Pick your top three !
0 voters
For me, Staff Group Labels is a massive deal.
There’s also lots of little improvements both to process and output that will probably go unnoticed until you … err… notice them.
Of the listed features: having a piano keyboard onscreen means I don’t have to use a USB keyboard with my laptop; and the ‘endless bar Insert mode’ is going to be super useful.
Do you mouse the notes in then using the on screen piano keyboard? I’ll try that later on my laptop, seems clumsy but maybe I can leave the mini MIDI behind.
For me #1 is the the Key Editor/AUTOMATION in write mode. I’ve been using NotePerformer in favor of BBCSO (which I have to before I create final stems) purely to avoid the uglyness of humanization, but now it’s a breeze.
Oh and by the way - YES on staff group labels, and the other setup mode improvements. Having concerto soloists separated out is much clearer now from Solo players.
In Others, I meant the crosshairs in Engrave mode. Simple, but astonishing. And Staff group labels.
Hell I didn’t even notice the cross hairs. - dang, that’s awfully useful.
Yes. You can select the duration with one hand and tap the notes with the other. Perhaps it’s a feat of prestidigitation, but not that different from doing it with a physical device.
Oh, and: Project Templates. Yes, we could use documents before, or import Master pages, but it just makes everything simpler.
Just keep finding new little things - the Jump bar actually remembers what you called last, even after closing the app and restarting. This is one of those annoying little programming tasks that us software developers usually don’t bother with. The fact that one of the team took the time to implement writing this to a state file (not the project file mind you, an application state file which is generally an annoying thing to have to do) really shows the care the team puts into this. Kudo’s to whoever did that!
Love the jump bar. inserting a pedal retake suddenly got about 400% faster.
I like the concept behind the library manager, but admit I find it a bit overwhelming.
Yeah I did too at first, this morning just used it and it’s really beautiful. Anthony’s video describes it perfectly.
1 second tutorial
Re: Jump bar - on second thought the remembering is part of the neat ‘favorites’ feature it has. Not all apps that have quick search enable this! Only one I can think of is Excel and probably the other Office apps.
One of the jaw-droppingly great features is Instrument Filter Overlay. Whether a choral+rhythm arrangement or full orchestration, it is MASSIVELY HELPFUL.
Other: an application icon that is no longer too large!
Detractors would of course argue that Finale and Sibelius both have this type of thing already: but I believe it highlights Dorico’s greatest feature, which is:
Nearly all of the features are fulfilments of user requests made here and elsewhere. People may still be upset about this and that not being included, but they should rest assured that it’s on the list.
I also LOVE the crosshairs. I do hope that in a maintenance update we can choose the corner of the object that the crosshairs issue from, however, as their implementation is not quite consistent. Some items use the left and others the right side which isn’t always helpful.
Basically anything that you might do multiple times in a row got that much easier, since the most recent command stays loaded! It’s these little clever optimizations that make me love Dorico so much.
Quite right. Thought I will add, Sibelius allows only one “focus” set at a time. Dorico now gives us unlimited filter selections, written to each individual piece of music. I LOVE IT.
My productivity has gone up 10 fold. I’ve said it elsewhere, for the first time I don’t feel like a MIDI programmer or an engraver, but a composer. The instrument filter is a big part of that.
Seriously, my poor little StreamDeck is sitting here, dark and silent — and completely unused. Which, as it turns out, has sped up my workflow immeasurably.
This is the one thing I loved so much about Sibelius. Compared to other notation programs, it genuinely got out of its own way and drastically shortened the distance between inspiration and notation.
But Dorico 4 has now upped the ante SO VERY FAR as to leave the also-rans in the dust behind it.
The Jump bar is getting a lot of love. I wonder, do people know about the Jump Bar alias feature? I happened to hear about this yesterday on a thread here (long gone now, lol …)
You can also define a jump bar alias directly in the jump bar. Just add =alias to the end of the string you enter in the jump bar to add an alias for that command.
