I’ve just finished a couple of biggish projects and love Dorico. It’s been stable, predictable, has excellent support (Daniel has carried his massive work ethic with him to Steinberg) and I think it’s about 80% right.
But that’s the point. I need my notation package to support my work in radio, TV, film, solo composition, collaborative composition, performance, electronica, arrangement, musical theatre and so on. And I’m totally certain I’m not the only person on here that wants it so. Rob is wrong when he says the problems is that people can’t hear what they write. I can and many of my colleagues can. But I need my notation package to be more than top notch music engraving.
If there is a design weakness with Dorico, it’s that the brief was for engraving. So, as has been discussed elsewhere, page layout can trump notation. Yes, it can easily do piano duets but copying, aliasing, moving pages around and so on don’t work optimally, if at all.
I guess I’m saying that I just want Logic, Ableton, SuperCollider, ProTools etc to have better scorewriting. And I’d like it to be Dorico. And I know that’s not going to happen soon.
With apologies to those who think otherwise, this is about workflow, not personal abilities. If you’ve ever sat in a film scoring session and watched the Sibelius monkeys producing parts at the last minute, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s not top notch engraving that’s important but you’d better be able to test your score against the edits before you start printing out the parts. Music, by the way, that is only ever played once, never published and left on the floor by performers to be swept up as detritus after the session.
I expect all the people lobbying for this joint project are also making their wishes known on the Cubase Forum.
I’m sure the Dorico Team and Steinberg will do what they consider in the best interest of their products and company–at the proper time.
Notation apps and DAWS are just tools. People can use them appropriately, or otherwise. If somebody claims “they can compose music” when they can’t imagine what anything sounds like before their computer “plays” to them, that just plain misrepresentation IMHO - and of course that doesn’t apply to every contemporary composer, whatever genre they work in, but it does apply to too many wannabes. It doesn’t mean that computer playback isn’t useful when it’s used appropriately, either, of course.
As I said in another post, I don’t believe there will be a “good” solution to integrating DAWS and notation software until somebody squares the circle between MIDI and a different data model for notation - whatever that is, but it certainly isn’t the current version of MusicXML.
It seems to me that Steinberg are working on exactly that integration problem already - Dorico has a very different internal data model from any of the other major notation apps, and they are plugging the Cubase playback engine into Dorico. It seems to be a bigger task than they first estimated though - which doesn’t really surprise me!
But if you “want it done the other way round,” if might be interesting to know why “integrating product A into product B” is good but “integrating product B into product A” isn’t. I suspect the “reason” is no different from the early days of motoring - as Henry Ford allegedly said, market research 100 years ago would have led to trying to breed faster horses, not designing automobiles.
Progress doesn’t often come from doing what customers say they want. It comes from figuring out what they really want, and offering them something the didn’t realize that they needed until they can see it. Does that sound like “too many customers are wannabe product designers who can’t imagine anything unless it’s in front of their eyes?” Well, maybe … or maybe that just another case of plain misrepresentation!
I am very confused by the world of notation software on two fronts:
the lack of notation fonts. Just do a google search, and take a look at the results you get back. It is astounding that notation software (the field) that has been around for ages, has essentially one look. I am aware that the amazing team developing Dorico took great pains to make the fonts look great, but aside from proportional adjustments, and some curves, it is essentially the same aesthetic that has been used for hundreds of years. I can’t change the font of the time signatures in Dorico. I’ve been doing this in Sibelius for ages. How can one not change a font? Did it seem unimportant to the developers? Since all my scores require a similar stylized aesthetic, I simply cannot use Dorico. Of course I could go in to photoshop/illustrator and play around and change it in there, but that is definitely a happy camper make not. Of course I’m no software developer, so I don’t cant claim I know how much effort it takes to implement such features, but Sibelius (sorry to keep on with the comparison, but its the software I want move from to Dorico, but simply cant because of the TS fonts)
I guess this is the addition to the first point. Why are we still using notation symbols designed like they were in the 1700’s? There are numerous graphic artists and font developers that have knowledge of music notation, it is so difficult (or expensive) to include one that gives some one the feeling that the music was composed in the 21 century? Take a look at Bjork’s new book of arrangements.
