Today I had some time to look at Dorico more seriously. There are really some great things and there are some things that feel strange in the beginning. Here’s a little test (see attachment).
The same 4 bars notated twice. In the first 4 bars I notated one voice in every stave. Everything fine and spacing way better than Sibelius. I couldn’t flip the tie in the third bar of the first system and also the stem of the dotted quarter note bar 4 didn’t want to go up. Don’t know why.
In the second system the same music, now with two voices in the upper stave. The dotted quarter note is ok now. The tie still isn’t flipable. In the lower stave the cross-stave notes resulted in a whole rest, high on a leger-line. You still see these strange leger-lines, (I set the opacity of the rests to 0%).
Notating it this way, it wasn’t possible to enter a two-bar hairpin below the lower stave. I also didn’t find a way to flip the two accents in the last bar.
In both systems the mf is touching a beam.
D.
D.
test.tiff (88.9 KB)
Douwe, please attach graphics in PNG or JPG format: only some web browsers can view TIFF files directly (and my chosen one, Google Chrome, cannot, for example). Whatever program you’re using to take screenshots can almost certainly save in another format: I would recommend PNG over JPG.
In general, it’s much easier to diagnose problems such as stems apparently refusing to change direction, of course, if you attach the actual project, rather than just a picture of the project. You can attach Dorico projects here if you first zip them up into an archive before you attach them.
Dorico will space your music better if you switch on the ‘Use optical spacing for beams between staves’ option on the Note Spacing page of Layout Options.
You should be able to change the placement of an articulation by selecting the note to which the articulation belongs, and using the Properties panel.
Dorico cannot perform collision avoidance for dynamics between staves when there are beams also between the staves: you have to adjust the position of those items yourself in Engrave mode.
Hi Daniel, sorry about the tiff. Here’s the dorico file.
Please be aware that my comments about these 4 bars, notated twice, aren’t meant to be negative. They are just observations and some questions.
BTW speaking of first contact. As far as I know all the right sounds are loaded from Halion Se & Symf Orchestra, except fpr piano, it loads the First Contact sound…
regards,
Douwe
test.dorico.zip (169 KB)
Hi Daniel,
Can you please answer my question from some time ago? About the non-flipable ties and the strange leger-lines.
Besides that I still wonder If I did something wrong when installing Dorico. Because I already had Cubase Elements I skip the Halion SE when installing Dorico.
It seems that I have both SE and Symphonic Orchestra now in Dorico and Cubase, However some sounds aren’t loaded in Dorico and i can’t figure why some sound are loaded and others don’t. Violin, Electr. Guitar, even Bagpipes : OK
But piano or mandoline : no sounds loaded.
Is there a difference in the Sonic SE library from Cubase Elements and the one that comes with Dorico??
Douwe
Both of these edits can be made in Engrave mode, but not in Write mode. Select the tie in bar 3 and you can change its direction using the controls in the TIes group in Properties. Select the dotted quarter note in bar 4 and choose Edit > Stem > Force Stem Up.
You can change the direction of the tie in Engrave mode.
There are a couple of bugs that prevent you from changing the staff position of these bar rests such that they’re inside the staff and hence show no ledger lines, which are fixed in the forthcoming 1.0.20 update, but in any case these rests will not appear by default in new projects created in 1.0.20 to begin with, so this will become less of a problem.
It is possible: double-click the staff to show the caret, position it on the lower staff, type Shift+D for the popover, type < into the popover, then hit Return and extend it with Space until it’s the desired length.
Select the note on which the accent appears, open the Properties panel, scroll to the right to the ‘Articulations’ group, and set the Placement property as desired.
Try choosing Play > Load Sounds for Unassigned Instruments. Since it seems you always get First Contact instead of the desired piano sound in any project you create, then it suggests you have a problem with your installation and you should consider reinstalling. You don’t need to skip the installation of sounds even if you think you already have them, as the installer is clever enough to find your existing sounds and it will only write any new sounds to your drives if there are sounds missing.
Hi Daniel, it’s been a while since I had a look at Dorico and this forum. I suppose I’m waiting for things like smart selection and filtering tools, cue-notes and things like that, before diving into it. Besides that I’m not that enthusiastic about the strict separation of Write and Engraving Mode ans some other things. In the given example I don’t get why some stems can be flipped in Write Mode and some cannot, I don’t get why in Engraving Mode the Tie Direction isn’t in that lowest panel (o and btw those blue little buttons you’ve to activate all-the time to edit something, they feel so unnecessary), I don’t get why in the upper system of my example I can select two bars in the left hand to add a hairpin and in the lower system I can’t…
All these things feel buggy, maybe they all have something to do with Dorico being very clever and do all the thinking and preventing making mistakes etc. But in the same time they don’t help making the software intuitive, they making things way more complicated than they should be.
Douwe
The idea with flipping of ties is that it should be possible to flip all of the ties in a given tie chain in a single operation in Write mode, and flip individual ties within the tie chain in Engrave mode. All complex software has bugs, I’m afraid, and Dorico is no exception. Dorico is also maturing and changing quickly, and there are rough edges and things that are not yet fully realised according to our design intentions. It’s possible to use the software to do really high-quality work, but it is the case that you will occasionally have to do battle against the odd bug or rough edge.