I have to disagree here; sometimes a minimum amount of formatting is necessary to continue inputting music in an intelligible way. I work on a lot of chant/open meter stuff; I have to insert intelligent breaks because there are no barlines to do it automatically. If I don’t mode switch to insert breaks, the score can get to the point where I literally can’t see what I’m doing, or lyrics become unintelligible and it becomes difficult to navigate the score. Having a visually clear / intelligible score helps you progress in both input and composition.
Generically, I understand the whole modal approach and don’t have many beefs with it now that I’ve adjusted my workflow to the program. But ideological rigidity for the sake of ideological purity over basic practical user-friendliness doesn’t help anyone. If you can do everything you like without inserting any manual breaks while you’re doing note input, then I’m happy for you. Unfortunately, I cannot.
Option to extend/shorten the MIDI note beginning (currently only the end could extended or shortened
We playback of the baroque and classical ornaments should have a switch on/off option (per ornament) in case we are using libraries with recorded ornaments. If the library doesn’t contain the needed ornament, then we could kindly ask Dorico to perform it.
@Thurisaz You can break ties anywhere by double clicking on the staff and using U or the scissor tool.
You can use the caret to input dynamics anywhere, including in the middle of a tie chain.
The Youtuber you’ve linked to is mistaken.
edit: I’ve gone on watching to the nonsense about how to Insert an extra beat in a 5/4 bar. Somewhat intuitively, you have to use Insert mode. There are so many mistaken “can’ts” in this video it’s unwatchable.
@pianoleo,
You can use the caret and backspace to delete the desired notes, but if you click to select the desired notes all tied become highlighted and if you press U then it removes the whole ties.
Also the adding of dynamics isn’t that easy… Yes, you can place the caret wherever you want, but it will insert the dynamic only for a single bar “f>pp” for example. I may want this crescendo to happen from the mid till the end of the tied group. Would be far more easier if I just select the desired region/group of notes by mouse and then adding the dynamic marking. Wouldn’t it?
If you have a more faster way with less steps, please, share it. I would be thankful to you!
Better handling of players playing multiple instruments in galley mode.
It’s really quite irritating when dealing with things like Horns and Clarinets that usually change only at flow boundaries…why do I “need” all of those empty staves just taking up valuable screen real estate and preventing me from using “copy to staff below”?
If your players are switching instruments solely between flows, and not within them, you could have separate players for each instrument and un-assign players from the flows they don’t play in. If the player isn’t assigned to the flow, its instrument staves shouldn’t appear in galley view for that flow.
Improve the editing speed in Setup Mode in projects with many players and many flows - with improve I mean something like any kind of edit should not take more than 2 seconds
An additional “Per Flow” settings overriding the settings which are “Per Layout” only
A rework of the chord, chord-diagram and tablature system allowing to add these separately in which ever bar one needs them
Definitely not OT. You have defined why I cannot use Dorico in my day to day work.
Although you may prefer this feature, for those of us who need to knock things out quickly, this just gets in the way. The only thing I want to do on the second pass is enter lyrics.
Most of what I do these days is not meant to be engraved. For those works that are, the separate pass approach is ok.
I’ve never tried to make one notation app do everything. I don’t mind working in Finale and exporting to Dorico for engraving. For that to work as well as I like, the long awaited and promised better MusicXML import/export needs to be implemented. Yes, it’s better now than when I started in 2018 but it’s not there yet.
I’m not quite clear as to why Dorico’s features make it impossible to use it for your day to day work. Dorico has always allowed entering articulations on the fly, before entering the note. Since version 3 we’ve been offered pitch-before-duration, as well as a separate setting for entering rhythm dots, articulations and accidentals before or after inputting the note. In fact, in note entry mode you can enter practically everything on the fly, including dynamics, playing techniques, tempi, and even lyrics. I don’t know of any other program which makes it possible to enter all these elements on the first pass, even lyrics. Isn’t this what you wanted?
The earlier comment seemed to be about entering System Breaks and Frame Breaks in Write mode. This is actually possible from the caret, too, if you copy one and accept that it’s now the one thing you’re using the clipboard for.
@Mikehalloran, please clarify the thing you can’t do on the first pass.
This might have been covered (too long a thread to read through) - but for the sake of entry you could create a separate layout with the staves that you would like to see and input in there before going back to the main score…
In re: system and frame breaks and nudging things in write mode - I can see why the team would be reluctant to muddy the engrave and write mode options. The trouble is - as the model stands unless we’re writing into Galley mode (why is it called that?) then we’re still working with layout at the same time as input - example of recent work: I have been typesetting a large scale choral work from manuscript, and have wanted to match up the system breaks with the number of bars per line on the manuscript for ease of comparison. Very easy to do in another application - exhausting to do in Dorico unless you create the right number of bars (for the whole 40 minute piece) in advance and set it all out in engrave mode in one go.
Even then if you want to focus on a few bars and want to Squidge them so they’re on the same page and visible together (say, composing a particular section), then again you need to go into engrave mode and footle before you go back to write mode - quite annoying if regular.
Could there be a way of completely divorcing write and engrave mode? or allowing “soft” system breaks in write mode? Probably no useful answer to that but as it stands the system and frame breaks are surely functions that should exist in both write and engrave modes - think about if I were writing on the manuscript on my desk - I would write on different lines at will, and scrub bars out and write on the next page… Then when I came to engrave it, I would likely paginate it a completely different way…
I regularly have to do just this, and I actually don’t find it to be any more exhausting in Dorico than in Finale or Sibelius. In fact, using Leo’s method above, one can insert system breaks on the fly while entering notes, without even having to use the mouse. This ability actually makes the process easier in Dorico than in the other programs.
Yes - the trouble is the whole keeping it in your clipboard thing! It’s a shame to have to (albeit slightly and non invasively) hack the system to allow for that functionality. A system break should in effect work like a carriage return in a word processor.
If I think of the LaTeX equivalent - the text document contains plain text with simple markup, then at the top (and intermittently in the text) layout rules are added (the typesetting element). Carriage returns are of course included in the basic text - otherwise it would be unreadable…
While copying music and, for checking purposes, keeping the same layout as the original, I generally don’t need the clipboard at all, so having a system break in it, ready to be placed at the moment of my choosing, doesn’t feel like an inconvenience or an unwelcome monopolisation of the clipboard.
Having said this, I also find editing system and frame breaks a bit of a grey area. As these breaks are layout functions and can only be created in Engrave Mode (with the exception of Leo’s trick above), it seems counter-intuitive that they can only be shifted around in Write Mode.
