Ideas

Hello,
Is it planned in next updates to put “ideas” (like Sibelius)?
It is a fast and effective option, since Dorico is very slow when there are 2 scores at a time.
Thanks

I don’t believe so. The better approach to two files is simply using two flows. One can be the work itself and another a “canvas” for ideas. When you switch between projects the audio engine has to readjust each time to prepare for (presumed) playback, so that produces a lot of unavoidable overhead for the background processing.

Thanks, but I still think that “ideas” are faster, visual and practical.
On the other hand, I do not understand how it is so slow to navigate between 2 scores and I have 64 Gb of Ram …

It is slow because Dorico has to load all the VST instruments and sound samples for the active project every time you swap from one to the other.

You can make that faster by setting the playback templates to “silent.”

But you don’t need two projects. If you put your “ideas” in a separate flow, you can open two windows (Windows menu / New Window), which work independently. They can show different flows, different layouts, or even different displays (i.e. write mode and playback mode) of the same music.

Thanks

I like the Sib Ideas feature as well. Generally though, I prefer Dorico’s flows, mostly because of the flexibility with layouts.

I would like to see improvements in flow management - letting you search, organize into folders, and/or tag them (maybe you can do some of this today, I’m still learning the ropes)

Using a single flow for ideas is interesting. I’ve been doing one idea = one flow. I quickly end up with a lot of flows. That said, I don’t know that a single flow for ideas is much better, because it’s essentially a list of ideas that’s harder to move around than individual flows.

So perhaps I can use flows for grouping different kinds of things… a flow for chord progressions, another for melodic patterns, another for rhythmic, a flow for each main idea and it’s developments. I think that would be a great help in organizing my material.

Thanks for the idea!

I don’t know Sibelius’s “Ideas” feature – I presume it’s some kind of ‘scratch pad’ for short phrases?

Don’t forget that you can import any individual flow from any project into any other project.

Yeah it’s a kind of scratch pad. The cool thing is you can select some notes, run a key command to “capture idea.” This adds the snippet to a little panel on the left. It be just a few notes, or an entire piece really. Under the hood it seems to store the idea as a Sibelius file so the actual content doesn’t matter too much.

What’s really cool is how simple it is to capture an idea. Then you can add tags / description to it, and search all the ideas based on name / description / instrument.

I do find that I’m missing this in Dorico. I’m often working on a piece and want to experiment with a single bar. With Sibelius I could write it out, capture the idea, rewrite, capture, and easily grab one of the earlier ideas and stick it in. When I’m tweaking a single bar in in a longer Dorico flow, I haven’t really found anything good for capturing that little snippet. I also miss Sib’s ability to search ideas.

I usually have a dedicated Piano Player/Instrument I copy fragments/ideas/snippets to. It’s not the same as the Ideas-Panel in sib, but for me it does the job.

Thanks