Wishes for upcoming updates?

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”):

  1. cut-away score

  2. 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).

  3. Possibility to create my own playing technique and notehead shape.

  4. Trills and tremolos notated with use of parenthesised notehead next to main note. Like this:
    1..png
    You can do independent glissando of main note and trill note. I’m using it a lot.

  5. 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

  6. 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”.

  1. backup improvement (Dorico is doing a backup for time to time, not only when I save it).

  2. creating unconventional cleff

  3. Parenthesised rest and noteheads.

  4. 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).

  5. 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.

  6. 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.

  7. 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.

+1

I have peculiar needs as a composer, and yet find many of them powerfully met by Dorico, which is far and away my preferred work environment; but since the programme wasn’t designed with specifically me in mind there will always be things that I’d like ideally to be different, of which this here is but a small sample (no, I don’t have time to make an exhaustive list, nor even the ability/willingness to shift focus to work out the best way to describe some of the things I encounter) :

  1. I’d like more choices with selection: the option of including time signatures and tempo markings, for instance, but also to have some kind of automatic detection of likely implied voices from chordal input, with respect to either range, or to likely intervals or to different standards of voice-leading.
  2. I’d like to be able to set optional behaviour for ‘Insert’ such that it could allow expansion into a zone of rests without shoving the rest of the music later on that staff further on, although as it is it’s wonderful (if I pay attention!).
  3. I’d like to be able to apply dynamics and other objects over an entire selection.
  4. I’d like to be able to do search/replace on any kind of object throughout a score, especially things like technique and dynamic instructions.
  5. It would be nice to be able to change the size of more than one staff at the same time, and for it to happen regardless of whether there were notes in the measure clicked.
  6. It would be very nice too if galley view avoided collisions between material on adjacent staves (then demo playback–something I use a lot–would be more elegant).
  7. It would be nice to have the right-mouse-click menu include selection options, or for it to be customizable.
  8. Something like ‘focus on staves’ that wouldn’t require naming a new–perhaps quite temporary–configuration: the current system, though effective, does tend to get ignored quite a lot because it takes me out of my ‘flow’.
  9. Oh, yes, the ability to instantly merge/append Flows–and then maybe drag flows to other projects and so on.
  10. Split-screen where one can scroll while playing back while the other one just sits there, stably, allowing gentle editing (btw I love the current functionality of being able to make edits even while playback is occurring: anything that makes this even more what it already is will be eagerly gobbled up by me)
    and of course more simple keyboard-shortcut customization either down deep into sub-sub menus, or with additional menus in the menu bar (Keyboard Maestro is great, but complicated and mysterious in this respect).
    Bugs I’d like fixed:
    i) ‘r’ on slurs gives a slur that overlaps with the previous one by one note, and it would be better if it simply repeated after the first one (having said that, the power of ‘r’ is something to which I have frequent recourse);
    ii) not exactly a bug, and maybe it doesn’t do this any more, but ‘Deselect> Top Note and Single Notes’ seemed at one point to have a 50-bar limit;
    iii) sometimes it seems that the timing of attacks gets a little strange when a lot of tempo changes have been made in playback;
    iv) rit. and molto rit. so far don’t approximate very closely any of the various options a human player would choose–of course I do understand that playback is pretty basic at the moment and that much energy is being devoted to having this brought up a level or two;
    v) Fermate reflected in playback (with an option of choosing how different composers have intended them, although just the basic hold-stop-continue would cover a lot.
    Well, I’ll stop now. Dorico is so phenomenal that we all want it to run every portion of our musical lives, as well as what it can do now, so thanks to the Dorico team for that, and for the commitment and talent that is being poured into it.j

I would just be happy to get eigthone playback and even bette, diversions by cent.

Would be great if I could control tempo thought some kind of slider without reentering it each time in a tempo popover.

I’m still coming up to speed with Dorico, so please forgive me if I’m wishing for something that is already there.

IN general I’d like to see any improvements that will make Dorico an ideal “composing” software…with a focus not only on being able to produce engraver quality notation, but helping me step through stages of composition and arranging.

One thing that comes to mind is I wish that when i add a chord I could ask Dorico to analyze the notes that are already present at a given position and extra the chord name for me. I’d also love to be able to specify in the layout that the chords are for write mode only and hidden from the layout printout in some way. I’d also love to have a dedicated functional analysis line somehow, I know some people are using lyrics for this, but there are inherent problems with that and same thing, I would want that hidden from the print out.

Dewdman, interestingly enough I believe many on this forum would pitch that this is the best software available to --compose-- into as it doesn’t force parameters on you the way other programs do.

Regarding the chord diagrams, while Dorico doesn’t auto-generate chords, you can go to any location where you would like a chord symbol to appear and simply play the chord notated below and it will still churn out a result for you.

Harmonic analysis and form tracks at the bottom would be an interesting development. No doubt educators would rejoice.

I think educators would be more interested in being able to include chords in the print copy, which it can already do.

