Seeing a lot of negativity on this forum at the moment, which is to be expected because people will have their questions and concerns. In an attempt to balance things out a little and give people who are sitting on the fence about purchasing Dorico a little encouragement, I thought we should mention some of the things we LOVE about Dorico! I’ll go first:
The UI is amazing; I don’t own a piece of software that looks as good as this does. I’m working on a 2009 MacBook Pro which barely has enough kick in it to launch a web browser, Dorico seems to do amazingly on it. Yes, it takes a moment or two to load the VSTs in the background, but I’ve genuinely sat for 20 minutes once waiting for ‘Sibelius Sounds’ to load… Even things like colour schemes, fonts, layout, it all feels very intuitive and sleek.
I believe Dorico will improve people’s music theory: The way tuplets work for example, it’s really nice to be writing in things like 3:2 or 6:4 for triplets or sextuplets; I’m having to thing twice about what a sextuplet actually is for example and what rules surround it. I got into a habit with other softwares of just putting a note down, hitting the tuplet button and then not thinking any more of it. Furthermore, Dorico also supports crazy time signatures. I remember when I was younger and played in a pit band for a secondary school performance of West Side Story, I came home after the week of playing America and wanted to have a go at writing something with alternating time signatures; I couldn’t, the software I had didn’t support things like that! Dorico does!
I’m sure I will keep adding to this thread the more and more I use Dorico! If you have things you really like about Dorico, speak out!
Love the way hairpins, slurs, transposition lines, etc. can be added accurately and fuss-free by selecting the notes between which you want these things to be drawn.
Also, just realised that once in note input mode you can use the arrow keys to zoom around the score adding some notes here and some there.
Indeed, I like being able to select two notes, press the slur button, and not have a panic attack over the fact that it’s sliced through half of my score. Keeping on the same sort of line, I am a massive fan of the centralised dynamic markings. Having the ‘F’ directly below the note despite sub. or any other markings attached to the dynamic is really neat and prevents confusion.
I mainly arrange music for the classical guitar which in Sibelius or Finale needs a lot of fiddling around to get the layout to look clear. My immediate reaction to Dorico is that it more or less gives me the layout I need without having to think about it
So many things to love: built-in polymeter support, the beginnings of irrational meter support, mostly effortless and clean nested-tuplet input (although I do miss the ability to change an existing note into a tuplet!)
But most of all: I love being able to write in open meter. My plans for current projects include working with Dorico to sketch out material/rhythmic ideas and configurations, and then to export said ideas into MusicXML for further integration into larger scores in Sibelius. I’m so impressed with how well flexible-meter stuff exports into MusicXML.
Furthermore, the simplicity of selecting two notes and hitting the gliss. button and it just working. No dragging the handles around for it to make sense like in other programs.
I’m also a massive fan of the whole ‘playing techniques’ menu, the way it’s laid out into the sections is really handy and some of the symbols such as Jeté simply do not exist in other programs, not unless you import them as a symbol and tweak every single one to align with the notes.
The UI is super.
I love the lock-duration button to repitch notes.
The insert mode fantastic.
The possibility to build the lay-out on this way is alsof super.
The way how Dorico is build is super -pro level.
I remeber the first days with Final Cut Pro X. A lot of negatism and now it’s one of the best video editors.
+1 on the UI! It’s a beautiful union of minimalistic and approachable.
Insert mode is a big time-saver (even more so once I get used to turning it back off!
Free-meter composing is so liberating.
Quote marks are automatically smartened in lyrics!!
Flows are a brilliant and much-welcomed concept.
Layout tools similar to INDD are also very much appreciated.
The first thing I thought of that’s not already in this list is: note spacing defaults.
The following is a Händel excerpt I threw at Sibelius (and imported via MusicXML into Dorico).
Aside from forcing these bars onto one system, the note spacing is the DEFAULT for each program. See how Dorico’s basically perfect, and Sibelius is a mess? Sibelius just assumes that whatever’s in voice 1 must be printed before whatever comes in voice 2, etc., whereas Dorico seems to handle these things on a case by case basis.
