Which, of course, I did not do.
But this sub-thread is clearly going nowhere productive. Good luck in your professional endeavors.
I’d like to see the ability to preset beam grouping in open meter. I love the fact that I can write without a meter signature, but often I want beaming in groups of 3’s, 4’s, or whatever. I’d settle for writing things in - say - 4/4, then switching to open if the beaming would stay the same.
Back to the wishlists! Not really notational per se, but here’s mine:
My bucket list:
- Audio export with a Save As/renaming feature (I don’t particularly like the the subfolder system
) - Flow folders! Would be a lifesaver for worksheets
- Flow slices instead of frame slices (slices linked to the flow/music)
- Video export
- Transcribe! by SeventhString-like audio import with measure mapping of audio file and synchronized playback
- A built in 0line instrument because the .xml import keeps crashing for me
- A setting that will include text and other things in the music frame so less collisions happen
- Engraving Mode template preview with ` key (the print preview in Write mode)
In a dream world:
- Automatic slurring according to lyrics (or automatic lyric placement according to slurs, either way)
- Automatic generated relative solfa lyrics (super niche, but one can dream)
In Engrave Mode it’s also possible to move the singer’s fermata from the rest to the first note, although the placement will have to be checked in each layout. This kind of situation is fairly common: the orchestra has to get out of the way while the singer continues, including perhaps a cadenza. To have to notate this bar ‘correctly’ (i.e. literally) in Dorico would mean having to change the time signature to ¾ for that one bar and to extend the singer’s note for an extra beat.
Not notational, but:
Work with Wallander to make OG NP portamentos “just work” by simply putting the connecting line in. Including multiple notes in a row all connected by lines (for notated up-down bending etc).
A heartfelt OMG Yes to 6 and 7 – sooo much time wasted recreating paragraph styles from one text frame to another!
Glad you liked those @thurulingas !
I think this would be tantamount to the development team (and Steinberg senior management) admitting that some layout decisions cannot be rule-based, with a default that works for most cases and options for the variations that they want to allow users. That seems…unlikely.
As a software developer, I’ve found that users often prioritise their own convenience over a product’s overall consistency of approach when asking for features they might want to see. If given the former, they inevitably start complaining about the loss of the latter. And as for considering the needs of other users as equal to their own – but that’s the job of a product owner, to balance the competing desires of different groups of interested parties. Whoever is wearing that hat for Dorico 6, I wish them every possible moment of peace between now and the release, because they won’t get much after it for some time.
In all my 33 or so years of using Finale I never did a tutorial. The manual was extremely helpful back in the early 90’s and I still have the multivolume set authored by David Pogue.
While I agreed with your comments in general. I didn’t understand how the one I just quoted above, followed from my suggestions 6. and 7. Don’t you think that these are capabilities missing from the text tool that the Dorico team would like to add if they could? Daniel mentioned when I posted about this problem, that there are programming difficulties preventing them from keeping the formatting constant when editing text.
Nor I. Give a me a good manual any day.
Good manuals and good tutorials are not mutually exclusive, and there’s no shame in following a tutorial. People learn in different ways.
I “learnt” Finale without recourse to any manual (the school having lost it), just by randomly clicking on stuff and seeing what happened, but I wouldn’t wish that on anyone; and I would have offered half my kingdom to anyone who could have spent 10 mins talking me through it.
Dorico is blessed with an abundance of Help material, and if that isn’t sufficient, there’s any number of third-party videos, books and tuition.
That said, I do believe there are things that could be made more … discoverable (dread word) and obvious for the newcomer, without cramping the style of the advanced user.
Agreed. From my perspective, the Dorico manual is bland, and focuses more on definitions without consistently telling the user how to do something. Yes, a lot of the “how tos” are there but not easy to find; I often find it much more useful to search this Forum or look at other resources online. And I did literally read the manual in detail over many days when I started to learn Dorico. For the basics, it’s pretty good, but I do think there is a lot of potential improvement. Finale went in the opposite direction; going from a very engaging, straightforward and comprehensive series of printed manuals to a decent but less engaging online manual that lost some of the personal touches David Pogue (before he started writing for the NYT) brought to the content.
That’s a better workaround, thanks!
Change color but then only change the opacity, got it!
The way I do it personally is by making a custom notehead set called “no notehead” that has no notehead. Then I select that for the note and the notehead disappears but not the dot.
Two more requests as I start to work on a new piece:
- Here’s an example of what I was talking about earlier in terms of better accidental management. I have Modernist chosen (but not sure it matters here), and have checked the box in Notation Options to “Prefer simpler accidentals,” yet rather than an e-natural in the right hand with a cautionary accidental, I get a Fb. I know I have an Eb in the left hand but surly an E-natural in the right hand is preferable, at least to me, right?
- Minor: there is no easy way to have a large time signature only appear for one instrument. I’ve tried creating a local time signature, but it won’t span two staves of an instrument like the piano or marimba.
+1 for more control over large time signatures and when they appear in optimized scores with empty staves hidden.
- Easier, faster, and more intuitive conversion to and from tuplets, based on selections (and please, no more sucking the nearest note across the barline!). I am aware of workarounds but I would love to see this made easier and more immediate without the extra steps.
- Better support of feathered beams (accel/rit) - right now the workaround is to create several hidden tuplets etc and it can be quite hard to un-beam, adjust, or copy after the fact. I would love for it to playback correctly with perhaps a speed curve adjustment in the bottom panel (i.e., linear, log, exp)
- Slightly related - better support for cadenza writing.
- Aleatoric boxes with playback!
- Convert 2-note glissandos to every note in between (based on settings: diatonic, chromatic, etc), thus filling it out with the correct rhythmic note values in between.
- Playback support for glisses which are partially written out (in a single octave) - and then terminating with a gliss at a final note (as commonly seen in harp writing)
- Easier ability to view time current time signature at every bar (especially helpful for alternating sigs).
Technically not notation but sort of adjacent:
- Hold down a modifier key to allow temporary override of position locking within write mode – without having to enter engrave mode. So with an element selected you could drag and hold down the modifier key to give temporary freedom to no longer snap to nearby elements.
- Toggle percussion kit view added to key commands menu (ability to quickly switch between 5-line, grid, and single instrument)
It would be rather neat if we could define (or begin) a cadenza in the same way we could a coda, for instance. I could see other commensurate options coming along with such a feature, such as the ability to select the cadenza signpost and toggle on/off playback, and the fact that adding a cadenza section would not add extra measures to the other instrumental parts.
This would indeed be neat, but I suspect is so contrary to the currently conceived workflow that I doubt it will come to pass. (Although if I’ve ever learned anything, I’ve learned two things: 1.) it never hurts to ask and 2.) “Never say ‘never’.”)