds than Halion. Now I found out that using the built in effects in the Aria player works like a charm. One thing to keep in mind then is that when setting up a reverb, Aria sends the reverb signal back to ch. 1 in the Dorico mixer. If you leave ch.1 empty in both in the channel setup in Dorico and in the Aria player, ch. 1 in the Dorico mixer then will work as effect return channel, which is very handy.
EffectReturn.png
EffectReturn.png558×751 107 KB

Print
• An option to select which flow to print.

• When hitting Print it’d be nice to have some kind of feedback from the button. Just a little wink or something so that you know that the program registered my command.


To sum up everything, I must say I really like Dorico and the team has done a tremendous job in creating this software.

Best wishes
/ Mats

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…and two more things:

  1. When working with my Expression maps I’m wondering how to make Dorico change a choir sound from “Ooh” to “Aah”?
    Technically I guess it must be done as a playing technique but since it’s already notated in the lyrics I don’t want it also to appear above the staff as a playing technique.
    When editing the tempo text, it’s possible to hide both the metronome mark and text items, wouldn’t this be a great feature even for the playing techniques?
    This would be useful for changing other sounds that’s more aiming for creating a nicely sounding demo rather than indicating an actual playing technique.

  2. When editing a metronome mark there’s an option called “Tempo (bpm)”. The use of “bpm” is a bit abstract since it doesn’t say anything about which note value actually represents the pulse. Maybe it would be a good idea to have an option to also specify which note value that represents the pulse.

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  1. You can’t currently hide only some bar rests except using the trick to set the colour of them to completely translucent.

  2. Yes, the custom player order feature in Layout Options is not implemented in the current version, but this has been implemented in the forthcoming 1.0.30 update.

  3. You can’t currently add arbitrary text to a tempo marking following the metronome mark, so you’ll need to add this as Shift+X text for now.

  4. There’s no support for repeat playback at present, so there it at present no way to specify how many times something should be repeated.

  5. There aren’t very many operations in Engrave mode that would benefit from being able to make quick selections of bars. In general the operations in Engrave mode are designed to work on small selections, very often only single items. Even the formatting operations like making into systems/frames can be done selecting only the first and last items that describe the range of the operation – you don’t need to select everything inbetween.

  6. We plan to add features to specify the number of bars per system and systems per page in due course.

  7. We also plan to add features to copy formatting from one layout to another in due course.

  8. We may be able to add a feature to remove all breaks in a selection relatively easily. I will add this to our feature backlog.

  9. MIDI latency during note input is something we hope to improve soon – possibly not in the forthcoming 1.0.30 update, but if not, then in the following one.

  10. Use the Edit > Beaming submenu to edit beaming.

  11. Your ShortLong.png picture suggests that perhaps you’re in 2/2 rather than 4/4? The option you show in Notation Options applies to time signatures with four (or multiples of four beats) and a half-bar, like 4/4, but not 2/2. You may want to use Force Durations for this situation.

  12. You cannot currently change the voice of an existing note, but this is of course something we plan to implement soon.

  13. Is it possible that your Soprano instrument has seven voices?

  14. If you want to print only one flow, create a new layout containing only the flows you want to print.

  15. I don’t know how to change between “Ooh” and “Aah” in the HALion choir patches; there are two layers in the patch, but I’m not sure how to switch between them. When I get back to London next week I will try to find out (if I remember).

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Thanks Daniel for your answer!

Some comments:

  1. There aren’t very many operations in Engrave mode that would benefit from being able to make quick selections of bars. In general the operations in Engrave mode are designed to work on small selections, very often only single items. Even the formatting operations like making into systems/frames can be done selecting only the first and last items that describe the range of the operation – you don’t need to select everything inbetween.

Making into system would be much easier if selecting whole bars were possible. 5 times out of 10 I selected something that resulted in half bars. This feature is really powerful but in the absolute majority of the cases I’d like to select whole bars. Selecting a barline requires much greater precision in the selection than just finding an empty spot in a bar, which slows down the workflow. (for my own part I’ve never fitted less than whole bars into a system, but that’s just me… ; )

  1. Your ShortLong.png picture suggests that perhaps you’re in 2/2 rather than 4/4? The option you show in Notation Options applies to time signatures with four (or multiples of four beats) and a half-bar, like 4/4, but not 2/2. You may want to use Force Durations for this situation.

This score is actually in 4/4.

  1. Is it possible that your Soprano instrument has seven voices?

This is very strange and I don’t understand what this is. The midi information is only in the topmost of the 7 so I don’t know where the others comes from. The thing is that they’re note present at start but “grows” during the work with the arrangement.

