Firstly, thank you so much for all your hard work on releasing Dorico 6! It’s a fantastic release with so much improvement. I was especially surprised and very happy to see my feature request for parenthesize playing techniques making it into the release! so thank you again It is definitely a time saver for me!
Since the theme of this release is more along notation and engraving, I would like to bring up a few shortcomings in this area that I have encountered in my projects, in hopes of it becoming on the roadmap.
Native support for dotted / tuplet tremolos (both single and multi note tremolos)
Native support for non-power of two meters, such as 5/6, 5/12, etc.
I know this is a big one, but better support for shapes and boxes and aleatoric notation (and also per instrument repeat bars) to avoid a lot of hacky workarounds and potential mistakes and errors.
That is it for now! But I will add to this thread if I think of anything else.
To help with sorting out percussion maps and any other MIDI related features:
In Dorico->Preferences->Play->Playback Template: A checkbox to turn on the “MIDI Light Up” feature. When selected, any time a MIDI message comes through, any related items in view should light up. If I’m entering notes, those same notes elsewhere on the staff flash, If I’m in the Edit Percussion Kit dialog and I hit a MIDI note, the line or space for that note flashes or is moved into view, if that’s not possible, an arrow pointing towards the note or some other indicator of where to look to see what’s happening. If I’m editing a melody in write mode and I move the Pitch Bend wheel, the Play menu would flash telling me that I can go to that mode to see whats happening, if I choose the Play mode, and move the Pitch Bend again, the down arrow next to velocity would flash telling me I need to choose a different option there. When I drop down that list the Pitch Bend option would flash when I move the wheel. And so on, throughout the entire program. I understand this is likely a huge undertaking, but so is trying to visualize in my head what’s going on, especially being new to the program and many of my assumptions from past experience with other similar programs are very wrong. Please help me!
Another item for helping map out how things are related: There are many technologies that allow you to map things in 3 dimensions, Prezi comes to mind, but that may not be the best tech for this. Create a multi-dimensional map with links between all the views/dialogs/modes etc so I can sort out visually how things like the various percussion dialogs relate to each other, this aspect alone is dizzying. If I’m in the Dorico->Preferences->Play dialog and I click on “expression maps” in the “Update to expression maps and percussion maps with…” description, then a view pops up with a line linking to the Expression Maps dialog and another line to the Percussion Maps dialog since it’s in the same sentence. With this visual way of looking at things I not only can go where I need to, but I can see what other possibilities are available in case the most direct link is not what I’m looking for. Search the docs is ok, but if I don’t know what a feature or function is called, I don’t know what to look for. As an example, as I’m writing this, I’ve come across a Preference item called “Default stage template”. Yes, I can look at the drop down list and see it’s some sort of situational option (I’m not sure what a Barbershop Quartet stage template would be…) but to understand it quickly, it would be helpful to have a direct link to the Stage Template dialog ( I think it would be in the “Library” menu, but shouldn’t “Library” be a stage I have a template for? lots of pp and ppp I would guess… but I digress). I hope this is a good enough description of the idea.
My list hopefully won’t seem to be too long or too complicated:
Tool tips on the right-side panel, so that one can readily mouse over an item and see the popover shortcut
(as requested by several folks in various threads, including me) an analogue to the JW Rhythm Copy plugin from Finale. It does really save some time, even compared with locking a measure and changing the pitches.
Some way to lower the volume of a note when one selects it (no matter what it’s set in the Preferences, selecting a note (eg, to start playback or just to select it in general) plays that note fairly loudly.
Ability to hide selected Proofreading issues, since some things may be false alarms
If one adds a staff mid-system, the clef is not displayed for some reason, but if I add it with the popover, the Proofreading tool flags it as redundant. Ideally, some default clef should have been displayed in the new staff, even if it starts in the middle of the page.
Change the default artificial harmonic to the fourth partial (not the octave)
I’m an experiential and visual learner. Reading a manual does me little good, searching helps when I have a specific problem and know what to look for. But to understand the scope of the program I need something more like a map rather than a list of cities and the tourist attractions available. Even just some flow charts that link various related items so I can understand what to do first if say, I want to create a custom instrument.
Well in your post asking a question, you could simply ask for anyone to sketch out something for you as a diagram, perhaps some arrows (and video URLs etc.) to help you and see what happens for your replies It could be a new trend here.
Yes, but that’s the kinda haphazard path I’ve been on, and it’s rather frustrating because just getting things working to hear the sounds I’m expecting seems rather disjunct. there’s no direct correlation between a Dorico instrument and the sound that is played. It appears the sound is chosen by first thing found in the playback template? I’d rather be able to specify the exact library/instrument I’m creating. Maybe I just haven’t found that connection yet. Maybe I’m not sure of what I’m looking for is called. If the program had a way of showing my what was possible, I might be better able to navigate to what I want to accomplish.
