Hello Dorico team,
I would like to ask you if it’s possible to add an option which will provide us an instant access to the Piano Roll when working in Galley View.
(With resizable Window - like Lower Zone in Cubase). There could be buttons to switch between Properties Panel and Piano Roll.
For more information about this idea, check the screenshot below!
We don’t have any current plans for this, but you can of course have multiple windows on the same project and show Play mode in one and Write mode in another at the moment. We don’t rule it out for the future.
Daniel hello,
Thank you for the reply!
I’m aware that I can open a separate window in Play Mode. Unfortunately this doesn’t work the best, as there is no way to remove the unneeded
window borders and Menu bars to free up screen space.
Another thing is I, and probably many other people, prefer to have the application Maximized… in order to have two windows opened I have to
make many adjustments - manual resizing of the windows to fit the screen size… This time could be used for something more creative.
I hope you and your team may think about such improvement! I have experience with Overture 5 and this feature is great!
On Windows, at least, there are handy features for arranging multiple windows belonging to the same application, and there are third-party tools you can use for Mac that provide similar functionality; the one I use, for example, is called Moom.
Well, probably for Daniel the only way to understand how beneficial is to have the Piano Roll in Galley View
will be to spend day, or two trying Overture 5. After Overture 5 is hard to live without this feature, especially when
working mostly with real-time recording.
It’s much faster to do note length corrections and quantization in the MIDI mock-up, but without loosing the contact with the notation.
Everything in one single window…
Daniel, my request is exactly in the spirit of Creativity First.
I like Dorico and about this feature I won’t step back until I see it there!
Well, some people here may ask me why I’m not continuing with Overture, since I find it so genius and most intuitive?
Yes, Don Williams is genius when it comes to Creativity First, and he is exactly in the head of the musicians… Overture strictly follows
the Rule of the Good and Intuitive Design - “Everything Should Be Achieved With No More Than 3 Clicks”.
The main reasons why I’m leaving Overture are:
Update release policy. /Vicious cyrcle of bugs and crashes/ I don’t want to feel myself a beta tester all the time…
The personal behavior of Don towards his loyal users.
The Engraving needs serious job. Yes, you could achieve very nice and comfortable for reading scores
but the soft isn’t Publishing ready.
Lack of Team behind the software.
Despite all these problems I’ve mentioned, Overture is the best example what actually “Creativity First” means.
And there are two things that stop Overture of being the top scoring software - the personality of Don and the lack of skilled coding team.
I can say all these things because for the past almost 3 years I, alongside with few others, became one of the major contributors to
Overture, and most of my ideas were fully, or partly implemented into the app.
With all my respect to you, Daniel, and your colleagues, and the hard job you are doing (I really appreciate it!), Dorico potentially can be
simplified a bit without loosing anything… and there are already existing examples which should be used.
That’s one user’s perspective, and I can’t say I disagree with some of the suggestions you’ve been posting. But I think the vast majority of experienced users really DON’T want to see significant changes to Dorico’s UI… Dorico isn’t Overture, any more than it’s Sibelius or Finale, and it shouldn’t try to be.
I think the team strikes a healthy balance between listening to users and considering their requests while not chasing after every demand… and sometimes saying flat-out “no.” I’ve been on the receiving end of this answer a few times myself, and I can respect the team’s approach. Besides, I usually give it time and find my perspective comes around (not always, but often).
We all know Dorico will continue to improve and grow. No program is perfect. But I very much doubt you will see fundamental, large-scale changes to the UI. Thankfully.
As for saying “I won’t step back until this feature is implemented,” that’s a bit rude despite all the smiley faces, and it’s not more likely to get your request implemented.
Something I really like about Dorico is that the developers have an overarching philosophy about how it should work.
I didn’t find it particularly “intuitive” to find my way around at first, but once I grokked certain basic aspects of the workflow I began to find it easy to extrapolate how to do other things. The heuristics built into Dorico flow from its designers’ philosophy, so if I need something that really isn’t within their scope, I either fix it myself with an external utility, or I change my workflow and expectations.
I did want the exact feature you are requesting, Thurisaz, and I created an Autohotkey script to arrange the windows precisely as I wanted.
Guys he’s not asking for changes to the gui. He’s asking for extra functionality. Cubase has workspaces, cubase has the lower zone. Please check out the lower zone.
