I’ve been ‘having’ to not use Dorico for almost a year, for a couple of reasons.
( @dspreadbury )
- I teach at a local Performing Arts High School, and some (most) of the students are using MuseScore…so, I figured I better know what’s going on
- I had to get a lot of scores out to, and work with, some Sibelius users and make changes, revise old versions, etc. etc.
Now, I’ve been both a Dorico-fan as well as a Dorico-critic. Coming from ‘Sibelius-world’, there were some aspects of Dorico that were a tough adjustment, and then the program became wonderful once ‘pitch-before-duration’ became a reality.
Having been away from Dorico over the last year or so of updates (..I vowed to stick to seeing what was going on with MuseScore so I could understand where students were coming from)…it’s fantastic to return to and upgrade through the various version of ‘Ver. 6.’ and find that Dorico is just running so beautifully and even some of the little ‘niggly’ things such as Ties, Dots, etc. have somehow been refined and are now so well implemented!
What I learnt from being away:
- MuseScore is, well, actually a real pain and nowhere near what you could call ‘professional notation software’ this day and age. And, I don’t want to support a company that has dubious investors and dubious intentions about their publishing aims, etc. And, the company goes off-line once in awhile, which means that people don’t have access to the software instruments they’ve paid for and that reside in the MuseScore eco-system.
- Sibelius is still very nice, and when you know it well, very quick to work in. But…given Avid’s ventures into AI now with what they’re doing with ProTools, and looking at the whole Sibelius subscription scene (…whoa! have you seen their new prices!..damn)..I wouldn’t want to be stuck in that eco-system.
- And while trying to use Sibelius, I was victimized by their crazy, inconsistent signing-in process a couple of times. It’ll drive you mad. You can’t work, can use the program, have to get back to Sibelius Ultimate, etc. etc.
It makes you really appreciate Dorico, Steinberg, and Yamaha.
Like, it’s so nice to be able to input music into more than once stave at a time for chords, spend barely any time at all making format changes before printing parts, using the great PopOver system, the ‘J’ key, using SMful fonts as you wish, etc. etc. etc.
You all know.
The only thing I liked better in Sibelius is the way in which ‘Instrument Changes’ are show in the score. You only need one Staff for One Musician who will play numerous instruments, instead of having two or more staves dedicated to just one musician alone when you’re working in ‘Write Mode’. (those extra staves take up a lot of room and can become confusing sometimes as to where you actually trying to input music)
It takes time away from something you love to realize what you’ve been missing!
And, Cubase is always amazing as well. Solid software from Steinberg!
OK…enough…have to actually go do some Dorico work now for a current project!
See you all around!