Play Tab Improvements - Dorico 3.5?

Dorico
1

Paul/Daniel,

I’d like to suggest some features. Most are very simple improvements. First, a quick side note… Dr. Crotchet, explosions, 90’s themes. YES!!! Now we need “Dorico for Windows 3.1” … “To install: insert floppy 1 of 60,943”. lol, I liked the Christmas video. Anyway, some suggestions to make Dorico almost as smart as Dr. Crotchet… :smiley:

1) Not in Dorico
pt.user.bellup
pt.user.solotonemute
pt.user.pixiemute
pt.user.moltovib
pt.user.sulc (and the other strings)
pt.user.min3tr
pt.user.maj3tr

I’d add trills up to an octave for playing techniques by default. That covers every sample library and avoids users having to add custom symbols to inconsistently mark trills with ornaments and techniques. It’s messy is all.

2) Incomplete fallbacks (playing techniques)
Jete, ricochet, colle, sautille… if these don’t exist, Dorico should at least know not to do a default sustain patch when some bowings are more stac and some more spic. More fallbacks = a “smarter” Dorico, IMHO.

3) Editing velocity
In the Cubase manual, search “Controller Event Editor”. For velocity editing, tilt, compress, and scale features are desperately needed in Dorico. It saves tons of time as a genius editing feature. It would take Dorico up 100 notches (easily).

4) Playing Techniques
TBH, I’d much rather write from the play tab. If I could edit techniques and have all the notation be automatic, I’d die happy. Edit: My ideal workflow would be writing in the piano roll (for quick editing) and have the notation be automatic, like an information viewer. I can’t see a reason not to allow editing here, yet to allow drawing new notes. It either seems incomplete or arbitrary. Are you guys planning this at some point?

5) Piano Roll - Size & Zoom Oddities

  • When I select multiple lanes (velocity, cc, techniques) and resize them, only one resizes.
  • No mass track zoom/sizing? The Play tab is coming along. It’s just hard to control the layout.
  • Shift + Mouse wheel in Cubase scrolls horizontally in both the sequencer and piano roll. Dorico is horizontal in the Write tab, yet vertical in the Play tab. I believe consistency with Cubase is important (just me) to make Dorico intuitive, but Dorico isn’t even consistent with itself. It’s easily a needed change for that alone.
  • CTRL + Shift zooms in Cubase’s piano roll and sequencer. It’s fast, simple, easy. I often find myself “lightly annoyed” that I can’t do this in Dorico. It’s not huge, but I do tend to feel like I’m fighting the Play tab a bit cause of it.
  • Select notes > Copy > move playhead to next bar > Paste > They show up on bar 1. Bug?

I hope some of these suggestions help! Good luck on Dorico 3.5… Can’t wait! I still can’t believe how packed full of features this is for a v3 release. Congrats again!

-Sean

Edit: I removed a request for markers under play tab. I hadn’t found the marker track as I was initially thinking to right-click or add it some way within the play tab itself, not in a sub-menu. Alas, it’s there! :slight_smile:

2
  1. is the most important here for me and something I would expect in at least a basic form to be in Dorico by now. They’ve been in Cubase at least 27 years as far as I can remember!
  2. I find a few things here need a little work as well and agree on the unintuitive mouse+scroll wheel behaviour.

Nonetheless, to look on the bright side, I’ve just finished my first Dorico score and it includes the notorious Wordbuilder in EWQL Symphonic Choirs and even using the already available editors, it has made the job of dynamics control a good deal easier than before. Not to mention that tempo changes in Sibelius could easily cause stutters and losing the place in the text. So far no problems at all of this nature in Dorico. I also find lyrics entry very logical and reliable. In general, after using Dorico in anger for about a month now, I’m pretty pleased overall and the main bugs in the PLAY section appear to have been fixed for the next release. Although I may focus on the play side in my comments, the hugely superior engraving and note-spacing intelligence is not to be sniffed at either, as is the idea of using Flows. It’s unlikely I will ever use Sib. for a new score again.