So, I personally love Dorico. I have used Musescore and Finale at different points of my life and I am so glad I switched to Dorico. It is immensely faster and easier to navigate, while having some crazy features like condensing and such. However, there is still a good amount of features that people still desire to be in Dorico. So, I am wondering, as a Dorico user, is there any way to help the Dorico team with updates or anything. What does the team at Dorico wants and needs from the community?
Itās very kind of you to think of us in that way, Mitchell. There are lots of ways you can help us. Here are five big ones:
- Spread the word: tell all your musician friends about Dorico and encourage them to give it a try. Growing our user base and selling more copies of Dorico is the single most important factor in ensuring that we can continue developing Dorico to make it better and better for our users.
- Update if youāre not on the latest version: if youāre still using Dorico 4 or earlier, buy an update to Dorico 5, as the update revenue really helps us. Likewise, if youāre using Dorico SE, consider upgrading to Dorico Elements, or perhaps even if youāre using Dorico Elements, think about upgrading to Dorico Pro.
- Try to help out fellow users: whether itās here on the forum, or on social media, or in the real world, providing assistance to other Dorico users helps us because any problem that the community can solve on its own is a problem we donāt need to weigh in on.
- Share your expertise: if you have expertise in a particular area of music ā whether itās a specific instrument, idiom, historical period, theoretical principle, etc. ā share that knowledge with us, or make your expertise known to us, so that if we need to call upon people with specific expert knowledge, we know where to find them.
- Tell us what you want to see: we have no shortage of feedback from users via many different avenues, but weāre always happy to see more. Share your requirements with us: donāt assume that we must have already heard it before. Much better that we see the same requirements expressed multiple times rather than not get to hear about them because you assume we have seen it all before.
You can make Dorico score videos and post them on youtube, etc.
You can boycott Avid (I do) and tell everyone that you boycott Avid.
I do this all the time and, although many seem interested, the effort required to switch from Finale or Sibelius which theyāve often been using for years is considerable and I havenāt yet made as many converts as I might have hoped though I persist! Another thing is it seems that many are even now simply unaware of Dorico because the others (plus perhaps MuseScore) are so institutionalised, it takes time to break the mindset. Of course I was a Sibelius user for almost 15 years before switching which I always knew I would once the playback features had reached an acceptable level. I guess one thing that can certainly ease the transition is as good as possible MusicXML import so the older app. becomes redundant. I have converted every single one of my works (20-30 hrs of music) which of course took a while. Needless to say, MusicXML export capabilities from Finelius is also an important part of the equation and if there are limitations there, thereās little Dorico can do.
Iād highlight helping other Dorico users on this forum. Frankly, Iām amazed that Daniel has time to do anything other than responding to all the posts on this forum.
And the āwishlistā of requested features grows exponentially, even compared to the astoundingly impressive list of features added in each new version.
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This made me smile, and reminds me of āyahooglingā which is my preferred search term. ![]()
I try to talk it up when I can. In the jazz composer/arranger community, most people havenāt gotten over the inertia of leaving software they are already comfortable using, but Dorico at least has some name recognition now and a few converts. Here was an interesting FB thread from a week ago, that had a few heavies chiming in, including the head of the BMI Composers Workshop, a winner of the DownBeat critics poll, and several Grammy-nominated musicians, so at least Dorico is on their radar. I tried to advocate for Dorico, LOL:
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The ability to extend the input caret through multiple staves and input a trumpet (or saxophone, or trombone) section all at once, is always popular among arrangers too:
Itās one of my favorite features, and I use it every day. I showed it to a colleague once and explained how much it speeds up the process and he was gobsmacked. Iāve converted at least two of my colleagues that I know of, and I talk it up whenever Iām in the right company, including a music conference this summer.
The other big thing that always attracts people is the beautiful default output. Even Doricoās worst scores, straight out of the box without manual intervention using factory defaults, are better than some of the other programsā best scores.
Thanks for the answer! I will definitely will do all of that!
I do make some score transcription videos with Dorico on YouTube. Maybe I should try to advertise why I use Dorico for those transcription. I will do that more! Thanks for the advice!
exactly! Iām not that interested in the technicalities of the engraving, simply wanting software which delivers with minimal user intervention so I can spend more time on the playback side which for me is the most interesting. In this respect, Dorico generally delivers in spades! Newly created scores generally require virtually no work in this respect ā only imported ones can sometimes have the odd layout issue but there are options which in most cases can sort things out pretty quickly.
Is it just me or is that a bit ironic?
I donāt think so⦠Itās the exact reaction Iāve experienced in a more classical operatic world.
I think most musicians probably just want to play and write music, and donāt really want to think about their notation software. If it works then itās fine, and they donāt want to bother changing. It often takes another external pressure to force a change, like subscription pricing, university supported software, compatibility with other musicians or publishers, etc. Even superior features, output, workflow, and audio can be a tough sell against that sort of inertia. Dorico at least is gaining some name recognition now though. For years I heard, āDorico, whatās that?ā and that seems to have changed, at least among professionals if not students.
Yes like iRealPro ![]()
- Share your expertise: if you have expertise in a particular area of music ā whether itās a specific instrument, idiom, historical period, theoretical principle, etc. ā share that knowledge with us, or make your expertise known to us, so that if we need to call upon people with specific expert knowledge, we know where to find them.<<
So far not many arrangers of barbershop harmony are using Dorico, but Iām continuing to mention it to new arrangers, and Iāve developed project templates that I share via my website. If I can ever assist with barbershop music, do call on me.
I must say that thanks to a relatively small number of users including your good self, most questions are answered incredibly quickly on this forum ā Iāve rarely seen anything like this elsewhere. Iāve often seen a query I know I could help with but which has already been dealt with. So although my 2.3k posts is a not entirely insignificant number, I more often am relegated to more specialist playback or library issues. Of course my relative lack of knowledge of and interest in engraving issues means I tend to bypass such queries anywayā¦
I have used that feature from time to time, but my workflow normally has me entering a line, then doing copy-to-staff-below, and harmonizing manually. However, this week I am engraving from a hand-written score that has lots of block notes, section by section (trombones, trumpets, saxes). I am wearing out that feature on this project.
I think the point is that Dorico has lots of tools that can be huge time-savers in the right circumstances. The more one learns about these tools, the greater the advantage over older notation software.
Off topic, but, Is it worth going to their conventions as a composer, in order to learn the compositional style/techniques? It might be useful for networking but I am not sure about the educational area (they are hobbyist, not academic). I used to sing in this style and have wanted to try writing for the genre - and in Dorico of course.
