Physical modelling of the continuous player input is exactly what it’s good at - unlike samples with pre-recorded vibrato etc which are never going to fit together correctly end-to-end!
Free vibrating instruments are the easiest place to start - that’s why they are outperforming sample libraries already in terms of “playability.”
The physical model will have to capture the relevant behaviour of the human player - so for strings, the virtual instrument user might need to know “how to play” the instrument in terms of fingering, left hand position shifting, bowing techniques, etc, to get the best out of it. That might put off those who just want to enter some notes and expect magic results, of course, but there is a big difference between knowing how to play a violin and being physically able to do it at “virtuoso” level. Historically, most composers knew “how to play” the instruments they wrote for, even if they never performed in public.
You are absolutely right, but what I meant is that the amount of variables you have to model in order to match or best a sampled wind or bowed string instrument is insane — variables that will have to be animated by very complex modulations that will most likely still sound off and inhumane. This might be my education talking, but, from an instrument design standpoint, sure: flexibility is great. On the other hand, if you want to emulate an acoustic instrument as played by someone, the amount of control data will be tremendous unless you can sort out a one-to-many mapping that works. None of this is practical from any end — hence why sampling has the upper hand, as you very well know. In fact, see how you’ve tied its putative use to a more intimate knowledge of the instruments — something fans of sample libraries aren’t exactly famous for… As I said, I’d love to be proven wrong, but I’m not sure if the market is going to supply a decent offering of physically modeled wind and bowed orchestral instruments any time soon, even though it’s the better technology!
Maybe they should stop working on orchestra instruments and work on the worst of the sysnthesis: solo human singing voice. If they can ever get that right the rest might be easy.
FOF synthesis can get you pretty far, but I don’t know any robust, professional-grade implementation available. But then again, I’m really not one for sample libraries.
Now that I think of it, the singing voice is the perfect example of what I was talking about. In theory, the voice should be fairly easy to model. The vocal chords actually produce quite a rough, basic excitation, and a professional, lyrically-trained singer kinda strives to make his/her vocal tract as harmonic — tube-like — as possible. But you need a whole lot of control data to make it lively and lifelike! As I said, I’m not sure there’s a robust implementation of a physically modeled singing voice available in the market.
Sibelius is horrible, and AVIDs new business model will rape you financially.
I just got off that mess. AVID has a horrible relationship with Apple!
Hang in there i am sure the programmers are working hard to get stuff like midi editing, changing note velocity,
triplets and Harp pedaling into it. It prints so fast and nice.
My problem is unlearning the Sibelius method and learning Dorico. You can do most everything just requires figuring it out.
The problem i have is with VST plugins crashing program. That is being addressed i here.
I am on Trial and will try cross grade educational version. I own 6 versions of educational Sibelius but the AskNet verification does not work with all the pictures it wants. Now THAT is a big problem. All us Sibelius users are staying with Sibelius because you can’t get cross grade to work for educational or retail version. I have both and tried. Steinberg is great on support but they can’t help as it is third party. Sternberg better get that stuff in-house quick!
This third party partnering will wreck Steinberg. AskNet is also putting tracking cookies for advertising GoogleAjax and analytics etc logging your whereabouts 24/7 NOT COOL. Steinberg does not do that on their site.
I wrote a theme for a TV show on Dorico when it worked and it was beautiful and all the parts played flawless!!
Problem stability issues.
I didn’t actually purchase Dorico for the engraving option at all. I just wanted to work in a good notation program. Hopefully one which will have good playback.
I hadn’t used notation since MusicTime first came out, a single 3.5 floppy disk software program.
My crossgrade from Sibelius was very easy and fast (but it was not from or to an educational license). What problem people trying to do a crossgrade from an educational license are facing?
what I meant was that you have started a new question in this thread, and it has nothing to do with the subject line. You need to start a new topic to ask about your trill problem.
But notation is all about “engraving”, whether it ends up on paper or on a screen!
Personally, I would like to see Dorico develop the many possibilities of displaying score and parts on screens, where the text can be edited in real time and appears instantly on all the screens, well formatted. Also the players should not have to initiate the turnng over of the pages while playing. This opens up all kinds of possibilities: a whole orchestra with notated parts distributed by WIFI.
Turning Dorico into a synthesizer is in my opinion a cul de sac.
