"Focus on staves" and som other minor issues...

Dorico
1

I’ll start off to say that I’m so happy working with Dorico! After this last job, an orchestration of Beethovens triple concerto for a wind orchestra, I’m almost as fast as I am with Sibelius. Both score and parts looks just awesome! For this project I also bought Noteperformer, and WOOW, just out of the box without any tweaking it sounds better than anything has done on my computer before!

But…

there are a couple of things I must point out that are a bit painful.

In Sibelius, “Focus on staves” is really useful when working on large scores. In this project I created a couple of new layouts for that purpose and it worked out really well. Well, until I realized that all my tweaking in the properties panel just affected that actual score layout. For some reason Beethoven uses cresc./dim both as text and hairpins. (At least in the edition of the piece I’ve ben working with…) So when everything was done I realized that all the dynamics had the wrong layout in the main score and all the hours I had spent with the dynamics were wasted. (Sorry for repeating myself from another post…)

Same thing with the piano part, where most of the tuplets are hidden in the edition I’ve worked with. I must say, my piano part looked really good after all tweaking. But when I turned over to the main score none of my settings were there. :frowning:

For the future I REALLY would like to see an option to set whether the properties settings should affect only the actual layout or all. When it comes to such settings as how the dynamics looks, I can’t see any reason why they should look different in the parts and the score.
But I must give you kudos for the great flexibility in the layout of crescendos and diminuendos. That’s really awesome!!


Cross staff notation doesn’t feel like it’s properly finished yet. The stems should flip automatically in the adjacent staff when moving music to it. When forgetting to flip the stems before hitting “M” or “N” it ends up in a total mess.

Navigation bugs
When moving around with the arrow keys in Write mode it sometimes jumps way off. Sometimes a couple of player up in the score and sometimes a couple of pages away.
When zooming without anything selected the score sometimes jumps away like 10-20 pages. (but with a selection made in the score the selection is centered on the screen when zooming)
By some strange reason the score also jumps away when closing the Properties panel.
This is really strange. (Same issue on both my Mac and PC)

For easier navigation it would be great with floating on screen bar numbers, so there always are visible bar numbers (e.g. on the top staff)


Time signature bug?
Tonight when I was editing the parts I found a strange looking time signature as you can see in the attachment. I tried replacing it with a new one with no effect.
TimeSignature_Part.png

TimeSignature_Score.png
TimeSignature_Score.png296×506 13.9 KB

Slurs on tied notes
Are there any plans to make this sure possible to add directly in Write mode without having to drag it in Engrave?
Slur.png
To end up this post I must say that working with Dorico is working with a smile on my face all day long. It’s so fun and inspiring when it looks so good, with great note spacing and tons of really smart solutions! Looking forward to the next update!

Best wishes
/ Mats

2

I’m very glad to hear you’re enjoying using Dorico.

The issue you describe with setting properties in one layout not affecting other layouts has been well-rehearsed here on the forum, and we certainly know that the cost of the flexibility that Dorico provides is that you end up making the same edit more than once. In the longer term we have plans to address this by providing a means for you to specify in advance what the scope of the property edits you make should be. In the short term, the forthcoming update will provide a new command (to which you can assign a shortcut) that will propagate the properties for one or more selected items from the layout you’re currently working on to all other layouts in which that item appears. It’s sort of a sticking plaster rather than the ideal solution, but I think it will be useful all the same.

We are aware that people don’t like the behaviour of navigating around the score with the arrow keys in Write mode, and we expect to spend some time on this in the future, though not imminently.

The issue you’re experiencing with time signatures is, I think, caused by having the caesuras attached in the wrong place. Delete them, select the rest or note at the start of the bar following the barline before which you want the caesura to appear, and create the caesura again with that note or rest selected. That should take care of it. This is caused by an underlying bug that is fixed in the forthcoming update but deleting and recreating the caesura as described should solve the problem for you in the meantime.

To choose whether a slur starts on the start or end of a tied note, see the options in the Tied Notes section of the Slurs page of Engraving Options. There are corresponding properties in the Slurs group in the Properties panel to allow per-slur overrides.

