High efficiency with Dorico !

Today, I quite finished a “crazy” project I started a month ago — while working (as my signature says, I’m an opera singer, soloist, in France), and also engraving a series of vocal score for colleagues, which means it was more like a hobby time killer than a full time job. That crazy project is the engravement of a french (only) version of the vocal score of Carmen, 100% in Dorico. We’re talking about a 442 pages long score. One month.
I must say I am very impressed with the stability of the program, and its logic. And, of course, the extraordinary quality of the output.
The only remaining thing that I could not deal with in an elegant way — so I decided not to deal with it — is the brackets management. I am quite confident that the issues we still have with those, and with complicated labelling (I’ve been using some Shift-X objects) will soon disappear.

Many thanks to Daniel and the team, we are lucky to have you :slight_smile:

Agreed, Marc!

Last weekend I had the first small pieces of mine ever to be played.

Dorico was complimented for its quality and clarity; and I assured the players that is was just as much a delight to compose in.

We are indeed lucky :slight_smile:

I am going to second these thoughts…

I recently redid a book I previously did in Finale. This time, one whole project with flows. I believe it took me half the time to complete in Dorico (if not less) than it did with the original Finale versions 14-ish years ago. I am starting to redo some other books. Those are moving quickly, as well. I have also been slowly reworking some old arrangements I did, just for fun, and they are zipping along. All in all, I feel Dorico is much faster and easier to accomplish basic things than any of the competitors.

We are VERY lucky to have such a strong and dedicated team working to better the software we use. There isn’t a software out there that has the same level of interaction with the design team as Dorico has, this is what I believe makes their product that much better.

Robby

Congratulations Marc and Mark.
Robby, are your percussion books being published? I’ve been clipping bits of your other interesting thread, ready for the time when I understand it…!

Steve,

I work part-time for a small percussion publications. They specialize in Beginner Percussion Materials. The owner is a good friend of mine, and I do 100% of the engraving for him. They are not my works, rather someone else’s ideas. If you’d like more information, I am willing to send you a link. His business has been around for 18-ish years. While he and I do not work on beginner percussion ensemble arrangements as much anymore, every now and then something new comes along for us to work on. He has many contributing composers and arrangers (although I am not one of them, I have thought about arranging my own beginning level stuff). Most recently one of the composers published a new mallet percussion book. I did the ENTIRE thing in Dorico. It is now published and for sale. With the improved unpitched percussion stuff that came in December, I am into redoing many of the previous works we have for sale. I eventually would like to move everything over to Dorico. There are still a few things that I am “unable” to do, but with each passing update, that list is getting less and less.


I also used to teach high school drum line. I have many, many arrangements I did for those schools. So I am also wanting to go back to my arrangements and redo them all in Dorico. I began the first one just 2 weeks ago, and have been working at making sense of the new percussion map stuff along with the percussion kit editor. It makes perfect sense for a drum set, but marching percussion is posing a little more of a learning curve.

Robby

Efficiency seems to be the right word. I’m VERY new to Dorico but after only a few days I can say that I won’t go back to the previous soft I used for the past 15 years.
Fast, intuitive (at least to me!).
Still missing important features but I can see they will be implemented in an efficient way.
Keep the good and promising work on!

Very interesting Robby. If you can send me a link, I’d love to take a look.

I’m working in my previous software still, but after Dorico it feels weirdly like travelling to the past…

Congratulations Marc (and Mark!)

I too have re-edited older scores in Dorico. Some of it is at the request of clients who need new sets, but I have done a few scores over in Dorico just to have them ready when the time comes. Re-editing with Dorico can really expose the power of this software: everything falls into place almost immediately and the fine controls that are available to me when I want to tweak are are superior to anything on the market today. Also, adding cues has become an addiction for me!

I just finished a re-edition of a chart at the request of the WInnipeg Symphony. As usual for me, the bottom margin of the first page on every part proudly reads:
“Created with Dorico - The future of computer music notation - www.dorico.com

And yes, “going back” to previously used software does feel like a time-warp.

I completely agree with everyone here. The software is such a delight to use, and not only speeds up my workflow, but saves me a lot of frustration too. The team is doing a fantastic job and I’m looking forward to seeing what they introduce in the next update.

Dorico is fantastic in many fields. I believe, that for many musicians, who write conventional music the workflow is very fast and effecive. It’s making me almost regret for being a composer of experimental music, because there are also many frustrating restrictions for unconventional notation.
Of course there are many things, which are very usefull in experimental music (thats why I am using Dorico), like music frames, but still it is – in my oppinion – at an early stage of development.
Just to – at lest once – feel the real pleasure from scoring in Dorico, I started to re-edit the V symphony by Beethoven:)

Bravo, Del Gesu ! But keep on posting here ideas of what you need, or the limitations you find in Dorico. I find that very interesting, and the team does not really need too much feedback about conventional engravement, since they probably are the most skilled dev team on that field and the literature is… Huge! But creators like you can have needs that must be expressed, in order for them to make them true options!

I’m currently re-editing a Beatles medley for a concert band which was copied by hand many years ago (with many errors and unreadable bits here and there) and with no score anymore (creating which was the primary motivation), and I can confirm that Dorico makes it very easy. I especially like the “lock duration” setting if you’re creating another part and keep the rhythm but just change the pitches (learned it from a video tutorial) – it’s so damn quick and easy to add another part!
The only thing I’m really missing is one-bar and two-bar repeats (the % signs). If that’s implemented, Dorico will be perfect for my current use. For when I’m writing big band scores I’ll need slashed bars for the rhythm section, too, but that’s not my current main focus.

Well, VIPStephan, your needs should be fulfilled quite fast, since those are implementations that we read about quite often lately… as well as the “tupleflying” tool, which will probably change the way we can use tuplets…

Thank you for your words. This is the first english speaking forum, in which I’m writting this kind of posts. Mostly because my english is not so good (and I spend a lot of time to write a post), and because I usually don’t involve to that kind of activities. But here I really feel, that I could have a real influence on the software developement, thanks to the Dorico team attitude. And I care about it, because I see big potential in Dorico.

You are certainly in the right place, Del_Gesu; and your posts (which are always completely understandable) are very welcome here!

Just a tip I discovered about brackets. I knew small ensemble would respond to groups for bracketing, so I made a group for the choir. The problem I had was that all the soloists were also bracketed together, which is not the way I’m used to read them.
The tip is simple : I create a group for each soloist and this way they are not bracketed at all, even if thay’re playing the same instrument (voice).
Hope it helps!

Be sure that many of us feel where you’re coming from. I too suffer from Dorico’s current inability to cover the more contemporary aspects of écriture for part of my own composing, but I’m sure it’ll come along. And it’s become oh-so-painful to go back to other tools…