There have been experiments, but the overhead costs and the overall practicality still aren’t there, and won’t be for a while. I remember an experiment featured by Sibelius a few years back, where a concert was more or less live-scored. And there is research on generative musical systems and notated live soundpainting…
Notation is all about engraving for engravers. That makes sense, and I appreciate the point of view.
But notation is not ALL about engraving for those who prefer to use notation programs for composing. Using Dorico for composing, and for audio feedback for those who only have access to virtual instruments rather than a real orchestra, gives one a much different perspective, and it generates a wholly different set of priorities.
So far it seems the Dorico team has prioritized engraving, and it was clear all along in the blog that this was where the team’s passion lay. What seems to composers a distracting nuance of engraving is critical to engravers. What seems a useless playback feature to engravers is critical to composers. Recent videos have focused almost exclusively on engraving or layout matters, presumably because there is not yet much to cover in the areas critical for composers.
I believe the team when they say much is being worked on in the areas of playback, expression maps, staves capable of exploding and collapsing, etc. I can’t wait to see some of the fruits of this effort start to actually show up in Dorico.
But it is hard for this composer to avoid responding to what seems the dominant attitude among engravers that composing aspects of Dorico are insignificant. Composers usually understand the point of view of engravers. It makes sense given their use of the product. Why do engravers often overlook or ignore the point of view of some composers? To me Dorico is (and is marketed as) a pro tool for both customer bases.
I do not see how focusing on chords, percussion, and the like are giving composers short shrift.
Plans for increasingly flexible playback, expression maps, and the like are also features of more importance to composers than to engravers.
The Dorico Team seems to be working tirelessly to help both composers and engravers realize their goals as soon as humanly possible. The quality of their output is laudable and amazing.
To ppl concerned about slur shape, the Engraving Options offer a zillion ways to make default slurs look the way u want them to. My publisher wanted more rounded (higher) slurs, and one adjustment did it.
But - IMO the team did the right thing: they focused mainly on engraving topics and put a lot of focus on getting the engraving related functions in Dorico right. If they had focused mainly on composer oriented features, expression maps, live MIDI recording, proper CC and articulation control etc at the cost of making sure the engraving part was great, Dorico could have easily been suffering from not being pro enough in any of these areas - not even the notation part.
I bought Dorico early knowing well that it wouldn’t be useable for proper work with Kontakt libraries, and that it wouldn’t have all the typical features composers and user with high focus on music making/composing would want to have. So - regarding the title of this thread - I can’t say stopped using Dorico, because I haven’t really started. There’s still too many things that seem unfinished or suffer from an IMHO outdated workflow, where ‘read the manual’ is the mantra. Frankly, I don’t think music software ever will get back to old school UI ideas again - there’s a relatively large (?) community of users who are happy as long as new software is better than the competition in many areas - but self-explanatory UIs have come to stay. I just had a new little session with Dorico, and found (again) that there are still many things in that program which requires a lot of steps and knowledge from forum/manual reading or elsewhere about how Dorico is meant to work.
Brilliant as Dorico is in many ways - that’s the weakest are in Dorico: there are too many things that are either too time consuming or which requires research of some kind before being able to perform quite simple tasks. And those are mainly relevant for all but engravers and others who plan to work a lot with Dorico. I can’t do that yet, because important functions are missing - but until then - I’ll definitely not stop trying it out every few weeks. Dorico has a great potential for becoming the de facto standard for what I believe is the largest (potential) target group: score users of all kinds - who are not mainly engravers, but who want good looking and correct results without too much hassle.
I dont believe it is off-topic: this is the real future of practical notation, in my opinion.
As far as synthesis/playback is concerned, I am surprised that there is not a program that takes in notated music and synthesizes it. Maybe it would rely on an XML file, but it shouldnt be too difficult to parse a score and synthesize it. One would, of course, be limited by the quality of the synthesis or recording of the samples, but I really think this task is a separate one from notation and that having to do both slows down the development of Dorico.
David, Newzik does open musicXML files and plays back — only guitar sound by now. That’s why I answered about that.
It DOES allow a conductor (reading the full score) and the orchestra (each one his part), and I think when the conductor turns the pages it makes the different parts follow accordingly. It’s present, and I think it’s used in Brussels orchestra IIRC