I understand that this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but not one notation program has added a modern take on notation. Like, please, no more calligraphy in my score. I would love you for that. From a business perspective, I never understood why none of the major players ever decided to include something like this. Aesthetics are more important than ever these days, I would love to have round note heads. I know in music they told us “note heads are not round”, well I don’t really care. I want my scores to be visual works of art, while simultaneously provoking the player to approach the piece with a different state of mind. And yes, many players have come to me and commend on the visual look of my scores (I never use cursive, even for dynamics) and said that they approached my music in a different way.
This alone, a modern font, easily added, I would even pay extra for, but I also believe that, if a notation software included this, it would so quickly and immediately stand out from the pack. Happy customers, and sets itself ahead of the competitions. What more could you ask for?
I guess I am also off the side that thinks that a notation program should worry so much about playback. While I of course would love all mu spitfire libraries to interact perfectly with articulation switching and seamless dynamics, I know that is a huge undertaking. I believe, from my experience working in the field, that composers who need top level playback, dont rely on their notation programs to provide it. The notation program is a graphic editor. I don’t mind a 20 year old piano sample being played when I do play back. Everything for film scores etc is getting ported to a Logic for either recording or sample-based mock up.
I would think the Steinberg team knows this, and that they also aware that their main demographic is composers who need a highly professional, individually customizable, graphic editor, not an ‘ok’ playback back engine. I bought Dorico the day it came out, in about three days of learning the curve, I found I could not add my own time signatures fonts, not could I have notes without stems. (as in Arvo Pärts ‘Fur Alina’). So I returned to my old notation software and haven’t been back to Dorico since. Those two features have been around for ages in Sibelius, and many composers (and music teacher’s work) needs features like this.
At an education institution where I have the final say in their music department development wondered what software to buy, a big bulk purchase buy. I told them to hold out for Dorico, I bought it first to test, loved it, almost signed the purchase slip for the school, but after my 4 days, realized students couldn’t personalize or create work sheets with stemless notes (at least not without alot of under the hood fiddling).
This is all not complaint. more a wish. I really love Dorico, I love the look, I love the thought put behind it, the team is amazing, Daniel is a saint, but some things that I dont think are such far out requests seem to be lacking. And the priority doesn’t seem to be forward thinking.
I’d be interested to hear from other users. Does the playback system really stress you out, and is that what your number one priority to get going is?
Does anyone else care about the ‘look’ of their score?
Thanks for listening.
I hope I can move to Dorico soon.
I don’t think anyone thinks that Dorico could or should compose for us. But music software may - or may not - have features which are useful in the composing process. IMHO it’s as easy as that. But right now we are in a situations where the three programs which interests me the most: Dorico, Cubase and Steinberg are all really good at ‘something’ - but also have serious shortcomings in other areas. Which leads to the next thing you wrote: “Progress doesn’t often come from doing what customers say they want. It comes from figuring out what they really want, and offering them something the didn’t realize that they needed until they can see it.”
I totally agree.
Meanwhile (#1) - I know many are somehow frustrated that they have to switch between 3 or 4 apps to get things done; things that could have been done in one app of that app existed.
Meanwhile #2: Until that app exists, it would be great if developers would give us what customers want.
As I’ve written earlier, I think Dorico is the most interesting thing that has happened is music software for a long time. But it lacks real time recording, proper tempo and automation editing, due to lack of some essential key commands and functionality (like eg lack of contextual menus everywhere) it also has a somehow steep learning curve for us who don’t use it regularly. And it misses some essential stiff Sibelius has which makes me consider buying Sibelius for the first time while I wait for Dorico to become more mature.
