What is Dorico's user base and how do you use it?

Dorico
21

To work efficiently, I need the followings:

  • condensing
  • figured bass
  • German functional symbols
  • contemporary graphics
  • a reasonable MIDI editor in Dorico
  • customised microtonality
  • customisable staves
  • cutaway hiding staff
  • the more customisable notation and playback options
  • video export
  • vector graphic export
  • graphic import
  • Korean-text-supported lyric input system
    and so on.

I was lecturer and guest researcher at several universities. Currently, I am concentrating on my composition, arrangements, writing modulation books and computer music books and organising symposiums on spatial sound arts. I am 47 years old and do not know what I may do further. I have no interest in guitar music, but in future, I may compose pieces for guitar. I tried to write for accordion with Finale. I learned the instrument techniques and notation with sound. It was hard to implement the required notation symbols in Finale. It was time-wasting.

Why did I move from Finale to Dorico?

  1. I can use more time for music.
  2. The developers in Dorico are more open mind and communicate with users.
  3. They implement broad spectra of the field of music.

There are diverse individuals in the world. A complete solution for music notation with engraving, playback and demonstration feature is highly required to save time and to increase productivity.

I would be happy that the developers investigate more effort to implement more professional tools in Dorico.

22

Robert Langslet’s General usage and reaction to the upgrade is so close to my own that I’m just going to quote it here.

I’m a composer and arranger. I love Dorico. The main value that I get out of it is:

  1. The creators/developers have obviously read Behind Bars, and they care > :slight_smile:> . (In other words, they are very very knowledgeable about the innumerable rules of music engraving and automate as much of it as possible)

  2. Condensing is an absolute breakthrough for me. Saves tons of time.

  3. The flexibility of setup mode with regard to layouts is amazing for my workflow.

  4. The power of Play mode to do DAW like things is totally new in the notation software world. All musicians working on computers come from the DAW side or the notation side, usually as a result of their background. I come from the notation side, so this is a big improvement in what I’m able to do.

That’s about it to be concise. Dorico is a total breakthrough for me and I’m thrilled about it.

23

I am a composer and a sound engineer/classical music producer.

To maybe some people surprise, I don’t care too much about playback in dorico, as I am separating these two fields of work.
If I want decent playback, I’ll go to a real DAW of my choice.
That being said I know how crucial decent playback is in many parts of the composing world, especially for commercial purposes.

For my composition and arrangements I need quick and reliable note entry which looks beautiful out of the box.
Write, engrave and setup mode are where I am home and happy.

As I am composing contemporary, I am missing some features, but with dorico 3.1 I was basically able to switch fully.

Since I am arranging and composing varieties of style, I am happy to be able to write for guitar and drums In a for me understandable way and let Dorico do the translation to my musicians (however they require it).

I am thinking music, and Dorico taking off weight in representation during the creative process is invaluable for me.

24

Thank you for this question and answers. It is helpful as I consider what I want my own workflow to be.

25

My uses for Dorico tend to be somewhat varied, and subsequently my praises or critiques of the software end up being equally so. I’m a composer as well as an arranger/engraver/etc. for hire, so nearly every time a major feature is added to Dorico, I end up having need of it at some point, if not right away.

On the one hand, as a composer, everything in the pipeline from getting ideas onto the page to putting pages in front of players is relevant to me. I do occasionally write for orchestra, so condensing is a massive time-saver.

Figured bass you’d think I’d only need for engraving work, but, funnily enough, the very first piece I ever composed in Dorico was an early-baroque-instrumentation contemporary opera type thing, and having had the figured bass feature back then would’ve been a huge time saver (well, I suppose if we’re being honest, there are some things the figured bass tool can’t do at the moment, so I don’t know if I could have actually used it for said piece, but that’s another post for another time).

Contemporary graphical pursuits don’t really come up all that much for me in my composing, but some of the more standard contemporary idioms like aleatoric boxes, incomplete tuplets, irrational time signatures (and the combination of those two), and other sorts of things do pop up from time to time, some of which are currently supported, some not.

On the other hand, as an engraver, I do a whole lot of anything. One week maybe it’s new editions of 16th-century motets from manuscript/partbooks (which obviously has a very specific set of notational and software requirements), the next week it’s string quartet plus guitar (with tabs) arrangements aimed at the wedding market (obviously with very different requirements). Basically, I need it all, and every time a new version comes out with at least one feature as big as figured bass included, I jump on it. I pretty much have to. Sure, there have been updates where something I’ve wanted or needed wasn’t included, and things I didn’t care as much about were given priority, but exactly like benwiggy said, you pay for my figures, I’ll pay for your plops :wink:

26

The Version History is always an interesting read, especially the smaller bits at the end for which the team doesn’t put out a dedicated video. The features that don’t make the headlines often have just as big an impact on my daily practice.

27

Hi Lew! Good to see you on here. Hope all is well and glad that you’re also enjoying the software.

28

I didn’t mean any offense, but likewise I have never heard of any of those people either. Surely you will admit that is a rather, how shall we say, narrow area of focus? I am involved quite a bit with music theory and have never heard of figured bass being part of that pedagogy. I suspect in that case we are talking the theory of music from that period. Study of history is perfectly valid. Personally my tastes find very little to interest me in the period between JS Bach and Tchaikovsky/Dvorak.

