Dorico - Steinberg's bomb on Avid/Sibelius

[Dnsmo]

They really need to address the chord chart feature in an update, SOON.

 

The company line, from Daniel Spreadbury, Steinbergs product marketing manager, is Dorico is already remarkably capable, and we will continue to build on its foundations to make it better and better.

 

I'll be waiting and watching.

 

Dennis

 

[MorayM]

2) "a basic thing like chord charts" is only important for the beginner/intermediate user for the most part.

 

I don't get this? Almost all big modern arrangements includes not only strings, brass and percussion, but also a rhythm section where you'd be punched in the face if not offering also a chord chart.

 

That's true, but that market isn't the one they're aiming for at the moment. It sounds like they're going straight for the biggest money first, i.e. film soundtrack composers and major orchestral music publishers - neither of which have any use for chord charts and lead sheets.

[zephonic]

I don't know, chord symbols are an integral part of every Jazz chart I have ever seen...

 

I would definitely think it is critical enough to be included in the initial release.

[ElmerJFudd]

Here's Daniel's official response on the matter,

 

"Please understand, folks, that the decisions that are made in the course of developing a huge, sophisticated new application like Dorico are not easy, and the trade-offs are very hard to deal with. We do not intend Dorico to be used solely for classical/art music. We absolutely want Dorico to be used for media music, for commercial music, for jazz, for Broadway. But adding features to software takes time, particularly when you aspire as we do to only add features that we can make work really well. We are trying not to include half-baked features in Dorico, and that means taking difficult decisions about what can and can't be achieved in a certain timescale. In an ideal world we would have complete feature parity with our competition in our first release, but realistically how could this be achieved in any sensible sort of timescale? Finale and Sibelius both have more than 20 years of development behind them (I even hear that one of those programs had a pretty impressive development team for quite a lot of that time...) and Dorico has three years behind it, with an enormous amount of infrastructural and architectural work in there. We don't take the absence of chord symbols and guitar tab lightly but we also don't take their inclusion lightly, either. We want to make the best tool for the job, and doing that will take time. I hope that there will be at least some projects that you will find Dorico is suitable for, even before chord symbols are included."

 

It's a first release. They won't have feature parity with Sibelius on Dorico 1.0. When they do add the chord symbols feature they intend to do it properly.

[MorayM]

Bear in mind that there are only 8-9 developers in the team. The "do it slow, do it right" sentiment is rare enough in the software industry these days and Steinberg have gone way up in my estimation for not pressuring the dev team into pushing out loads of half-finished stuff as fast as possible.

[MorayM]

I don't know, chord symbols are an integral part of every Jazz chart I have ever seen...

 

I would definitely think it is critical enough to be included in the initial release.

 

I'm not disputing the importance of chord symbols for jazz. But if they're not marketing Dorico as a product for jazz/pop arrangers yet, why spend the time including them when it would be better spent honing the engine?

[linwood]

I would have bought it today if the crossgrade price was better. $149 and they'd have me but $279 doesn't excite me too much when my license for .sib is good until July 2017.

[Mark Schmieder]

It can't do "sound for pictures". Lots of other things it can't do. But I like the workflow and have faith in its future.

 

Some full-time pro composers (household names) that I know are starting to look more at Overture, which I didn't realize had a makeover in recent years (I've been ignoring it for too long).

 

Also, the cross-grade price of $119 Overture is quite appealing and much better than that of other notation programs -- and especially that of Dorico!

[Franz Schiller]

Hey Mark, I'd never heard of Overture before. It looks pretty sweet, but there's a real dearth of information and reviews about it on line.

 

I've been searching for just the right notation software for a while now, and was holding out for what Sternberg had on offer. I was about to pull the trigger, but now Overture is looking very tempting.

 

 

[Mark Schmieder]

One of the advantages of Overture is its full support for MusicXML v3.

[MorayM]

Dorico v1.1 update out now - including chord symbols!

[ElmerJFudd]

Haha - finally!

I need a copy to see if I like the workflow.

So used to Sibelius, it's tough to switch.

[mate stubb]

Yay! Now I kan haz tab!

[ElmerJFudd]

Development continues...

 

[video:youtube]

 

Dorico 2.2 adds further powerful MIDI-centric features for media musicians, including real-time MIDI recording, improved MIDI transcription, and import and export of tempo tracks from and to MIDI files.

[Donsta]

I've been using Sibelius for a long time but I've been unhappy with the direction the software has gone. It's time to switch.

 

Thanks for the link Elmer.

[Nathanael_I]

I'm very happy with it. I moved on from Sibelius over a year ago. Haven't looked back. They aren't at feature parity yet, but it does anything I want it do. The default output is also gorgeous. It just looks "right". Even more so than Sibelius.

[Mark Schmieder]

I was hoping for a Black Friday sale, as even the cross-grade price is quite high... but I'm not going to pay for yet another Finale "upgrade", given that they're not even at parity with themselves yet.