Note that this isn’t a critique against Dorico, Steinberg har an active team working on Dorico, and we see progress from release to release. But I’m personally, I’m torn between Dorico, Cubase, Logic and Sibelius. And I think the most realistic solution; the one that’s most likely to give users like me what we want, is an as full integration between Cubase and Dorico as possible; or rather: a merge. Those who aren’t interested, won’t notice if Dorico would get a lot of “DAW” functions, and Cubase uses wouldn’t notice if the score editor in Cubase got a lot better either. So - any development in the direction of not having to switch between several apps is brilliant. Of course, as a long time Logic users who have invested in Dorico and Cubase this last year, life would become easier for me if Logic would have gotten some og the composing oriented features of Sibelius, the best goodies (notation wise) from Dorico, and the best features from Cubase (freeze and unload samples, expression maps (but ideally based on Articulation IDs), everything related to articulations/CCs/Kontakt/ VI automation etc). Cubase getting the best things from Logic (a unified main window, voice separation tool, window linking, straightforwards finding and assigning of key commands, loads of contextual menus, the Inspector which includes two channel strips, better handling of inserts in channel strips etc) would also help Logic users convert to Steinberg.
But right now I think the main culprit is that developers work with developing, and not (much) with making music, so they don’t have as much time and experience with using those tools as we (the users) have. Therefore, they don’t have a chance to see the many negative/existing side effects of having to rely on 3 or 4 apps. Result: they keep developing each of the apps as separate products, because that’s of course the easiest solution for them.
This might sound overly harsh — hopefully not —, but it goes along with the point some are trying to make.
So you want to make something special, above the crowd, hopefully guided by the tools the crowd uses, without being able to manipulate those tools in any special way? I’d love to be Haubenstock-Ramati too, but, alas, I’m not. Maybe with enough training. That’s like wanting the pen to draw for me.
While it’s unarguably harder to do so, you can change the time signature font in Dorico — to a SMuFL compliant font. Bjork’s book was engraved in Sibelius, I believe, so obviously the problem is not the tool, but skill and the amount of time you put into it. Notengrafik worked with a Berlin design studio to design the font, so the process to get it to work with Sibelius or Dorico would be very similar — Dorico would be easier on the engraver’s part. Everything you described can be done today — even in Dorico —, it’s just that it’s very time consuming and has little to no return. Not to mention that you want very personal solutions, while wishing they came from somebody else.
Here are two WIPs — still a bit rough, but going. I hope to find some time to kick the second project into serious development sometime soon, which is based on my handwriting; there’s a piece of mine that I would love to engrave this way. Hopefully I get can it legible like handwriting fonts usually aren’t. I would have more complex examples, but there are glyphs still missing.
Wow! That means a great deal, coming from you. They’re still very, very rough, as I said, and I have a bit of trouble committing to one project because I’m still looking for the right look to take all the way.
I really must take issue with this assumption. Every single person in the team is a musician of some form or other, involved in composing, arranging, conducting, performing or recording music. We have about 100 years combined experience in the development of music software, and way in excess of that for our experience in using it. (I’ve been using music software since Notator on the Atari ST in 1992). We also all use a very diverse range: Cubase, Logic, Ableton, Max,… If you looked a the Cubase or Wavelab team then you would find the same thing: there are fewer places where you would find as many musicians in one place.
Many posts in this thread can be summarised as, “Why on earth can’t Dorico do X? The developers/Steinberg obviously don’t care about it”
Well, chances are we do care about it. If Dorico doesn’t do X today then that’s probably because we haven’t had the time to commit to doing it and doing it well. We have to be able to do the basics well before adding the bells and whistles. A massive part of our development time has gone on getting the notation engine stable, capable and extensible, as everything hangs off that. Similarly a huge effort has gone into the audio engine (which itself is the product of many years of effort from the Cubase team), upon which Dorico’s playback engine sits. This all takes a lot of time. It will be quite some time before it can do everything that our competitors can do, but we have a lot that our competitors don’t (and more of that coming in the next update). We have to (well, Daniel has to…) make very difficult decisions constantly about which things we have to drop in order to focus on getting other features implemented. We have to devote our time to the areas that will be the most benefit to the most people, which means that often your own preferred feature/bug may not be considered a high priority for the moment.
Re: DAW features. Dorico isn’t a DAW and doesn’t pretend to be. However, there are a lot of DAW features that would be valuable additions, and we will hope to add them. We know that Play Mode may be frustratingly limited at present, but there’s plenty of scope for extra functionality in future versions. Tempo editing? Dynamics? Controller Lanes? Real-time record? Micro-tonal playback? Better support for 3rd party sample libraries? Yep, all things we want to add in the future.
Re: Cubase interop. We don’t know yet what form any future Cubase interoperability may take; all options are on the table. We know that many users have workflows between scoring packages and DAWs going in both directions, so interop is important, but we’ll need to investigate the best options. Cubase and Wavelab are now starting to benefit from closer integration, and we may be able to build on that foundation in Dorico in the future.
Re: engraving focus. Dorico is a scoring tool first and foremost and so engraving quality is of the highest importance and as such is the focus of much of our work. Even if the scoring is very hurriedly prepared for a recording session and then discarded then this is still very important: the scores need to be clear and well-formatted with the minimal amount of editing. If the players have to sight-read it then I’m sure that they care about the quality.
Re: frustrations. Please bear in mind that if there’s something in the application that is very frustrating or limiting to use, then we’re probably finding it very annoying too. Annoying things do tend to get fixed for this very reason.
It should be apparent from the many responses in this thread that every user has completely different priorities, running the spectrum of ‘Don’t care about playback’ through to hyper-realistic rendering with a collection of orchestral libraries. We know though that it is somewhat important to most people. We will never totally please everyone, but we do aim to please as many as possible.
Not harsh at all, absolutely fine. Thanks so much LSalgueiro for your reply. Yes, I want to make something special, “above the crowd” is maybe not the term I would use, but yes, I have a unique and visual concept of how I wish my scores to look (I think you’ve maybe got the wrong idea, I dont want to be Haubenstock-Ramati, I just want a distinctive look. I care about the aesthetics, and its more than spacing of notes and thickness of the beam). That is the nature of art, it develops. Please look at dynamic markings and time signatures from 100 years ago, and we still use them. Now take a look at the font for a movie poster from almost 100 years ago
I have my voice in composition, in playing, and in how my scores look. Whether or not that seems significant for you is not of my concern. It is the art I make. And it is clearly a problem in the world of notation software. Which is the title of this thread. My whole professional and personal life is surrounded by composers, engravers, and musicians, maybe you and I hang with different crowds, but it’s clearly unanimous across my group of colleagues that notation software is coming up short. Not all of us want to look so traditional. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that of course, but it doesn’t represent my art. That is priceisly why Bjork, and Gorecki, while not eschewing traditional notation practice (as in, the meaning of symbols etc) but instead decided to modernize the design. So I’m fairly confident it’s not some cranky personal unique vendetta I’ve got. I’m quite a cheerful guy actually. Just a bit perplexed by what’s “wrong in the world of notation software”. And quite clearly, whats wrong (just to use my go to example) is that not one notation developer has ever offered an option for a treble clef that doesn’t look exactly like the same treble clef that been in use for centuries. My PHD supervisor had amazing penmanship, and her bass clefs were works of art unto them selves, let alone her,magnificent looking scores. She was a copyist for a very famous composer, and had developed a style under his direction that, felt like it fitted with his music. I’m not talking about crazy wild alternate notation, simply different fonts. For various symbols and dynamics. Is it that hard to have an option for two different shapes? Normal bass clef and circular bass clef? I would gladly pay for multiple font options from 3rd party designers if I knew that compatibility was solid.
