What's wrong in the world of notation softwares?

Shifting by octave in Dorico is Ctrl+Alt+up/down arrow. Alt+up/down arrow moves by a large step (e.g. by what you might think of as a diatonic step in 12-EDO), and Shift+Alt+up/down arrow moves by a smaller step (e.g. by half-step in 12-EDO or by a quarter-step in 24-EDO, etc.).

There already is: Control-Alt-Up/down by default.

There are also key commands to add accidentals, as well as to move the pitch of a note by a semitone.

If you want to make the key commands match a different app, you can edit them.

Note, the key commands are sensitive to what “mode” Dorico is in, which delays the time when you run out of shortcuts. For example you can make A-G have a different shortcut function when you are not in note entry mode.

Personally I mostly use a desktop keyboard with a numeric pad, and I’ve remapped the note entry key commands that I use most often so that I can keep my left hand on the left end of the main keyboard (for A-G and several other shortcuts) and my right hand on the keypad. Not quote conventional “touch typing”, but it works for me! ( I also turned off the Z and X shortcuts for zoom in/out, because I kept hitting those keys by accident - and my brain is already programmed to use Ctrl-plus and Ctrl-minus for zooming)

ok thanks for that!

"So, this is my tought on the notation software market, and sadly I can only conclude that there will probably never be a real decent software for those who don’t limit themselves to orchestral music. "
DT-Sodium, I read your post - and I think the reason why Dorico still is missing several things some of us had hoped to see in the initial version is that they’re beginning a new project and want to start each of the various functions that need to be in there the right way. So things take time. Also, it’s so far mainly aimed at engravers, it seems - not composing, or making educational material, or making mockups which require a good workflow for CC automation, and not for making piano music… and so on. But I thing that the UI in many ways is good. In other ways it’s very… old fashioned; simple things need a lot of steps to execute, one need to memorise many key commands (and they are cumbersome to reassign) - and so on.

I disagree that if someone suggest that program XYX in many ways is better, just use that instead - because the reason some of us has started to use Dorico is that we want something which has the goodies the competition has: only with a better UI and with the extra functionality that never was implemented in program XYZ. And IMHO, "it’s not a DAW’ isn’t a valid argument either: I guess we all would prefer a DAW with a 100% pro score editor (or a pro score editor with the stuff we have used DAW for in the past, as part of that score editor).

One day some company (all relevant companies) will make a DAW/Score editor combo with a transparent UI and a minimal need to search up how things should be done, because it already is implemented in the easiest possible way (and in ways people expect things to be implemented). Will Steinberg be the first company to release such a product? I have no idea. But with Dorico’s good fundament (I say this even if feel that there are areas in the UI which are counter-intuitive), Dorico could develop into a brilliant all-in-one solution.

“So Dorico is made to write classical music only ?” If it helps, there are certainly shortcomings for work with classical music as well. I expect it to take maybe another year (or two) before Dorico has real time MIDI recording, or commands needed for composing/editing piano music, at least on the level Sibelius had. But when I bought Dorico, I was prepared for that.

If you generally think that there’s something wrong with “the world of notation software”, I wouldn’t have stated it that way. But there are really many things that could have been implemented in a much easier way. (And also a number of users who don’t expect new and innovative solutions - or a workflow which requires a lot less clicking, manual reading and so on. Nevertheless, they key is IMO - patience.

Ctrl-Alt-down (or Cmd-Alt-down on Mac) moves the selected notes one octave down. No need for 8 keystrokes.

Oops - already answered. Sorry.

You guess wrong. I have hardly any use for a pro score editor bundled with a DAW. Unless the DAW was genuinely “free” (i.e. not just a bump to the package price) and totally transparent (in the sense that I could get playback for audio proof reading by doing literally NOTHING) it would usually just be an added expense and a time-waster.

And a DAW which comes with a “free” (in marketing-speak!) lightweight sound library that has standard orchestral instruments missing means spending yet more money on a different library, of course…

So far as I’m concerned, Dorico says “Notation program” on the box, and the only thing I want is that it does what it says on the box - so long as it does it very very well, of course!

Copy the part over as you’ve been doing and then use ctrl-alt-down arrow to move the copied part down an octave.

Stew

Option-command arrow moves notes up or down an octave. (Mac–I assume there’s a Windows spelling of this).

Yeah sorry, in French “polyvalent” means doing many different things. It doesn’t even mean being good at it actually.