If it is one’s area of interest, that’s fine with me. I just think some of us are surprised to see figured bass at such a high priority. But I’m not complaining. There is something for everybody to like in this release.

29

“I’ve never heard of it, so it’s obscure.”

30

Really? I had 4 semesters of theory as an undergrad and it seems like all we did was counterpoint and figured bass, LOL. Enough so that I can still read it and understand it even though I’ve never once had a use for it professionally in the past 20 years since. Even if it only helps Dorico compete in the education market, then I’m all for it, as the education market largely (in my experience) is switching to MuseScore.

31

To echo other sentiments expressed here: update cycles are a give and take. We pay for some features we won’t use and others that are very important to us. I’d wager two things:
1.) very few users use ALL the features of Dorico; most people only have a need for a subset of features.
2.) this is the same for EVERY program you use. Seriously, think about it: are you disgruntled with Apple for updating Logic Pro with all the live looping features when all you use it for is classical mockups? Probably not. Most of us on this forum would probably never touch that feature… but it doesn’t make the recent update a bad one… just one less relevant to us. Do you use every feature of photoshop? InDesign? MS Word? Excel? Not even close. Even power users don’t have a need for literally everything.

We’ve all experienced an update that was more relevant, and another that was less relevant to us. That’s just how the cycle goes. When it is less-relevant to us it doesn’t make it a bad update! And as we always express: no one is ever forced to upgrade.

I’m another one of the lucky classical musicians that falls right in the middle of the bell curve and has been essentially fully-operational since D1. I realize what a privileged position this is. That said, there have been bumps along the road for me too. It was a loooong time before we could nudge specific lyric baselines, for instance. I still can’t control certain barline situations as I’d like and have to export pages as SVGs to affinity designer to tweak them and then render my PDF. I will never have a need for guitar, percussion sets, and a few of the other larger features but I don’t begrudge the dev. team for working on them. Perhaps I’m naïve but it’s still exciting for me to see all these industry-leading developments and I’m happy to support the effort.

32

As conductor, arranger and orchestrator, condensing is one of my favorite feature in Dorico.
I’m very happy to have clef and transposition overide feature because I do a lot of scores for windbands.
I would have been very happy to have the figured bass features some years ago when I was studiyng harmony.
I used to enter music in pitch before duration mode with my first software Igor Engraver. This was more natural for me and I want to take a look on the new feature.

I use Dorico only for written music, and I don’t need DAWS features. Noteperformer is a fast way to have decent sound for mockups.
Dorico covers nearly all my needs. I work increadibly faster than I did before for a better and more beautiful result.

I like the way of editing music, espacially for arranging. I like percussions features and the way of doing multi instruments parts.
I never use tab notation, chord or jazz notation.

As say Romanos401, we don’t need all the features because Dorico is made for different kind of music and usage.
How many Excel users are using the macro or the financial analysis feature ?
Many softwares are probably confronted with this.

33

The point is that every bit of software will have things that some users really need, and others they don’t. The trick for any application is to get at least one of the constituencies served. Everyone is disappointed when their own special need isn’t met - that’s natural. The time to worry is when software has improvements that nobody wants! I don’t use Tab, but am glad for my lute and other guitar-brethren that it is there.

I’ll be plunking down my $$ shortly.

34

And, given all of that, I’m sure the $60 update is worth it to you for the “speedy-entry” alone!

35

One of my work colleagues has a different version, which he claims was a quote from his 9 year old daughter: “I’ve never eaten mushrooms, I don’t like them”.

36

Very true!

Time is money. It’s hard to say what I’d be willing to pay for something like, for example, “smart” split points for real-time piano MIDI recording. Easily 10 times that, for sure.

37

Snakeyes021 said a lot of it for me: “I end up having need of it at some point, if not right away.”

When I am not a drummer for example, is also when I find the some of the drum features most useful and expand my writing for them. I learn and it helps keep me honest. You could call me pragmatic when it comes to engraving, but dang it, a beautiful score (or maybe even a chart) is a piece of artwork and a joy to use. I need to find a printing service nearby that stocks appropriately sized paper.

And like was said, if you’ll pay for my scripting … Truth be told, I feel like given the burn rate for a first class team, that paying the upgrade price just for the “thinking about it” time is worth it. Seems like none of the other notation products have done anything close to this kind of innovative thinking in ages.

I’d like to give a +100 to Dankreider’s comment about time being money. I’ve at least halved my time of working with “Product A” because of the cumulative benefits of a lot of little things.

38

Thanks for all the replies. It may prove useful to the team with the thoughts going forward on how Cubase and Dorico may liaise with one another.
Maybe I’m capturing the Zeitgeist but I’m just watching this latest film from Spitfire ‘Composer Magazine’ and my original question could have been lifted straight out of the interview.

39

There is music theory and then there is music theory. If your study was music of the distant past, then it wouldn’t be surprising to find the figured bass references. My study of theory is mostly jazz and other contemporary music. I have a stack of texts 3-1/2 feet high (literally) and I’m quite sure there aren’t any references to figured bass in any of them. I’m not saying one is more valid than the other. I’m saying figured bass is completely irrelevant to many of us and it really is possible to go through 45 years of arranging and never have any contact with figured bass.

If you are looking for somebody arrange music to be appropriate for the baroque period, surely I am the wrong guy. :slight_smile:

40

Precisely. It is obscure to me.

If it floats your boat, that’s OK with me.