Why "letter" (and not A4) is the default page size for instrument parts?

I dream of a world where my annual high school musical arrangement jobs look like this:

All the kids play from an iPad with Dorico

The conductor tells me after one rehearsal, that the trumpets need a lower version, while a violin kid makes a comment for me that he would like have bowings excluded

On the weekend, I Open Dorico, Open the arrangement file and all the comments and suggestions are there.

I make changes to the trumpets, write a high trumpet voice into some keyboard, delete the bowings, hit save.

Next rehearsal, everything is perfectly up to date on each stand.

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But honestly, I don’t even need a „big other“ - just last week I was having rehearsals and used my iPad to quickly mark things either I or the ensemble should improve.
If I could have done these drawings directly in the Dorico app, and then open the file on my desktop or laptop to go over them - I would be a happy man! (This and cutout scores… :wink: )

I suppose that when in-place editing is a reality, which I wish for too, you could use a shared Dorico file via iCloud (or others), which would updates to be pushed to the other iPads.

IIRC Harry Connick, Jr. has a (custom) system like this that he uses with his players. Knowing how thoroughly the Dorico Team keeps abreast of the competition, I suspect someone there is already aware of it.

https://www.finalemusic.com/blog/finale-harry-connick-jr-and-american-idol/

Harry’s copyist is a close friend of mine, and I used to sub in Harry’s big band on alto back in the mid-2000s. It was really cool system where everyone had their own monitor, foot pedals to control it, and everything was run off a server. I actually talked to his copyist right after the Dorico iPad version was released just to see what they were using now. The band is much smaller now than it was back then so they all just use large iPads with ForScore. All the files are accessible through a main Dropbox account. They have bluetooth foot pedals too but he couldn’t remember what the brand was when I talked with him. Everything is in Finale. Harry writes directly into Finale and my friend handles all the part formatting, PDF creation, Dropbox management, etc. (He’s a great saxophonist as well.)

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