Steinberg themselves tout this as a revolutionary feature. You are not forced to use it. You hide/show the lower zone with a click, but brings a powerful set of features and work flow for users who work that way. This is what he’s talking about, and it wouldn’t affect users who have a particular workflow. Please don’t immediately shut down new ideas from users. How about…“hey, this could be a good idea, let’s discuss it.” Rather than “no, we do it like this so you have to too”. And I don’t think he was insinuating anything by the comment about not stopping till he gets what he wants. I think this is just a way of expressing a desire for a feature he sees as highly useful. He ends with best regards and respect.
Well, I can parse “I won’t step back till I see it there” two ways:
Either it means “I’m not going to stop repeating my request till I see it”, or “I have already stopped using Dorico and I’m not going to start again until I see it”.
Both are equally childish, IMO. Just like the endless comments about how wonderful Overture is. We got the message the first time (and that was back in 2018).
I have said that we have no current plans for this, but I am not in the business of shutting down any but the most hair-brained of ideas (and this is not, of course, a hair-brained idea). Though Steve and others are right that we do have a particular design philosophy in mind for Dorico, and we do not make changes to its user interface lightly.
It would be good to be able to switch between something selected on a staff and the same thing selected in that track’s piano roll (at suitable zoom). This is similar to moving between score and part.
Hello guys,
Interesting comments after my last one.
As I can see the only people who clearly understand my point are theduke and steveparker.
I’m not asking for any serious design, or philosophy changes in Dorico.
I’m asking for additional feature to Bottom Panel, an option to invoke the Piano Roll of the selected instrument.
And this option to be available only in Write > Galley View. This small, but enormously functional improvement doesn’t violate
the design and philosophy behind Dorico.
I understand Daniel’s position, as he is coming from Sibelius, and probably not much DAW experience. I don’t know?!
I’m coming from the DAW world and for me to have an instant access to the MIDI data while editing the Scores is essential, especially after
real-time recording. Of course without doing any wasting time procedures to make two Dorico windows to co-exist on the same screen.
So, Daniel, the adding of this function exactly in Galley View, can’t be considered design change, or philosophy change.
Actually the only design change here will be the ability to extend the Piano Roll Panel up and down, like Lower Zone in Cubase.
dankreider,
I’m aware that Dorico isn’t any other product. Dorico and Overture are the only two existing applications in a group called DAW-like
scoring software. So, as all existing DAWs have almost the same functions, it won’t be something odd if Dorico and Overture have many
similarities.
-steve-, would you tell me, please, how did you create this Autohotkey script?
Thank you very much in advance!
Rob,
Nothing childish here… I’m not going to stop using Dorico until the feature appears, since I have paid for it. Just sometimes we have to fight for
the things we find right and useful and this is not childish… So, Dorico is DAW-like notation software and I’m asking for adding of small feature which exists in every DAW and the only other notation software in this category - Overture.
I know it’s hard to explain such need to someone who is familiar with notation software, and doesn’t have deep knowledge in DAW, but I should keep trying…
Like Thurisaz, I am also a long-term Overture user. But I didn’t even upgrade to v5, for all the reasons he stated, and more. I’m very happy that Dorico came on to the scene, and I know I’m going to enjoy its growth and its overall concepts.
I’m also a Cubase user, and I really appreciate the functionality of the Lower Zone, introduced in v9. Having piano roll and the main project window automatically in vertical sync makes so much sense. There might be other ways that it could be useful in a notation context. But I can certainly live without it for now, because I tend to do most of my composing in Cubase, and then transfer to Dorico for… notation!
Being able to see notation and piano roll together may be a valuable resource, but the idea that Dorico is a DAW-like product is stretching things. Steinberg didn’t bring on the Dorico Team to create a DAW; if Steinberg had wanted that they would have assigned programmers to improve the notation aspects of Cubase. Dorico is a notation program, and just as it has expanded the boundaries of what a notation program can offer visually, it endeavors to improve what it can offer in playback.
I am happy if Overture had good solutions to UI challenges and that it took users’ suggestions seriously on some occasions (as does the Dorico Team), but if it gave people the impression that they users could insist developers redesign their program in the user’s own image, that would be a shame.
Derrek hello,
Who said that Dorico is going to be a DAW? DAW-like and DAW itself are very different things… For the DAW-like Notation software is important to have almost all MIDI data editing functions available in DAW. Well, many of them are already available in Dorico.
We don’t need Audio Editing, Advanced Mixing and Mastering functions in Dorico.
Personally I would like to be able to do my all arrangements and orchestrations in Dorico, with the libraries I have on my computer, because it’s much
easier for me to work with notation. After that to export audio from Dorico and import it into Cubase for further editing.
At the end to have nice looking score sheets and decent sounding audio files.
Just some more features must be added to Dorico, to fulfill completely this task.
There could be buttons to switch between Properties Panel and Piano Roll.