Composers would like to see chord (and possibly functional analysis in some cases), while they compose but EXCLUDED from the print copy. And if the software could continually keep the chord names up to date with what is on the staves, then it helps a composer to use less of his brain cells for the menial task of constantly analyzing the notes on the staves to see if the chord is in agreement with the intention. It can also in some cases help to flag errant notes, when a chord suddenly displays as something other then the composer had in mind… for example.

There are actually some other notational programs which are way ahead of Dorico in terms of compositional tools, but they suffer very poor engraving. For example Myiad Harmony Assistant and Pizzicato. Additionally, many composer oriented plugins have been developed for Sibelius, Finale and MuseScore which also aide the composition process substantially.

I do think Dorico has the “potential” to be the best in this area eventually, I do not think its there yet. The playback engine is heading towards best in class, which makes it a primary candidate to consider the compositional process as being very significant for people that will be attracted to it over time. IMHO.

I am unable to use Dorico efficiently so far.

My desktop runs Win 7 Pro and Dorico requires Aero themes to even start up. I use this machine for serious audio editing, and Aero doesnt allow me to turn off the annoying Windows sounds.

My laptop runs the latest version of Windows home. The Dorico interface takes up so much space on the screen that I can hardly see any score. See Nos 6 & 7 of this thread: Screen resolution issues - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

As Win 7 is not officially supported by Dorico, I would like to see my Win 10 problem solved asap.

David

Personally at this point I’d just like to see the mixer open quicker when I’m working on a big film score as it’s incredibly sluggish right now, I tend to avoid using it for that reason unless i absolutely have to, and have even gone as far as to disable the hotkey to make sure I don’t accidentally open it (it’s right next to the video hotkey which I use a lot). It doesn’t seem to have this issue on smaller scores though which I seem to remember being explained as being down to the way it’s rendered graphically right now.

It’s interesting to see that many of the old requests in this thread have already been met.

Contemporary articulations (so-called “jazz” articulations), can’t use Dorico for half the commissions I get without them i.e. scoops, falls, etc.

Falls etc. are easy enough to create in the playing techniques thing.

Sorry for the late reply, is this in the new version? i.e. 2.1? Because in version 2 it was very convoluted and then you had to manually move them to the sides of the notehead in engraving mode. So when you have literally hundreds of these across multiple sections and instruments in a 600 bars piece of music, it becomes nonsense for a 21st century software, especially considering it’s 1 or 2 clicks on the notation programs we already own.

No, there’s no new functionality in Dorico 2.1 that would make these kinds of brass articulations significantly easier than in earlier versions: you would indeed still need to position them manually. However, it’s worth remembering that if you apply X/Y offsets to an item, when you copy and paste it, those offsets are retained, so you should in fact find that copying and pasting a manually-moved playing technique is not horrendously laborious. Obviously it’s no substitute for a proper feature for these, of course, and adding that is a high priority.

Daniel, it always surprises me how you seem to be on top of everything, you workaholic! I have a concerto première coming up at the end of the year and it barely has a few falls here and there, so it’s a strong candidate to have the parts made in Dorico, could you elaborate a bit more on this X/Y offset thingy or point me to some how to/walkthrough…? Copy/pasting is certainly a reasonable workaround.

Thank you as always,

C.

PS: why is this feature taking so long when it’s so blatantly common in music these days? Is it the horizontal positioning that makes it tricky?

Bollen,

You can duplicate a playing technique in the PT editor. Rename it “PT offset” or whatever. Then edit that PT and move it on the X/Y axis.

You can also choose to make that the default PT in the popover.

The feature is “taking so long” because we only have a limited number of developers, there are only so many hours in the day, and there are hundreds of competing demands on our time. I will point out that Sibelius didn’t have a good solution for scoops, falls and the like until Sibelius 6, which was released in 2009, which, depending on the way you count it, is either 11 years after the first version for Windows came out, or 16 years after the first version for Acorn computers. So Dorico’s development is working on an incredibly aggressive timeline in comparison to other software. Of course that doesn’t help you much when you’re waiting for a specific feature, but just to try and put things in perspective…

There’s nothing inherently more complicated about these brass articulations than many other things we’ve already done, but we won’t do something until we can do it properly, so you can at least be assured that when we add them they will work properly. And I am certain it will take a lot less than 11 years to add them to Dorico (don’t forget Dorico is less than two years old at this point).

Take a look at the playing techniques in the Brass category in the attached project and you should get the general idea.
brass-artics.dorico.zip (305 KB)

:wink:

Very useful thank you, that sounds simple enough!

Oh sweet Daniel, no need to explain that much, low priority would’ve been enough. I appreciate the file.

The problem is I don’t know anything about software development, but I hear so many scoops, falls, etc. in music all around me all the time, not to mention a lot of the work I get asked to do here in London, that it just made me wonder why so many obscure(er) things were being prioritised e.g. micro-tonality, which I use a lot, but nowhere near falls and scoops. Furthermore, I saw this in several other notation programs, they all had the so-called jazz articulations many versions before quarter tones, Sibelius was probably the exception. This and the above led me to the conclusion that these articulations are more in demand than other more “niche” ones.

In any case the work-around is sufficient for now and of course I know you’ll do a wonderful when this is implemented.

All the best!