As a developer myself, i perfectly understand that creating the perfect program takes time. Still, i have some problems with the way today’s programs work :

  • Dorico costs close to 600€ (about 300 for a crossgrade, limited time offer). That’s a huge amount of money for a software that may or may not fill my need in an uncertain amount of years (and from what I see it might still need about 3-5 years to even come close to what Sibelius or Finale offer). When I bought Notion, it costed about 80 bucks, that was an okay price to bet on a newcomer and even then, it’s been about 5 years and the soft still can’t handle drums. I get that the Dorico is still a work in progress. Well, can I use it now and pay when it is ready? This looks more like an overpriced beta.
  • From what I see, Dorico still has a huge way to go to ever come close to it’s rivals. I discovered yesterday that it doesn’t even have rudimentary support for tablatures and guitar articulations. Why would I pay at least 300€ for a software that is years behind it’s opponents in terms of functionalities ?
  • A software can’t live without a community, for feedback as well as to get some money to justify paying a team to work on it. Most user, after trying a software that doesn’t meet their needs simply uninstall it and never come back. How do you expect Dorico to live on ? On the forums I usually use, there is no single topics about Dorico, it’s like it doesn’t even exist.

Finally, my comment was not as much about Dorico itself but more about how the market fails to offer a tool adapted to most musicians : electro writer are expected to work with a piano roll in a Daw, pop and rock writers use guitar pro, jazz musicians probably use some chords diagrams taped on some wall and orchestral music writers use Sibelius or Finale. While all notations software have their pros and cons (which is normal), they also have their very own huge flaws that make it unusable once you want to mix heavy metal with symphonic instruments for example.

You have to put the cost into perspective. If your work is worth 20€ an hour, then 600€ (ignoring the cross grade offer) is worth 30 hours. If Dorico speeds up your work by only 2%, that will pay back the 30 hours in a year and Dorico was effectively free. (And from my experience, you save a lot more time than 2%).

Of course if you don’t make any money from what you do (or from anywhere else if you are student etc) that logic might not apply to you!

I wonder if anybody makes money from the notation options in Notion - they used to be pretty primitive, and last time I looked (not recently) Notion didn’t even have a demo version, you just had to believe how wonderful it all was from their website. Paying 80€ with that little information really is taking a shot in the dark IMO!

:unamused: :wink:

I was genuinely worried that I would sound snobby if I questioned whether anyone used GuitarPro in a professional context, but then DT said that “jazz musicians probably use some chords diagrams taped on some wall”. Now I’m much more at ease, really.

I would say that you’re complaining that a certain tool, which you admittedly cannot manipulate to its full extent and potential, cannot fully concentrate the whole of your workflow, which is frankly an unreasonable demand either way. Some people sound like they’ve been forced at gunpoint to buy the software. Jeez!

If we are talking about “chord diagrams taped on the wall” - since when did most real-world drummers read anything? I really can’t see why the Dorico team are spending their time implementing unpitched percussion when they could be doing some thing useful like plainsong notation instead :open_mouth:

Of course if you don’t make any money from what you do (or from anywhere else if you are student etc) that logic might not apply to you!

I wonder if anybody makes money from the notation options in Notion - they used to be pretty primitive, and last time I looked (not recently) Notion didn’t even have a demo version, you just had to believe how wonderful it all was from their website. Paying 80€ with that little information really is taking a shot in the dark IMO!

That’s not really the point here. I own for thousands of euros of muscial software (notation, daws, VSTs) and have never made a dime with my music, i just enjoy playing and writing it. Here the price is really to compare with how you get. I dont see how you can expect to sell a software that does maybe a third of what Sibelius does for the same price.

I was genuinely worried that I would sound snobby if I questioned whether anyone used GuitarPro in a professional context, but then DT said that “jazz musicians probably use some chords diagrams taped on some wall”. Now I’m much more at ease, really.

If you can’t make a joke … i could just as easily have said that metal bass player just need a tool to write flat Es. And yes, i’m pretty sure a lot of professionnal musicians work with Guitar Pro as it remains the most efficient tool out there for a lot of stuff when it comes to modern music.

Well - they do sell. And who said it can do a third of what Sibelius does? For me, Dorico already does so much more than any other notation software.

As a beta tester of Dorico said, “IIt’s going to go from “Can’t even do chord symbols” to “Market-leader for chord symbols” overnight.”

Would whoever is holding a gun to DT’s head trying to force him to buy Dorico, please stop. :unamused:

What? even version 1.0 of Dorico did things straight out of the box that took hours to fake in Sibelius. And there have been a 75-page list of enhancements and bug fixes to Dorico since then (compare with the number of enhancements to Sibelius in the same time frame, which can probably be counted on the fingers of one foot if you ignore the “this release fixes the bug that screwed up something in the previous release” type of enhancements…

If your whole musical life depends on having guitar chord diagrams, that doesn’t mean everyone else’s whole musical life has the same issues!

Hi DT,

I’m a jazz musician and although I still can’t do everything I want in Dorico (I need to write drum parts), I’ve found that the quality of the output is superb. If I were you, I would come back to Dorico in a year or so to see whether the functionality you need is there.

Best,

Rich

I agree. He guessed wrong. Seriously.


Again, I agree. Strongly.