:-) Share Some Laughs? — "Best" Ideas for (ahem) "Improving" (i.e., ruining) Dorico

Dorico
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Hi everybody,

I’m not sure, if this is the right topic, but I have also 2 items for the wishlist.

  1. more granular color options for notes (e.g. making just the dot of a dotted note completely transparent)
  2. random pedal note generator (I would like to make my music more unpredictable)

Crossing my fingers for the next updates!

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84

I am very slightly horrified that you seem to have taken this thread seriously.

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85

After all, it’s almost Halloween.

86

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. This is a state of the dart feature, it’s essentially an ideal human proof-reader that works on two axes (good/bad) and an imaginary meta-axis (ugly).

At extreme settings of good, the user will be rewarded for writing anything. A span of two octaves for each hand for the piano is a given. An inexaustible supply of mutes for tubas exists and it takes no time to change between them. Bass clarinets never hitting a low note is as it should be. Treble clef top line F 64ths repetitions (q=104) at ppppp for the 3rd trombone is not out of the question.

At extreme settings of bad, things get tricky. Why this key signature. I don’t like the way you’ve brought in this high G# in the flute solo. This first entrance for the horn is too stressful. I don’t know why you’re writing pizzicatos for an outdoors gig. This was the worst time to demand a3 for the trumpets. I won’t bother to check the harp part. Write it again, CAREFULLY this time. Why are your violas sitting and looking around playing nothing?

Finally the ugly meta-axis can at any time modify the current assessment, either through toxic positivity or devastating nihilism from an artistic perspective. To be more in-tune with accepted critique formats, this modifier’s output must be cryptic and terse. For example, at the extreme minimum setting of ugly AND good, a sample output could be “Masterpiece. Heartwarming.” when analyzing a Bmajor maestoso piece for a fanfare of 7 year olds, with trumpets being occupied at around the bottom of the staff.

At extreme settings of ugly and bad, a projected output for an 8 voice double choir fugue featuring a stretto that manages a double cannon could be “Are you sure you are bringing something new to the table? Yawn.”

Because, let’s face it. Dorico is an excellent tool that allows us to freely (easily and beautifully too) capture our creative endeavours on a digital sheet of paper. But what is really lacking horribly in the program is the encouragement, or the clipping of wings, the strike that shapes the iron. And that’s exactly what GBU (the good the bad and the ugly) could offer. It’s beyond AI.

Hopefully in a hot-fix? Shouldn’t be too hard to implement.

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87

But this is the Finale forum or isn’t it?

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88

Yes, they are all here now.

89

You got me! :open_mouth:

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90

Music educators call that an “organ lesson.”

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Snarky AI composition tutoring. Curb Your Musical Enthusiasm, perhaps? Marvelous.

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92

Dorico should be tied to all your devices such that it stops you from working in Dorico until you fill those activity rings, log your medications, take out the trash, etc. Conversely you can’t leave Dorico, use your phone email etc. until you finish at least 8 more bars today. Is tied to your smart TV - it knows. It plays tutorial videos softly while you sleep, or after 10 minutes of the news or more than 2 political commercials, whichever come first.

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93

That would be a normal daily yield for Anton von Webern (if memory serves me) …

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94

I propose a tournament to all Doricians, Michael : enter in Dorico the Drei kleine Stücke für cello und piano op.11 in under ten minutes.
The winner will receive a box of Cyril Lignac teddy bears (a pure delight).

Nounours

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That would be 1% of real time composing … hm …

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Renamed:

DaticoTM

“We track more than just your beaming preferences”

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Yes. But, il faut les mériter ces Nounours !
It would be a tournament comparable to ‘blitz’ in chess… :crazy_face:

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Community building - your preferences will be regularly and randomly swapped with those of another Dorico user until we finally agree on standards just to stop the madness. Best case result: There shall never more be Vb_______. Metric pages sizes shall serve for all and necessary sizes will be always be in stock at every local printer. Worst case: time signatures are outlawed, insert mode is always on, real time entry only, must play every stave at once.

99

Loving this thread! Some ideas come to mind:

  • Finale defaults emulation mode – for the hopeless nostalgics who actually love the aesthetics of the ancient default appearance you get in Finale.
  • Sibelius tuplet limitation mode – facilitate the learning progress for Sibelius converts who have spent decades getting used to the idea that you can’t paste anything if it “intersects a tuplet”, as well as not supporting nested tuplets etc.
  • Amateur playback mode – helpful for those who want to get an idea of how their scores will sound like if performed by amateur musicians, featuring options like:
    • pitch drift for choir
    • quarter note triplet plus eight note triplet instead of dotted eight note plus sixteenth note
    • single players occasionally playing in a G.P.
    • omitted entrances
    • impromptu accelerandos in open pizzicato passages for strings
    • shakiness of start and likelyhood of retrying it from the top
      etc …
  • Stemlets warning dialog – as stemlets is a highly controversial topic in the engraving community, Dorico should take preventive steps to avoid nasty quarrels in niche forums like Music Engraving Tips on Facebook.
  • Integrate Mr. Clippy – who doesn’t love the aesthetics of the 2000?
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Some additional default tweaking ideas building on the concept that Dorico should avoid making assumptions about the music you want to write:

  • Default to having no beams at all – we don’t want to force the common practices down your throat, but rather encourage you to express yourself in your own unique and crazy manner.
  • Default to a 1x1 m^2 paper size – sticking to the SI base unit is after all the most scientific way to go. This might even help aliens visiting our planet to feel more welcome as we don’t know anything about their printers nor their standard paper formats yet.
  • Default to an empty Page Template set – meaning that you get to decide beforehand exactly how you want to configure the headers, page numbers and music frames before writing a single note (assuming that you actually want to utilize western music notation to communicate your music).
  • All colors should default to hex #808080 – this provides a safe gray middle ground, encouraging experimentation with creative color palettes. This applies to paper background, notes, text, staff objects etc.
  • Default to the 1-EDO intonation system – after more than 400 years of using the same old 12-EDO, it is time to start encouraging prospective composers to start fresh and to think outside the box. Better to start out simple and introduce tonal complexity as your creative progress moves along.
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100

Ok, one more for the dedicated users, but also for our new Finale buds:
A Random Dot-or-Tie Generator. Want a dotted eighth? Well, how about a dotted 16th-tied-to-a-thirty-second-tied-to-a-sixteenth? Or (my personal favorite) a dotted whole note that appears as six quarters tied together.
Want a tie? Get a dot. Want a dot? Get a tie. Sometimes. And, if you hit Force Duration, a pop-up with a hologram of Elaine Gould will appear to tell you why you are wrong (that would actually be kind of cool!).

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101

Oh, I see you’ve discovered the “Is there a good jazz library” thread. :wink:

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102

Lol! Is there an actual reference to this supposed feature in that thread or are you just giving jazz musicians a gentle sarcastic needling? :wink:

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