I need more information about the problem you report with crossing notes between staves. We don’t consider Dorico’s implementation of this area to be incomplete at all. Please provide a minimal example that reproduces the problem you’re experiencing. (To produce a minimal example, make a copy of your project, delete all other players and flows except that required to reproduce the issue, trim the bars before and after the affected passage, then do Play > Playback Template and reapply the default template, which will make the file smaller, then zip up and attach that minimal project here.)

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Daniel,
Thanks for quick and detailed response.

Looking forward to the updated Properties functions!

Navigation
I love the navigation with the arrow keys, it’s just that it acts pretty randomly sometimes. Here are two examples of what happens when zooming in the original score with nothing selected.

Flow 1
zoom level 150%. bar 1-6 visible
When hitting “Z”, zooming to 200%, the score jumps to bar 29.

Flow 2
Zoom level 150%, bar 1-7 visible
When hitting “Z”, zooming to 200%, the score jumps to bar 198 in Flow 3.


Cross staff (see attachment)
Bar 1: The original music
Bar 3: Hitting “N” in the upper staff
Bar 5: Manually flipping the left hand notes. The left hand rests are misplaced here
Bar 7: This is how it should look.
CrossStaff.dorico.zip (423 KB)
Slurs on tied notes
In some cases I want the slur from the end of a tied note, but not in all cases. I can’t find out how to achieve both.

4

I think you may have missed a part of Daniel’s reply

5

To change individual slur tie-chain position, select the slur and open the properties panel (cmd-8 on mac, ctrl-8 on windows or clicking the up arrow on the bottom of the window) and you will see the two properties that control the behaviour: “Start pos. in tie chain” and “End pos. in tie chain”.

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Oups, I’m sorry, how could I miss that? I looked in the Property but missed the change start position option. Thanks for enlighten me, and once again sorry for missing that excellent option! :+1::+1:

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The time signature behavior was caused by not pasting in the rests where the caesura should be placed in between. Now it look great again! :slight_smile:

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For erratic zooming, make sure you select something real (basically anything except a rest) before you change zoom.

Dorico is otherwise incapable of working out what you’re trying to zoom in or out of, and (as you’ve experienced) often gives up and takes you to a completely different bit of your project!

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Pianoleo, yes, that’s my experience too. (especially when the score jumps a way a couple of hundred bars… :nerd: )

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You need to use a down-stem voice on the left-hand piano staff to start with for this passage.

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Yes Daniel. I have found myself several times in that situation and would have loved that Dorico changed the direction of the beams automatically — I suppose we are spoiled by the AI we have in that software…

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I don’t know how you would expect Dorico to know to do that. It’s an up-stem voice, and when you have multiple voices on the same staff, each voice uses the stem direction it is imbued with. Ergo you have to use a down-stem voice if you want Dorico to put the stems down in that situation, or flip them yourself. There’s nothing more Dorico can do automatically in that situation than it already does.

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I know, Daniel, and it’s as easy as selecting the notes and change to downstem voice (or flip stems). But don’t be surprised if this topic comes back now and then : you’ve spoiled us ^^

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Oki, Daniel, I understand now. Thanks!
I guess I’m used to the way Sibelius handles cross staff notation, where music still “belongs” to the other staff and still is edited in that one, and that the stems flips automatically.
This way it’ll be a couple of more steps, but I guess I’ll get used to that too. Even though I’d prefer that the music I move to the other staff would still “belong” to the other.
I tried to do it this way and now it looks great as everything else. Thanks Daniel and Marc!

Daniel, the random “jumps” when navigating with the arrow keys, is that som kind of bug? (e.g. pointer moving a couple of players up in the score when navigating with the arrow keys instead of moving to the next note)

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It’s not a bug as such, but it’s a consequence of the way that arrow key navigation works, which is based on trying to find the next item in the same direction using a graphical approach, and it sometimes gives unexpected results. It works beautifully in Engrave mode, but the same approach isn’t so good in Write mode, and at some point I expect we will make some changes in this area.

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Oki, I understand, thanks for quick reply!

Back to Beethoven…! :ugeek: