Requests for the key editor

Hi,

I’ve been using Dorico for about 3 months and I love it.
I especially love the DAW-like key editor in Write mode, which I can’t find in any other notation software.
However, there are some (lack of) features that keep annoying me, and I have some requests for improvement.

  1. The link button shouldn’t be disabled until you click it again.
    (Or at least I want an option to realize it.)

Currently, just scrolling horizontally in the key editor disables the link button. So, even when I click some other area on the score, the key editor stays on the same area.

Logically speaking, the “link” is broken when you scroll horizontally, and it makes sense to disable the link button. However, it’s really troublesome to click the button so often. It’s all the more troublesome because the button is the only way you can switch to other instruments on the key editor.

My current workaround is to never scroll in the key editor, and to click the area in the score where I want to move. But this is unintuitive.
Also, sometimes the zoom control overlaps with the CC lane and I have to scroll horizontally to draw a CC curve.

  1. Automations should be copyable to other instruments.

I often need this feature when I’m writing an orchestral piece where I layer some instruments to play the same melody. It’s tiresome to write the same automation curve again and again.

I found this thread and understood that you are already working hard to get this feature back to Dorico 4, so I’m looking forward to it.

  1. The heights of the piano roll and the CC lane should be individually adjustable.

Currently, the piano roll automatically shrinks when you click the CC lane, and the keyboard image on the left is often too narrow to see the name of the note I’m working on.
The keyboard image is proportionally stretched if I expand the key editor itself, but then the CC lane is too wide to edit easily.
I hope the heights of the piano roll and the CC lane will be individually adjustable in the future.

Last but not least, thank you for developing this wonderful notation software.
Three months ago, I was dissatisfied with my notation software’s inability to tweak musical details, and was considering switching to a DAW. However, as a classical piano player, I wanted to work in scores rather than in piano rolls, and was struggling with not-so-good notation features of a DAW.
That was when I encountered Dorico, a beautiful integration of a notation software and a DAW.

So, I do hope that my requests above will be accepted and that Dorico will be even more appealing to DAW users.

Thank you for reading.

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Welcome to the forum, @Kanata. I’m pleased to hear you’re enjoying using Dorico so far. We are hard at work on restoring the remaining missing editors to the rewritten Play mode at the moment, and the next update will restore the dynamics editor, as well as providing important improvements to the capabilities of the MIDI continuous controller editor and the velocity editor.

Once we have shipped those improvements, we will turn our attention to making some further improvements to the overall user experience of using these new editors, and that will include things like being able to have both the piano roll and velocity or continuous controller editors active at the same time, and so on.

Watch this space, and in the meantime, please feel free to share any other requests that you have.

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Thank you for your reply.
The feature I want the most is 1. the link button behavior, so I hope you add it on your to-do list.
Keep up the good work!

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Everybody has their most useful features, but for media composition the key editor is the most significant. Dorico’s ease of use, and now the inclusion of this editor in with the notation finally breaks the DAW composing tyranny. Not to mention eliminating 90% of the CC work needed to get an orchestra to play satisfactorily.

I’ve mentioned to Daniel how I think the tempo editor could be minimally tweaked. Otherwise the biggest issue is line drawing. Drawing in CC straight lines is tedious, I’m hoping the editor can be more forgiving.

But do real musicians play in straight lines?

The genius first trumpeter of the NYC describes it so, as have the many SFO musicians I worked with, and personally when I play I think the way they taught me, which was find the high and low points of the phrase, and aim for that. My orchestral days are over and now it’s recording and piano is my main instrument but there too I don’t see subtle differences in volume. Top drawers teachers I’ve worked with believe that at most there are about 5-7 levels of volume intensity that can be had with a key and a hammer. Certainly nothing like the 128/whatever points we see on your average CC curve - not to mention whatever granularity is built into the sample (how many volumes do they record at? No more than three I’d guess with the rest interpolated). (1)

So as a piecewise linear approximation I’d say yes, feel free to disagree. But I see DAW composers leaning on their faders massaging them in a way I feel is artificial. Seems like more of a compensation to me but feel free to differ.