I feel that your well articulated points, actually supported my argument. In your quoted text, you say that time signatures can be replaced, while being much more of a pain in the butt, than in Sibelius. Exactly. Why? Time signature fonts/sizes/placement are not something wild, unheard of, or avant garde. Often, a quick peek at a notated film cue will show you that. Maybe I want giant sans-serif time signatures in the middle of my staves. Infact I want sans-serif all the time. I presume you will well agree that this is nothing new. This isn’t too difficult in Sibelius, yet it is Dorico. For gosh sakes, it’s not even in my film scoring world, look at Arvo Pärt scores, or obviously the monumental 3rd symphony by Gorecki https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NPgbk7HiSPo/hqdefault.jpg
I’m curious about your statement “Everything you described can be done today — even in Dorico —, it’s just that it’s very time consuming and has little to no return. Not to mention that you want very personal solutions, while wishing they came from somebody else.” Well obviously “very personal solutions” is way off base because the biggest selling composer of the 20th century used non traditional time signatures. So it’s not some obscure wish of mine.
What does “no return” mean? Are you implying that a notation application that had a visibly distinct modern aesthetic for engraving options would not compel people to buy it? I would have to disagree. I feel it would profoundly set them apart from the pack, ahead of the pact in fact. Also “the skill and the amount of time you put into it”, precisely, again I think you are supporting my point. Isn’t software about making our tasks faster and easier to accomplish our art? I see you’re doing an old jazz standard, and you want a faux-handwriting font. Why don’t you practice cursive for a couple of years until your penmanship is stellar, and just do it by hand then? The best penmanship beats computers every day of the week. You don’t do it because software is here to make our lives faster and easier, and provide options. I am quite proficient in Sibelius, and I would be eternally grateful if you could explain to me the method, out of the box, for achieving the Bjork-like aesthetic? Round note heads and an alternative treble clef with thinner lines is all I ask for. Or something even slightly similar. I don’t think it is possible. If it is simply about time and skill of the user, by your reasoning, we should all make our scores in Adobe Illustrator, that would give us even more control than any notation program ever devised.
But thats not the point I’m trying to get at. I’m wondering why, when an old clumsy program like Sibelius, can change time signature fonts in a flash, why can’t the benchmark, new, sexy program Dorico do it? It’s like precedents get set in the software world, and its up to the competition, especially the new kids on the block, to keep up and push ahead. Isn’t that the purpose of new software. To break ground? And say, regarding, a different looking treble clef, is it really that hard from a coding perspective to have, for example 3 options? And the user choses classic, modern, stylized. Or whatever. The same with round noteheads. Or alternative aesthetics for rests. I don’t imply any condescension in this statement, I truly am ignorant to coding, so maybe it is that hard. But, in Sibelius, I can change the note heads to multiple other shapes, just not round ones, so I suspect it isn’t that hard. It is what people developing think is important. And I believe that the developers, of all the programs are missing out on a huge opportunity to be the leading game changer. While Dorico is a tremendous program, made by a suburb and dedicated team, so far, it seems it’s just another notation program. Hopefully this will change, because the GUI is so much sexier, and I have a feeling that the input method will be fast and fun, and the layout options look spectacular compared to the Sibelius disaster. But I have an aesthetic that is my voice, and I want to keep it up, which I can in Finale and Sibelius, so I can’t switch over to Dorico unfortunately, which I really want to! Neither can many of my contemporary composer colleagues. It is the old irony, that us musicians are some of the most forward thinking artists, always searching for something new and beautiful, in jazz, and classical, yet in so many ways we are so conservative and adverse to change. I’m a guitarist. And in the guitar world, it is the worst. the majority never dares veer from the established norm of the last 60 years.
Thanks again for your reply. I think it is great we all engage and strike up conversations like this. I hope it can, even the smallest amount, help contribute to the growth and refinement of a musical tool.
It’s not necessarily that it’s hard, it’s that it takes time. Every extra option adds a surprising amount of overhead and doubles the number of executable paths through the code. A huge number of the bugs that occupy a large amount of our time are caused by the unexpected interactions of different options. Please don’t take the lack of a feature or option in Dorico 1.x as being indicative of where we expect to Dorico to be in future versions. If you read the SMUFL font specs and look at the Bravura metadata you’ll see that there’s a lot of extra metadata that is required in order for a font to look good. That is all very time-consuming to produce. If you care enough about wanting a custom time signature font then you’ll care about ensuring that it looks good in the score.
