Will we see an option for large time signature in Dorico any time soon?
We will certainly add this at some point, but I can’t say exactly when it will be added. It is not currently among our highest priority items to add.
That’s a pity. Many conductors specializing in contemporary music actually demand it…
There are literally hundreds of things competing for our attention. We will get to everything, but we can’t get to everything at once.
Many conductors specializing in contemporary music actually demand it…
I also feel that it should perhaps get to go a notch higher up on that list, higher than
It is not currently among our highest priority items to add
You are setting out to be a serious and professional notation and engraving program and contemporary music simply requires this (actually more or less standard) feature very often.
Yes, and everybody feels that way about every specific notation that they use in their music! We will do our best to add things as quickly as we can.
Indeed, you should listen to every request, and I know that you do, but in the end it is how you (Steinberg) as professional software designers, prioritize them that will determine the success or failure of Dorico. I do appreciate your achivements so far, but if the professional composers of today have to continue using Finale for another year or two, you risk losing a substantial user base…
Postby Daniel at Steinberg » Fri Oct 14, 2016 8:55 am
Yes, and everybody feels that way about every specific notation that they use in their music! We will do our best to add things as quickly as we can.
Postby fratveno » Fri Oct 14, 2016 12:30 pm
Indeed, you should listen to every request, and I know that you do, but in the end it is how you (Steinberg) as professional software designers, prioritize them that will determine the success or failure of Dorico. I do appreciate your achievements so far, but if the professional composers of today have to continue using Finale for another year or two, you risk losing a substantial user base…
I think Daniel hit it head on–everyone has their own special feature, or pet peeve concerning Dorico’s first version and whats included, and I could be wrong but it seems that the posts are divided into two groups:
- those who fully support Dorico, and know its worth and are willing to wait for the features they desire, rather than have a rushed out bug eaten first release.
and
- those who may or may not fully support Dorico but who flat out say they’ll NEVER buy Dorico, and/or predict the failure of Dorico for ignoring a part of its user base, for not including what they want , in its first release.
As if Daniel and Steinberg didnt realize this beforehand and both cared about it greatly, and are doing their best to get things done in the best possible way for as many people as theyre able to accommodate. Frequent and free updates are promised along with a demo version to help fill out its initial release, so all should be satisfied and supportive.
And the level of caring about users and their wants and concerns is so CLEARLY evident in this forum, and I am genuinely appreciative of this…
Just my opinion…YMMV…(and yes Im in the FIRST group 
)
I don’t really follow that logic. Have you seen how many new significant new feature there are in the recent Finale 25? I didn’t count any that were relevant to how I use it - nor in Sibelius 8, 8.1, 8.2, 8.3, and 8.4 for that matter.
To be fair, I did notice something about large time signatures, but that is of zero use to me compared with a long list of features Finale (and Sibelius) can’t do easily but are already in the published Dorico “list of features”.
Unless something spectacularly unexpected happens at MakeMusic or Avid, I don’t see even the worst-case “waiting a year or two” scenario will change the comparison by much.
I agree with Bob, and the sentiments left by Daniel. I truly believe that Daniel, Paul, and the rest of the team are working very hard to ensure that things are being worked out efficiently, accurately, and properly. They have a hugely broad range of features that are needed and wanted. And they are tasked with the tremendously tedious job of making decisions about what can and cannot be tackled.
And as Daniel said, everyone thinks what’s most important is what they need. I, for instance, don’t need large time signatures. I need percussion stickings!! And I will tell you, percussion stickings are very important in the world of percussion arranging. However, I know that while many users will use percussion stickings, possibly the vast majority of users will not. As such, I am just going to have to wait for it to be implemented accurately and appropriately. Hopefully it comes soon. But I will not refuse to get in on the ground floor of this software, just because something I need isn’t available. I’ve seen the work of Daniel and the team at Sibelius, and I know he and the team listen.
Many years ago, with an early version of Sibelius (Sib 2 I believe), I was in a short-lived arranging project with a colleague and we began by inputting Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. The key at the start caused one of the transposing instruments to be in the key of Cb. The original score rewrote the key of Cb into B (which makes more sense to me). Sibelius could not do that. I left a message on the Sibelius forum, Daniel responded. Daniel added it to the feature request. It was later implemented in the next version. From this interaction alone, I know that it will be very worth it getting in with what the team is working to achieve. And in time, it will do what people want it to do.
Robby
I plan to switch my career to transcribing music found on ancient Sumerian tombstones. I hope that Dorico is fully optimized for this notation – if it really is music notation – and that it will play back correctly according to Sumerian performance practice. I’m sure that success or failure is riding on this.
I think the bottom line here is: how many more million euros is Steinberg willing to spend on this project without revenue?
I hope I understood this correctly–
As Dorico is being released the 19th–next Wednesday–revenue will start coming in that day…
Thanks Bob
Even if Dorico had every possible feature on day one, I would have to postpone using it exclusively in place of my current notation program while I learned how to use it effectively. So I see this first release as a wonderful opportunity to start learning the program while the Team continues to expand its capabilities. For me, the release schedule sounds very forward-looking.
I’m afraid this will be unlikely in the initial release. Unfortunately there is a huge schism within the Sumerian tombstone community about the best way of handling rest positioning, and it’s just not practical for us to support all the options. It’s likely that we’ll wait for the appendix in the 2nd edition of Elaine Gould’s book before we can commit.
LOL - some of these posts really crack me up.
More seriously, I am with Claude / Daniel / Robby: everyone has their own little pet peeves. The first release won’t have all the feature I’d like to have, but based on everything I have seen and read so far, I am completely confident that in time Dorico will have everything to make me a happy little boy.
In terms of film scores, and in terms of prioritizing features, from my perspective the following features are closely related:
- large time signatures
- the ability to import video
- the ability to add hitpoints
- the ability to add timecode
- the ability to integrate third party VSTs with expression mapping etc.
Not everyone will agree on this; e.g. film orchestrators may not have a need for 2 through 5, as their job is to create playable scores and parts, they don’t care about how it sounds or whether it works with the picture; that’s the composer’s job.
And many film composers may not particularly care about being able to create score and parts that are playable by orchestra, as that’s the orchestrator’s job. (on a side note, many film composers are not classically trained and can’t even read notes; obviously that is not your market)
But that’s the situation right now. There are people who like to do everything, e.g., Alexandre Desplat, who composes / orchestrates / conducts everything himself. And he is not alone.
If you can create something that will cover all 5 bases you will create a Revolution.
My point was simply that I’m convinced that the Dorico team has a clear and pretty complete view of what features they want to add over the coming months/years, BUT the order in which these features are added must to a large extent be governed by how (and to whom) Dorico will be selling.
A huge amount of debate goes into all the decisions about the relative priorities, and none of the decisions are taken lightly. Every feature that goes in is at the cost of another that has to be pushed back. Our focus has been on getting the fundamentals right so that we can easily build on them to support new notation or playback features in the future. We are very aware of the requirements of different groups of users and that will guide our timetable for the future.
The only one of those that is a show stopper is 2. All the other ones have workarounds.
I do wish that the film community would get over this large time sig thing. Not only is it ugly, but can cause mistakes to be made by the conductor.
DG
This would not be a problem if you would simply add a native-born Sumerian to the development team. 