(1) I suppose the point is whether interphrase notes are jumping around, again in my experience I’m so busy making music I’m not farting around like that, unless it’s some modern piece that calls for it or whatever. Just the high/low points. Oh well I guess there are swells that are like an exponential curve - so yeah of course there are exceptions.

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Thank you Dorico team for the 4.1 update.
Actually, I’m a bit disappointed to see that none of the features I want isn’t in 4.1, and I hope they will be implemented in 4.2 or 4.3.
Keep up the good work!

I agree with all these suggestions, I really think the team needs to get better key editor testers. They have made very questionable deign decisions since the beginning and they are not really getting any better, they’re just changing it. Which baffles the mind when you consider how they have revolutionised the notation part….!

I, as an accordionist and conductor, don’t have everything I ask for either, but I think the team works in the best way possible.
No doubt about it and Dorico gives me full satisfaction.
Congratulations to @dspreadbury and the Dorico team who are more than competent.
We are really dealing with top notch people
So, one thing at a time.
There are obviously priorities to be put in place so that the software does not end up in a dead end.
Another thing, I think we all want things for our own workflow but it is important to have a community thinking and not an individualistic thinking.

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Imagine standing in a queue at an airline counter, the person in front of you is complaining that the airline stranded them in a foreign country and lost their suitcases. You then decide to jumo in and tell everyone in sight that: “I, as a frequent traveller, haven’t had everything I require on my trips, but I think the airline does its best, we’re dealing with the best people, I think people should stop complaining about their individual mishaps and be grateful that we get to fly…!”

As a pianist, what I do know, I? However, from the beginner’s lessons I had with flute, clarinet and sax, I know that some of the exercises that were requested were to play linear crescendos and diminuendos. Maybe this is just a way to gain control of the breath, but it might become the natural behavior when actually playing.

I would be very curious to see an analysis of real playing. I’ve never found one to show the crescendo curve, so I will have to do some experiments myself with some skilled performer.

Paolo

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Actually, I’m a bit disappointed to see that none of the features I want isn’t in 4.1, and I hope they will be implemented in 4.2 or 4.3.

I’m sorry you’re disappointed about that, but I did tell you very directly in my initial reply in this thread that these things would not be included in the next update. I said:

We are hard at work on restoring the remaining missing editors to the rewritten Play mode at the moment, and the next update will restore the dynamics editor, as well as providing important improvements to the capabilities of the MIDI continuous controller editor and the velocity editor.

Once we have shipped those improvements, we will turn our attention to making some further improvements to the overall user experience of using these new editors, and that will include things like being able to have both the piano roll and velocity or continuous controller editors active at the same time, and so on.

We are now working on the percussion editor and the semantic pitch bend editor, which are the final two editors that need to be restored, and as soon as work on those is complete, we will be turning our attention to addressing the kinds of quality of life improvements you requested in your original post in this thread.

We are doing the best we can to prioritise the work on the Key Editor to rework all of the editing functionality that was present in previous versions while making the editors work better, and I think we’re making good on that, with all of the existing editors (piano roll, velocity, MIDI CC, dynamics and tempo) all now working considerably more reliably than they did in Dorico 3.5.

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This is so off-topic we should probably move to a different thread or VI-Control, but… I have done extensive research in this matter for a sample library development and found that there’s definitely no linear behaviour in any instrument. Brass tend to be exponential curves, string the other way around. Woodwinds, depends which one, behave like strings or brass. Percussive instruments (including keyboards and plucked strings) are erratic as hell… They are like a series of little mountains, all of different sizes, that grow on a non-linear fashion.

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But then: does the straight line we draw in the CC lane translate into linear dynamic variations in the sampled instrument’s loudness?

Paolo

Usually yes, which is why it sounds so robotic and ‘synthy’. Some libraries e.g. sample modelling have emulated this a bit, but you’re still better off exaggerating the curves manually.

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Ah, I’m sorry. I should have read your reply again.
Thank you for your good work!