The new 1.1 update looks really promising, great work!
Now I’m only missing one function to start working full-time with Dorico.
When working with large scores I often need to listen to just a couple of players and not the whole score. This works excellent in Sibelius (just selecting the staves and hit “P”). In Dorico I have to mute/solo in the mixer to listen to selected instruments, and afterwards un-mute/un-solo. Are there any plans in a near future for a better solution for this? I guess this won’t show up in 1.x, or? Or are there any workarounds for this?
When it comes to “Focus on staves”, I know I can create custom scores as a workaround. It’s not a good solution but I can live with it until a better solution is implemented. But when adding players to a custom score I need to reopen the context menu after every added player. It would be great if there was a check list or something so I could open the menu, add all the players I need for that custom score and then close the menu/check list. Creating a couple of custom scores now is very time consuming due to all clicking and navigating.
The same custom score workaround can be used for playing back only selected instruments: only the instruments included in a layout will play back.
I don’t know quite what context menu you’re talking about when it comes to editing the custom scores: it’s easy simply to select the custom score layout in the Layouts panel in Setup mode, then check/uncheck the checkboxes for the players to include or exclude in the Players list. You don’t need to use the context menu at all. It should take literally a few seconds to change the players in a custom score.
Ah, I’m a fool, I missed that I could just select the custom score and then check the players in the players column. Thanks!
Anyway, I’d love to see a playback solution in the future more like the Sibelius way (I’m sorry…), so that I don’t have to create a new custom score for every instrument combination I want to solo listen.
Another thing:
I know you are working on the slash notation and I have a small wish. When I see the default setting och slash notation in Dorico (even in Sibelius) the note heads are too big in my opinion. I hope this will be customizable when fully implemented.
I’d like the to look like this:
Thanks again for all the amazing work on Dorico 1.1
I’d like to second the request for a Sibelius-style “Focus on staves.”
The way Dorico handles auxiliary instruments (players w/ multiple instruments) as extra staves in Galley View and then formats them automatically in Page View is brilliant from an engraving perspective (dramatically reduces the risk of mistakes being made when changing instruments, etc.). However, from a composing perspective, it makes Galley View very unwieldy for large ensembles. I’m now working on a full orchestral score with numerous auxiliaries and 3 percussionists with many instrument changes, and the number of staves that appear in Galley View is getting insane. It make Galley all but unusable, which is terrible because I’ve always loved Panorama in Sibelius. In order to avoid seeing literally 40+ staves (I’ve also been putting each wind on its own staff so as to facilitate parts later), I’m sticking exclusively to Page View for now.
Yes, I see how the custom score workaround is serviceable for now, but a proper “Focus on staves” option that all behaves as Mats Halling described above would be wonderful, especially if it also limited audio playback to only those staves.
On a somewhat related note, I assume that, at least for now, for orchestral scores showing multiple wind instruments as different voices on a single staff in the score but individual parts for the players, Dorico still requires the Sibelius trick of creating another Player (ie “Flutes”) with all flutes copied and condensed onto one staff?
That fantastic news that you’re developing a next-generation solution to wind parts sharing staves. As you surely know, this functionality is really the holy grail of orchestral engraving and will make Dorico enormously helpful for orchestral engravers
Regarding my previous griping about “focus on staves,” I’ve taken your advice and set up custom layouts for “wind section,” “string section,” etc. and indeed this method actually has some stunning advantages over Sibelius. I have two monitors, so I’ve set one up tab in Portrait Page Mode showing the full score, and the other in Landscape Galley Mode showing one section at a time. Dorico constantly synchronizes the two, so selections and changes on one (ie the section) appear simultaneously on the other (ie the score). This kind of simultaneous reference to the section and the full score has really improved my compositional workflow a lot, and I can switch playback between the section and the full orchestra simply by clicking in one screen or the other and pressing play.
The only problem I’m having is that Dorico has started to crash fairly frequently. I assume if I have several “tabs” open (ie various sections), Dorico is continuing to update the tabs that aren’t showing, thereby wasting system resources? I have a decent system w/ 32GB of memory a new i7 processor, and running Dorico off of fairly high quality SSD but it’s crashing a lot so I’m checking now that I only have two tabs open at a time.
I must be doing something wronge… I would like to create a custom layout so I only see a couple of instruments from the score, so in Setup Mode, I created a custom Layout and added only the players I want to see. After that I created a New Tab and choose the new layout from the list, after which I saw this:
Can you send me the crash logs that are being produced? If they’re not being produced, then please follow the steps in the sticky FAQ thread to ensure that crash logs will be produced.
Provided you assign the players and flows to your custom layout, that’s what you’ll get. Dorico doesn’t have a feature like Sibelius’s “focus on staves” feature (which is kind of what this thread is about…) but you can use custom layouts to achieve a similar effect. You do need to assign both players and flows to the layout, though, otherwise you will see no music.
This thread has been really helpful regarding “focus on staves” - is there a Tutorial on this, yet?
I am particularly focusing on percussion this weekend and while “unlearning” Sibelius in my head, I feel that I am still searching for elements that haven’t yet been included in the latest update.
The drum set and 5-line percussion for multiple (non)pitches is a hindrance for me, at the moment.
Any suggestions, besides patience?
You can watch the video that Ant did about creating a custom layout, which is the procedure you would use at present to achieve something like “focus on staves”:
We are working on unpitched percussion at the moment. You can fake up something that basically looks right if you use an invisible clef instead of a regular percussion clef.
Why can I hear instruments playing that are not in my layout? The score includes a xylophone, and I’ve made an arrangement in a layout that has no xylophone. Yet I can clearly her it playing in that layout. This score originated in an XML import from Sibelius. It’s no big deal, but it’s puzzling me.
Since the instrument filter is a new feature in 4.0, and this thread is 4½ years out of date, I suggest these posts from today should be moved to this thread from earlier this month to avoid lots of confusion. (Sorry for not answering your question.)
This has been reported by other users. I don’t remember what, if anything, the team has promised to do about it. No doubt there will be some other user who will say, “I like hearing the instruments, I just don’t want to see them.” Some solution that accommodates both options will be necessary. I’d imagine this will be addressed in a “dot” update.