I’ll add a short wishlist here as well. Again, the more I learn about Dorico and even now Cubase, I’m blown away at how advanced the program is compared to Finale. I’m coming to Dorico more for film composing, here’s my short list too:
BMD Decklink/Ultrastudio or AJA Video integration for external monitoring (similar to the options in Cubase).
Time Warp function similar to Cubase - makes for quick tempo timing for cues
Markers/ Time code staff - I would love to see more functionality between the markers and time code staff.
LTC! Someway to output SMPTE Timecode to sync other programs.
Adding Streamer and Punch indicators as an option to Markers for “Live to Picture”
Print Markers - have an option to print or at least copy Marker timings and names for printing to a cue sheet.
Thanks to the team for a great update. I’d love to see:
Left-hand side ribbon items being user-customizable (no personal use for note values smaller than 64th, and I’d like to add double sharp and double flat there for example)
“Avoid collisions” property available for dynamics and player labels
As mentioned above, ability to add some definitions for proofreading. For example, a composer I regularly work with commonly uses “dol.” for a dynamic (I create it with the dynamic “p” hidden and dol. written as a suffix), and Dorico doesn’t recognize this as a valid dynamic, so my proofreading list becomes littered with false alarms.
Rest vertical positions editable in condensed staves.
Less janky bracket and sub-bracket control in condensed scores. Ability to set “no bracket” in edit instrument definition (timpani and vocal soloist staffs could use this).
Option so that when a bracket change is made in engrave mode, all brackets in galley mode would not be broken automatically.
Full user control over individual instrument numbering.
I agree, I also would love to see user control over instrument numbering. I often have to remove instruments and re-add instruments and some gymnastics in between to get the numbering to my liking, if I end up adding instruments after the initial setup.
Also ability to select and add multiple instruments at once. Adding instrument currently takes so much time, especially in large scores. Dorico keeps freezing while it creates all the layouts and adding instruments to flows. So adding a few instruments can easily take a few minutes
Personally, I’d like to see -or warch- shorter official YouTube videos describing new features etc, 30 seconds intro and outro is too much, and I’m a cellist
This is actually very well documented and there are a myriad of threads here talking about it.
But … I sympathize with you about the “map” you are talking about. I’ve asked in the past about a playback “white paper”, but nothing arose from it (no blame, they have much better things to do). I’d love a flow-chart of what happens after I hit the Play button.
Just to be sure: Am I correct in finding that this is not yet possible without Force Duration?
EDIT: If my assumption is correct, then this sits near the very top of my remaining wishlist, as this practice of splitting syncopations on the 8th note level at half bar and on the 16th note level at every beat is super super common and in a settings-centered scorewriter like Dorico should not require to use Force Duration.
You can specify the exact library/instrument you are creating. But to be useful, you do need to provide each instrument with an Expression Map that will correctly control how the specific VST/Library responds to different articulations and dynamics. (This can be a complex exercise because there is very little standardisation between all the different sound libraries)
Once you have that set up you can save it as an Endpoint. You can then combine Endpoints into your own Playback Template.
All that the factory Playback Templates do is guarantee that “some sound” (selected from the available bundled libraries) is assigned to an instrument.
If you are looking for Expression Maps and Playback Templates that others have already constructed, have a look at the Playback Template Resource page
Yes. No changes in D6 on this point.
We have to play with the Notation options or keep your finger on FD.
By the way, reading some recent posts in this forum, following my usual practice, I’m going to wait for 6.1 before installing the new version.
Wisdom is the mother of safety.
If you’re interested, I installed Dorico 6 straight away onto my new M4 MacMini - and it feels even snappier than version 5, despite all the additional functionality.
I second that. Immediately installed (with v5 intact just in case) on my 2024 M2 MacBook Air and it’s been working fine as I compose a new work. Unlike on some occasions with Dorico 5.X, I have yet to see any audio engine issues on startup (eg, “the audio engine could not load; Dorico will now quit”). Obviously YMMV, but I’m not experiencing any issues so far. Compared with what it was often like with Finale, where there were occasional general crashes, the entire app would crash if the audio output changed (even Reason doesn’t do that), and so many things didn’t work reliably, this is a very reliable app so far (and version 5 was quite stable as well, other than the aforementioned audio engine issue that so far seems to have been addressed by the dev team).
I was hoping for one particular bug fix, but alas it vexes me yet.
Harp writing:
A glissando from bass staff to treble staff that begins on one page but finishes on the next page.
The glissando line begins properly, going up toward the page margin,
but on the next page, there is no gliss line to the final note.
thanks for all the other improvements.
fingers crossed that this little fix makes it into one of the upcoming updates.
It is definitely a time saver for me!
It could be a new trend here.