I asked on this forum on the first day of release if it was possible to do something in the style of John Cage’s Number Pieces. Have a look at the reproduction Anthony at Steinberg knocked up for me in minutes. Need I say anymore?
I love how easy it is to write lyrics into the score. It’s a chore in Notion and only a little better in Sibelius. Just write it, don’t care about tied notes anymore. Brilliant and actually so simple
I found typing lyrics in fairly easy in Dorico. Still, I look forward to the time when we will be able to paste pre-existing (pre-hyphenated, if necessary) lyrics into an edit window and click them into place.
Thanks to other members of this forum I’ve discovered that I can copy a measure with a pickup beat, then get into note input mode and select the 4th beat using the little hash lines (carets?). I can then paste into the 4th beat, without ever having had to create the proper number of rests leading up to it.
Insert mode.
Meterless input.
Popover concept.
Multiple voices input is SO easy compared to Sibelius.
The UI (albeit a little chunky at times).
The general quality of the output.
The quality of the parts and that I don’t have to muck with individual parts to secure that things go where I want them, as opposed to all over the place creating disturbance and headache.
In general, this feels like a (albeit rough at the edges, but give it time and it will blossom) super great composition tool, and I can’t say that for Sibelius really. I mean- how many times has anyone composed on paper where time signature and barlines where given BEFORE the first phrase was even conceived? The workflow I fall into with Dorico feels like composing with paper: play some notes on the keyboard until you like the sound of their pitch relation, change to input mode, write them down all 1/4-notes. Create meter and rhythm later. What’s not to love?
Just thought it would be nice to mention that I have just got off the phone to a client whom I have recently typeset a written score using Dorico. In terms of copying on Dorico, I found it to be a really pleasant experience. Yes, I had a few minor issues with font size on the engrave window, but on the whole, it took me far less time to perfect the score and even less time to prepare the parts than it would have in any other software.
Some really great things I noticed:
The layout of the music on the page is spot on, Dorico really does make the most of every bit of space on the paper paper. It’s also really nice to see that by default, in a part, if the music finishes in a bar that isn’t near the far right of the page, it won’t stretch the bar stupidly long to make sure it ends on the right side. I think this looks so much cleaner
Master house styles made things really easy and any adjustments I made reflected on all the parts without having to do them one at a time.
My client made a special remark on my slurs, noting that he really appreciated that I took time to make sure the slurs were correctly above or below the notes, and that I had followed the house style he has was used to. I’d like to say that I did have a big input in these slurs, but I really did just select two notes and press ‘S’ and let Dorico work it’s magic! Shhh!
I really like the printing options, allowing me to export the parts as single pages, 2-up pages, booklet etc. Really handy!
The parts required pretty much no manual adjusting at all, all I had to do with them was create a a title and composer house style for them.
By default, the cautionary accidentals were a bit OTT for what the composer wanted, however, with a couple clicks in the engraving menu, the program sorted them all out and pretty much matched what he had written.
Overall, I found myself having to work against the software a lot more than I would normally have to with other programs, which allowed me to spend more time concentrating on the actual notes than having to sort out slurs which cut through half of the page or wonder off into the abyss.
I love the layout of the output. It’s definitely very close to perfect for my use (I write a lot of piano music).
Insert mode.
The way Dorico handles cross-stave notation (that was such a pain in Sibelius).
Caret input and the new level of flexibility it provides.
The popover for dynamics, tempi, clefs, lyrics etc. Very clever and useful.
The UI (except that many of the icons aren’t retina ready, which was very surprising to me).
The concept of flows (so great to finally have the possibility to have several movements in one project, that makes things so much easier, like page numbers, reordering of movements etc.).
The responsiveness and the communication quality of Daniel and the team.
The generally positive and helpful attitude of the first-generation user base. Thumbs up to my colleagues here.
