Suggestions for key editor and orchestration

Dorico
1

So while I have owned Dorico for about three years, I’ve only just managed to go through and write a whole arrangement. This led me to a couple of points that I feel would help improve especially the key editor and orchestration work.

First, one issue with middle-mouse pan in the score view is that it also responds like the left mouse button: if clicking over an item, it selects it. And if “Enable note pitch and rhythmic position editing using the mouse” is enabled, trying to pan while pointing at a note will drag the note instead of panning, as if it was a left button click. I assume this is a bug, but nevertheless I’ll add it as a suggestion to fix.

Key editor

I still feel most comfortable looking at a piano roll alongside the score when trying to work out harmony or certain rhythmic patterns. As such, I have a couple of QOL suggestions:

  • Allow middle-mouse pan in the key editor, just like in the score view.
  • When locking instruments, allow switching between primary instruments by double clicking a note of that instrument, or by selecting a note on the staff of one of the locked instruments (e.g. what happens when instruments aren’t locked).
  • When copying notes (alt+drag) from multiple locked instruments, add each note to the instrument it was copied from. Currently, all copied notes are added to the primary instrument only.
  • Add chord and marker “tracks” (similar to the playing techniques bar) to see the chord symbols and rehearsal marks in the key editor as well.
  • Add some kind of visual indicator of bar lines (as in double and repeat bar lines).
  • Add a visual indicator of repeat bar regions.
  • Allow for entering and editing tuplets in the key editor area. Currently, it’s not possible to move notes with the tuplet in the key editor, just the notes themselves.

I would also like to have a separate full-screen key editor, or at least the ability to maximize the lower zone and fully hide the score view. If only to optimize performance. I often have two windows open, one regular, and one with the key editor. But the second window is just the lower zone dragged up to fill the view—the score view is still behind it, which can, in my experience with large scores, reduce Dorico’s overall performance since both windows still have to be processed and rendered.

Orchestration

And now for the big one :wink:. I have trouble writing piano sketches, because the sooner I can hear the proper instruments play the melody and accompaniment, the better (while I still love the piano as a regular instrument, I simply can’t stand it while sketching). However, regardless of which DAW or notation software is used, orchestrating a sketch is still a lot of work, and not very efficient while sketching.

Recently, I’ve found Divisimate, which inspired me, but is not quite capable of what I would like and doesn’t work with Dorico. But it did start me thinking about its capabilities.

Everyone knows what short scores are, and they’re pretty cool and efficient. It’s technically possible to write them in Dorico, using text elements to indicate instruments (i.e. + Trumpets, - Violins), but they can’t be played back properly—it’s still multiple voices on one or more staves, often linked to a piano.

What I would really love to see is the ability to actually make those markers functional. Let Dorico route the notes from one voice to one or more instruments (i.e. players) in the project. So, for example:

  1. Select a note that belongs to a “voice”.
  2. Open the “orchestration popover” and type + Trumpet 1. This will add a “+ Trp. 1” marker to the selected voice in the score (alternatively, use + Trumpets to route the voice to all trumpets immediately). Optionally add a tag to transpose the result up or down to fit within the instrument’s register.
  3. Dorico will assign (route) the voice to the instrument in the flow called “Trumpet 1”.
  4. Hit play, and Trumpet 1 will now play that voice, instead of the sketch staff.
  5. Later in the composition, type - Trumpet 1 so that the Trumpet 1 player will no longer play that voice from that point on.

Then have the option to “explode” the notes later, so that Dorico automatically writes out all the notes to all the (selected) staves according to the short score markers for further refining and final orchestration.

I now discovered that, while searching for examples as I’m writing this, someone else had suggested this feature as well: Feature Request: Sketching Staves with Inline Instrument Assignments (Short Score Mode).

Well, I’ll just add my 2 cents and +1 to it :smile:

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