Dorico’s layout engine is very flexible, and in the fullness of time we expect that you’ll have a huge amount of power to to customise the appearance of most score items. We’ve taken great care to design for the future. Maybe you’ll want to use an SVG instead of a glyph for a notehead, or something like that. However it will take time to get there.
Thanks Paul. Yes I can imagine the coding must just exponentially tangle itself up the more one adds features and tweaks existing ones.
I’m glad you guys are taking the time to implement everything on solid ground. That is definitely admirable.
In a previous post in this thread, you mentioned that Dorico is first and foremost a notation app. I was so glad to hear you say this! Thats what I love about your team, and what I’m hoping will continue to be the mindset in the future.
I honestly don’t know much about muse fonts, although there is a member on here who designs some nice ones. I guess all I’m really asking is for some personality to be allowed in to the scores. I would gladly pay good money for a music font that replicated some of the modern aesthetics of the Bjork book.
I never actually got around to it, but I was going to buy a music font for Sibelius a couple of years ago. But I was skeptical as to how it would integrate.
If graphic designers design a font, noteheads, rests, clefs, can it be easily imported int Dorico? This is the aspect of notation software that has always confused me a little.
edit — goddamn it, something timed out and I lost a gargantuan post where I engaged aleos as best as I could point by point. ugh! I don’t have time to do that again, but I actually invited him originally to engage me by PM, so maybe do that if you’re interested and I’ll eventually reply. if not, I’ll have my hand at it again.
I tried to clear up some misunderstandings on the reading of my original post, and the gist of it is that aleos might fundamentally misunderstand how music softwares handle fonts, and how Dorico does it differently. Since Bravura is licensed under a SIL Open Font license, I might be able to whip up a derivation with non-serifed time sigs and round noteheads. Also, Dorico 1 isn’t a stone tablet handed down from above where everything is finished, as the team is probably tired of articulating.
I can only speak for myself, and it’s clear to me that Steinberg and the team definitely cares about the product. The fact that it was Steinberg (and not Avid or Apple or someone else) who made the decision to start working on a new score app with members of the ‘old’ Sibelius team also says something about Steinberg’s focus in all this, which is highly appreciated.
The response would not at all be positive if D. launched with many fancy “DAW features” at the cost of the engraving part. The communication between the users and SB in this forum is also second to none. So kudos to you all!
The thing you quoted (about those of us who rely on eg. 3 different apps in our music making process) was mainly about me lobbing for the kind of features which may not be so important for those who mainly are engravers, but which are very important for those of us who aren’t engravers but want the best results we can get when we work with notation. IMHO the kind of changes we’d like to see are quite different from those who mainly use Dorico or only use Dorico with Cubase.
Wow, I’m really flattered by your words as well. I stumbled my way into font design because I’m a huge typography nerd — I considered editorial design before plunging definitely into a career in music; perhaps engraving was a natural compromise! — and because I felt I needed it so as to have complete control over what you can do in a notation software. I’ve used it to do littles fixes here and there and only now are emerging the first sketches to what might someday become a (somewhat) comprehensive font. I had no idea there was some interest out there!
The closest thing I have to a finished project is the following, but this was made to very clearly match the handwritten reference and it isn’t Dorico because I was working with somebody else:
I’ve been doing this in Sibelius for ages. How can one not change a font? Did it seem unimportant to the developers? Since all my scores require a similar stylized aesthetic, I simply cannot use Dorico. Of course I could go in to photoshop/illustrator and play around and change it in there, but that is definitely a happy camper make not. Of course I’m no software developer, so I don’t cant claim I know how much effort it takes to implement such features, but Sibelius (sorry to keep on with the comparison, but its the software I want move from to Dorico, but simply cant because of the TS fonts)
