I’ve recently discovered the magic of the new Staffpad update for iOS (highly recommend, despite a short learning curve). I am currently trying out the 30 day trial of Dorico and also love it, but am having issues importing .xml from Staffpad to Dorico. It just interprets things very strangely, or not at all. Parts have random beats, rests, measures added, some measures aren’t interpreted at all, etc. Thoughts? I would love to become a “first draft Staffpad, engrave and refine on Dorico” person, but this is making that impractical at the moment.
This is my first post and want to attach the .dorico projects for you to see, but the file type is “invalid.” Help on that, too? lol
Hi!
In order to attach data type files (even .dorico) you have to ZIP them up first. (or simply add ‘.zip’ to the filename, which can be confusing though)
I’ve used Staffpad quite a bit for the purpose of importing into Dorico, but can’t say I’ve encountered problems of the type you describe. Mine were rather small files, though, but still…
What happens if you import the XML files back into Staffpad? Have you tried to import them into other notation programs like S* or F*. Perhaps you could upload the Staffpad XML export here… ?
It would be more useful to see the XML files than only the dorico projects. After all, we already know the imported project was a mess. If we have the XML file we can try different import options, etc. Zip up the xml file(s) to attach them to the forum.
A picture of what you see in staffpad might be useful as well, so we know what you want the Dorico project to look like.
Here’s an example of an .xml and its corresponding .dorico file. It all looks pretty good until m. 58 when the meter breaks down, then at 60 it stops interpreting all together it seems like. Thanks so much for your help! It’s Too Much .dorico.zip (959 KB) It’s Too Much .xml.zip (438 KB)
Thanks for sending this example in. StaffPad isn’t including a couple of (I think) crucial elements when it’s describing tuplets. This is OK provided all of the notes or rests are of the same duration as the implied tuplet unit. But in bar 59, in the violin part, you have an eighth (quaver) triplet starting with a 16th (semiquaver), and because the tuplet unit is not explicitly declared, Dorico assumes it must be a 16th tuplet, which then results in the remaining durations not being able to fit, and everything else goes south from there. I will contact David at StaffPad and ask him whether he would be able to add the missing tuplet unit element to StaffPad’s export in a future update. We should also try to toughen Dorico up against this kind of omission, which I will make a note for somebody to look into.
Thanks, Daniel! I’ve been communicating with David on this issue as well. I’ve attached another with different issues- parts are just offset by a couple beats here and there, making it very difficult to decipher what needs to be fixed. I tried to attach the dorico zip but it says it is too large. This was also done with Staffpad.
Having opened the MusicXML file in Dorico I can’t tell where it’s not looking as you expect. Where does it diverge from what you expect to see in Staffpad?
Sorry it’s unclear!
m. 9 violas come in a measure earlier than written. There is a random 4/4 time signature 2 bars earlier that is redundant (seems related).
m. 20-21 cellos there is a missing measure of rest with another redundant 4/4 at 21. This offsets the part.
The viola part comes in a bar early because bar 7 in the viola part is exported in the MusicXML file as completely empty, which Dorico doesn’t expect. Ditto the cello part in bar 21. I’ll again ask David whether this is something he might consider changing in Staffpad’s export.
I am looking at StaffPad, and I think that the ability to use both Dorico and StaffPad seamlessly would be fantastic. I was happy to read that the Dorico people and the StaffPad people communicate!
The way I see it is that Dorico and StaffPad work quite well for “written music” (I was about to say “classical”) and are loved by who is mainly interested in a “writing” approach.
I hope the smoothing process between the two apps proceeds under the most favourable auspices.
I’m considering buying StaffPad too to make my writing/engraving process faster using the Apple Pencil to input notes. According to my plans I would use then mostly Dorico to finalize the scores and prepare the MIDI for programming in Cubase.
It would be great to have the handwriting feature included in Dorico for iPad but as far as I understood it’s not planned at the time being.
So, in order to have a fast way to make Dorico put all the instruments on different channels (you know, before condensing), would it be better to notate all the instruments on separate staves on StaffPad? Or there is a way to make Dorico automatically set this when importing the xml? I think that if I write an already “condensed” score on staffpad then dorico will put, let’s say, both flutes on one player, both oboes on the second player and so on, right?
Right. The more complex import system just introduced is directed at MIDI import rather than XML. I’d put each instrument on its own staff in StaffPad if you plan to import into Dorico later.
Yeah, that sounds good. I hope Steinberg will improve xml import for the condensing tool. It’s just that I feel like StaffPad would make my writing production faster, and available wherever I am with my iPad.
Do you mean that you wish dorico could import scores that are already condensed? It hardly seems a burden in the digital age to give each instrument its own stave.
And Dorico already has both a copy/explode function and edit > filters that can strip off different voices from a staff.
Although a more advanced routine my be helpful in some cases, considering the tools that exist now and the hoped-for other features yet to be implemented, a dedicated tool to separate voices from one staff (and deduce when to use a 2 and when to assign a single line to one instrument) may not be in the immediate future.
I mean that it would be nice to have a fast way to import a condensed score (so with 2 flutes wrote on the same staff and so on) and assign with a couple of click the notes to 2 different players in order to have them on different channels when exporting the MIDI from Dorico. Unless such a feature already exists and I don’t know about it lol
I should try that one. It seems indeed something fairly quick to do as long as you have 2 different voices all over the piece on the same staff. if you have a 2 passages I think you have do this selecting manually the parts when the instruments play divisi one by one
Import the xml, add the missing players you need in setup mode, select all the contents of the condensed stave, filter either the top or bottom notes and either cut and copy, or duplicate those notes to the proper stave. The whole procedure would take less than one minute.