  1. I don’t know how to change between “Ooh” and “Aah” in the HALion choir patches; there are two layers in the patch, but I’m not sure how to switch between them. When I get back to London next week I will try to find out (if I remember).

Ah, I’m sorry if I was a bit unclear here. I’m working with GPO 5. Changing the vocals from “Oh” to “Ah” isn’t the main issue, just an example. What I’d like to know is how, if it’s possible, to change a sound without having it printed in the score (i.e. with hidden text or so).

Cheers! :slight_smile:

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I would need to see your project in order to be able to tell you why you’re not getting the expected result with regard to showing a half note halfway through a bar of 4/4. I would probably also be able to tell you why you’re seeing so many soprano voice entries in Play mode. Zip up your project and attach it here, or email it to me, if you want me to take a look at these issues.

At the moment, the only way to change a sound would be using a playing technique, and at the moment, playing techniques cannot be hidden, though I expect this will change at some point in the future.

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I have managed to implement most of the playback features in a vocal score, but one irritating one is the seeming inability of the moving green line to continue on to succeeding systems. One has to move the page to follow the music. Is this something that is known about, or am I missing something? Another thing I have noticed is that when entering a ‘rit’ the music does indeed slow down, but does not revert to the original tempo afterwards, even if I re-enter the original metronome mark. Any ideas anyone?

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This is a known situation and is due for correction in a future update.

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Is it ok to add wishlist items of my own? I likewise enjoy working with Doric much better than either Final or Sibelius…

  1. IS there a plan to allow horizontal lines (i.e. arrows, dotted lines, dots for rits, etc?)
  2. Is there a way to have slurs that don’t attach? (for l.v. notes, for example?)
    Also, while working in a “single measure” mode (thank you for that!) secondary voices kept moving to different places in the measure if I edited the top voice, even though they were individually “beginning” and “ending” a voice. FYI


    Thanks!
    Matan
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You can’t create arbitrary lines or arrows yet in Dorico, but things like dotted lines for rit. markings are already included, and can be accessed by changing the properties of a selected rit.

There’s no way of producing laissez vibrer ties at the moment, except perhaps using a Shift+X text item containing a lyric elision slur, which you can copy and paste from here, setting the font to Bravura Text.

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I would probably also be able to tell you why you’re seeing so many soprano voice entries in Play mode.

Haha, Daniel, I think I know what I did.
When adding an extra voice to one player I use Shift-V. But when the extra voice is added I should just cycle these two voices with V. What I did was to add a new voice with Shift-V everytime the soprano was divided into two, with the result that I now have about 14 (!!) different voices in the soprano… :slight_smile:

When it comes to the “Short-long”-issue (Steinberg Forums) I can’t for some reason reproduce it now.

The only remaining ting/request (for now…) I’m thinking of is my question about the Signposts. I’d really love to have the possibility to disable/show them in one go. Selecting/de-selcecting them now is a bit frustrating since I have to reopen the view-menu for each and every signpost I’d like to change the behavior for.

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Thanks for your request concerning hiding and showing signposts in one go. I’ll certainly consider it.

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To pile on this wishlist: I’m finding Dorico very helpful so far with my workflow, and spend a fair amount of time with it every day (composing an opera with well over a hundred flows over five or six different projects). While of course I would like the alternate endings and the guitar chords that everyone else would, what is of more immediate interest to me would be

  1. the capacity to merge/arrange the material from different staves onto a target staff or group of staves and
  2. the ability to copy/append flows from different projects to a new one, or to append projects (I know there has been some vague discussion about this latter, with suggested workarounds, which I do practice).j
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Both of the things you ask for, John, are of course on our roadmap. Being able to import and export flows, add them to existing projects, create new flows by importing MusicXML etc., will hopefully be part of the same update in which chord symbols will appear. That’s the plan, but of course it’s subject to change until that update is actually released.

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Thanks, Daniel, reassuring if not surprising. On the immediate plus side, the flexibility of editing and adjusting existing music has never been so flexible or intuitive for me.

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Ah, two more things:

  1. I find it quite helpful to be able to see the tempo/metronome mark in the transport bar, will that be possible in the future?
  2. Do you have any idea of when that little on/off-button in the top right corner will be activated. It would be so helpful to be able to switch between project without having to load all the samples.
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  1. Yes, probably.

  2. No, unfortunately there’s no timescale for this at the moment, though of course it is planned.