BACKGROUND:
Well, In April 2017 I was tasked to do a “Musical Drama Enactment” of the sinking of the SS Mendi, a British Troop ship transporting over 800 black South African volunteers to Frans to fight for the Crown in hopes of status in South Africa. In the English channel, during WWI, ships would travel at high speed to avoid the German U-Boats. So, The Argentinian Cargo ship (SS Darro) collided with the SS Mendi. The Mendi sunk within 20 minutes where over 600 men and crew died in the freezing water. Much like the Titanic.
DIFFICULT CHOICE:
I have purchased Dorico and wanted to wean off from using Sibelius as the primary choice of scoring for my clients. As this project had 9 movements, Dorico seemed to be the best choice as it made use of the “flow” structure. So I started my project in Dorico…but…boy did I have difficulty understanding the software. The basics are fine, but moving between movements (at that time) and staves running into each other etc. AS WELL AS extreme pressure from the Navy Band’s Director of Music, caused me to halt my project in Dorico and go back to Sibelius. I figured that a large project like this was NOT a good choice to learn Dorico while I have such a short ETA. So I had 9 different Sibelius scores (Files) for each movement.
THIS PAST WEEKEND (Sep 10th)
I finished the project with Narration, Sound fx as well as a Bass Baritone. I wanted a Tenor, but nobody would sing at my studio for free…except for my Baritone Friend…though some notes are out of his reach and he truly did a good job supporting his diaphragm to reach those notes (sight Reading), Zulu words and all!
October 24th, 2017 (ZK Matthew Hall at UNISA in Pretoria)
The Navy Band now has it’s parts, score and Sound fx files and is rehearsing like crazy to learn this 30-minute Event Enactment.
NOTE: this is NOT an advertisement!
Those who would like to hear it and hear the reasonably good performance of the small vst - NotePerformer with Sibelius, can listen to it here:
First listen to CD1 and then CD 2 for it follows the story logically.
The choir sings my Agnus Dei. Just a few bars and then those with good ears will hear I made good use of the motif of G. Handel’s “The Grenadiers” all different variations in my composition.
As I had extremely little time, I could NOT adjust many MIDI properties in Sibelius except for “Velocities” and the usual dynamics. The creator of NotePerformer did a fantastic generic job of interpreting a score. Here is a “Battle scene” I did in NotePerformer for the “Battle of Isandlwana” during South African “Anglo-Zulu War”: Listen to The Battle (Director's Cut) by Wilswyn Studio in The Battle of Isandlwana playlist online for free on SoundCloud
BIG PROBLEM
My Baritone friend asked me (as a favour for helping me) to arrange “Abide with me - there are two different versions)” into a medley. I thought that this would be a great opportunity to learn Dorico! With something more simple.
WEIRD!
Now that I finished my LARGE project, I ran Sibelius as I needed to export only ONE last composition of mine as an Audio file for SoundCloud. Sibelius CRASHED every time I clicked on its icon. 20 times I attempted…no success. I deleted the license folder…no good! I uninstalled the entire installation, Application Manager and all. Re-installed Sibelius…restart PC…it crashes. THIS IS AN OMEN, I certain of it!!! 
CONCLUTION:
Well, it seems to me, that I now have to uninstall Sibelius and mothball it…with Finale and Encore.
I am now off from work until next year, so now I am going to STUDY Dorico to its fullest extent! I’m sure that its VST Halion will sound better than NotePerformer if only I can grasp how to adjust its properties etc. I also have purchased EWQLSO Platinum 4 years ago and could NEVER get it to work in Sibelius. So now is my chance to Play (excuse the pun) around with it. My NEXT BIG PROJECT with more than one movements will be done in DORICO!!
So…wish me luck and expect many questions over here!
Blessing to all of you here at Steinberg and users…my friends.
A bit early, but have a blessed Christmas!
Hans Nel
Wilswyn Studio
Cape Town