 

Most of the people I collaborate with require Finale compatibility. The Music XML exports aren't quite there yet (at least from Finale). Important stuff gets lost. I had too many problems with the various revs of Sibelius demos on the Mac and don't trust its future or like the subscription plan.

 

As it's affordable and has a good workflow that is especially ideal for certain tasks, I invested recently in a cross-grade license for Overture 5, and still have a working demo of Encore 5 on my box but can't justify buying it.

 

My first notation package was Notion, which I still have and which got bought by PreSonus. I liked their initial focus on composers vs. publishers as the workflow seemed faster and more intuitive, but then for obvious financial reasons they switched to focusing almost exclusively on educators and so the emphasis more and more became "easy and quick rendering" using their London orchestral recordings and closely-guarded "smart" algorithms. I rarely launch it anymore, but it works for a lot of people's needs.

[ElmerJFudd]

Alright, they have released Version 3. The guitar notation/tab stuff people were waiting for is now in it.

Some other major enhancements.

 

Condensing: Exclusive to Dorico Pro 3

The headline improvement in Dorico Pro 3 is the ability to produce a condensed conductor"s score automatically. In a condensed score, music for multiple players â for example, two flutes or four horns â is written on a smaller number of staves, reducing the number of staves that must be included, allowing each staff to be larger relative to the page, and making the score easier to read. However, in existing music notation software, the process of producing a condensed score is extremely laborious, and always involves maintaining a separate document from which the individual instrumental parts are printed, meaning that editorial changes need to be made in two or more places. Producing a correct and clear condensed score has always relied on the judgement of an experienced human editor. With deadlines ever shorter, and budgets ever tighter, the cost in time and money of producing a condensed score is simply too great for many projects.

Dorico Pro 3 changes all this at a stroke: now users can input the music for each player and click a single button to automatically produce a condensed conductor"s score. Dorico decides how to write the music as clearly as possible, with the flexibility to change the condensation from phrase to phrase and from system to system. The increase in productivity that this represents is comparable to other generational strides made by music notation software, such as dynamically linked instrumental parts and comprehensive collision avoidance. No other music notation software offers anything like this â only Dorico Pro 3 combines all of these technologies into a single, comprehensive package for score and part preparation.

Tablature and guitar notation

Dorico 3 also introduces tablature for fretted instruments, and greatly expands its capabilities in guitar notation. Dorico is the only professional music notation software where notation and tablature are dynamically linked, so that edits made in one representation are automatically reflected in the other. You can edit the number of strings, number of frets, and even the fret spacing for any fretted instrument, allowing Dorico to handle writing tab for unusual instruments like banjo and dulcimer with ease. Common guitar notations such as bends, slides, and harmonics are all included and are easy to input and use. Dorico 3 also brings chord diagrams for guitar and other fretted instruments, with a library of common shapes and an editor to quickly and easily define one"s own chords.

For classical guitar, Dorico 3 introduces comprehensive support for left- and right-hand fingering and string indicators. Guitar music is challenging to lay out because of the density of annotations on every side of each note and chord, but Dorico 3 handles all of this automatically, producing layouts that closely match the most refined traditional engraving, and saving an enormous amount of time.

All of these guitar-focused features are included in both Dorico Pro 3 and in the entry-level Dorico Elements 3, putting comprehensive support for tablature and guitar notation into a well-rounded package for the guitarist who also wants to write for other instruments.

Even more new features

Other new features and capabilities in Dorico 3 include:

⢠Comprehensive support for harp pedal changes, including automatic calculation of harp pedal diagrams, displaying partial diagrams, and even marking notes that cannot be played with the current pedal settings.

⢠Customizable playback templates, making it easy to configure Dorico to use one"s own virtual instruments and reuse those settings in future projects.

⢠New editors in Play mode for note velocity and pitch bend.

⢠Independent routing of individual voices on an instrument to different channels or even completely different devices, bringing much greater flexibility in how music can sound.

⢠Olympus Choir Micro choral samples from leading virtual instrument developer Soundiron, who have brought their beautiful vocal sounds to the HALion platform.

⢠Users can leave reminders for themselves or for collaborators using the new Comments panel, easily reply to existing comments and export a formatted list for proof-reading.

⢠Group playing techniques together and show arrows or other lines to indicate a gradual transition from one technique to another.

⢠Show bar numbers at multiple vertical positions in the system.

⢠Easily control where chord symbols should appear for solo passages.

⢠Automatic notation of natural and artificial harmonics for guitar and string instruments.

 

[video:youtube]

 

 

[Mark Schmieder]

I did the update a few days ago, but haven't had time to work with it yet. Reports are mixed, regarding how good a job they've done of providing better continuity and retention of data values, markings, etc. when going back and forth between MIDI files and standard notation. So I'm a bit confused about whether this is considered to be stronger in Dorico yet, vs. the competition. But the new quick-action to get a reduced orchestral score is why I paid for the upgrade instantly, as I need to generate some of these by mid-October, and it may be a time-saver and also result in more legible results.