Hello All! My name is Morgan, I’m a professional media composer, orchestrator, and score producer based in SoCal. At the beginning of the year, I switched from Sibelius to Dorico and it is truly a match made in heaven - I couldn’t be happier! Dorico is the future of music notation, and that future is here now, at least in my opinion
That said, in my orchestration workflow, I have come across a few issues that could be potential bugs, and some feature requests for future updates or new releases.
POSSIBLE BUGS
Engrave Mode Text Justification: In my master templates, I add a text frame at the bottom of the layout that I toggle to be right justified. When I save the layout changes, everything appears to be normal. If I save that project as a template (which I prefer instead of duplicating a project, or the “save as” method), every time I create a new project, the text justifies left and I have to manually edit the justification. This can happen once, or in some cases several times when editing a project.
Condensing Issues with Auxiliary Instruments: This one may be user error. In my master template, I use condensing. For example, I usually have 4 trombones in a large orchestral instrumentation. Often, I will add a Bass Trombone to the 4th Trombone player. I condense such that Trombones 1 & 2 condense on the same staff, and that Trombones 3 & 4 condense on one staff. Now, when inputting notes in Gallery mode, if I add music to the Bass Trombone Player, it breaks the condensing in the condensed score so that 3.4 and Bass Trombone are then on separate staves. I would prefer 3.4 to remain condensed and for the Bass Trombone to stay on the Trombones 3.4 staff. Similar issues occur throughout projects and workarounds are quite tedious.
FEATURE REQUESTS
It would be great to have the option to create a Folder containing the Dorico Project file when saving, similar to most DAWs (Logic for instance can save either as a package file, or as a folder containing the .logicx project). That way, when exporting PDFs, it would automatically choose that folder, and one wouldn’t have to create a containing folder manually.
The typical notehead style used for suspended cymbal in an orchestral setting is the Default notehead while Dorico’s default for suspended cymbals is an X notehead. This is most likely due to the fact that the default sus. cym. in Dorico is extracted from a drum kit. So, in a future update, it would be great to have two sus. cyms. to choose from; the one that already exists, and one that conforms to standard orchestral practices.
Thanks so much in advance for any feedback and thoughts you might have! Cheers!
@DanielMuzMurray Thanks so much for the warm welcome! And gotcha, I didn’t know that. If you’re able to comment, will Condensing expand to allow for this type of auxiliary doubling in the future?
I think the reason for #1 with the text frame is what’s happening in the master page. If you put text in a frame, format it how you want, then remove the text to make the frame blank again, you lose the formatting. In the master page, make sure you’ve set the text formatting as you want it.
Have you added the frame to the layout directly, creating a page override? Or are you editing the master page?
Please allow me to add my own welcome to the forum, @morganfatormusic.
I don’t think we do have the suspended cymbal in any drum set percussion kits, so we can probably reasonably easily change this in future, rather than add an extra version. I’ve made a note of it and will take a look at some point.
@dspreadbury Thank you so much for the warm welcome, and for taking the time to reply; the outreach is greatly appreciated! I also appreciate you marking this down and being willing to take a look. I will certainly add feedback and there as I continue to use the application, but truly, I couldn’t be happier with Dorico. It’s simply a work of genius! Cheers!
