I would like to present my wishes for upcoming updates. A couple of problems I presented in my topic “The future of scoring music of the future”:
but there were a lot of thoughts, not always connected with this topic. And when Dorico team will be checking of users needs, they will look here, not in my topic.
So, this is a summary of most wanted fetures, much compact.
I. Features which are necessary to finish most of my scores (for me – “must have”):
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cut-away score
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creating custom instrument. To have a possibility to assign name, cleff, transposition, groups and brackets, number and position of lines (instead of 5-line notation: 2-line, 4-line, 1-line and even 0-line. And possibility to change this in any bar).
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Possibility to create my own playing technique and notehead shape.
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Trills and tremolos notated with use of parenthesised notehead next to main note. Like this:
You can do independent glissando of main note and trill note. I’m using it a lot. -
Transitions from one playing technique to another. It could be native feature or it could be possible by the creating custom line.
I’m writening a lot of string works, and somethimes the main rule of whole piece are transitions from sul ponticello to sul tasto. I need to have possibility to notate something like this:
This is transition from sul ponticello to normale.
BTW Custom lines would be helpfull for a lot of things. It would be good, if they will be:
a) horisontaly or verticaly fixed
b) preceded/ended by arrow or any different glyph
c) stretchable
d) with the words above/under, etc
e) continous, dotted or made by glyphs -
Creating a bracket, which is used for showing the duration of the fragment of piece in seconds, without time signature.
It could be native feature or it could be possible by the creating custom line.
II. Features which are “good to have”.
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backup improvement (Dorico is doing a backup for time to time, not only when I save it).
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creating unconventional cleff
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Parenthesised rest and noteheads.
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Divisi feature.
I have a lot of divisi. It would be perfect to have native feature for this, but I can do workaround, if I will have possibility to create my own instruments groups (see point 2. in “must have” section). -
Better management of instruments in setup mode. E.g.:
a) when I click “add solo player”, I would like to have possibility to add more than one players in one action, to choose a couple of different instruments, click “add” and have them. Now I have to add them one after the other.
b) To have option: “rename player
Usualy I have one instrument attached to one player. If I want to have different - than default – instrument name in the score, I have to first change instrument name and then – player name (because in many situations, many score, “player” is the same as “instrument”).
c) If I don’t want to see players in players grups, I could hide it. There is the same with instruments. But when I will close and open Dorico, I see all players again. It would be very handy, if I could close the list of players in particular group and after save and relanch Dorico it will appear just like I did.
d) In play mode when I click shift+cmd and click on one player - list of instruments of all players is showing. But it’s not working in Setup mode. -
Key commands. It would be great to have more flexibility to have key commands. Especially for the items in right panel (like playing technique). There are a lots of icons, so it would be very difficult to have it all in preferences/key command. The solution is to have e.g. five unsigned slots and five key commands, to which I can temporaly assign any icon (like sul tasto or glissando), when I need to make particular object a lot of times in particular project.
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Independent time signature improvements.
Imagin, that I have this kind of time signatures in my piece and my piece is almost ready. If I want to have independent time signature in one player (e.g. I want to add solist in my orchestral piece) and I will do it - it will change only to next global change of time signature. It would be good to be allowed to choose range of bars (by clicking on it) where I want to have independent time signature. Now I have to assing for the rest of instruments (orchestra) independent signature in every time signature change.
