Chord Symbols now in Dorico

[SMS]

Looks pretty well done. Any of you tried the new Dorico 1.1? Tempting.

[MikeHalloran]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible. YMMV

[N Grossingink]

The Dorico Competitive Upgrade ($280) ends at the end of this month, in a few days. The tutorials at the Dorico You Tube channel are excellent. Don't bother with the web or PDF manual, at least at first.

N.

[SMS]

The Dorico Competitive Upgrade ($280) ends at the end of this month, in a few days. The tutorials at the Dorico You Tube channel are excellent. Don't bother with the web or PDF manual, at least at first.

N.

Have you tried chord symbols yet?

[Michel R E]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible. YMMV

I'm with Mike on this one.

Has Doritos at least added cues for parts?

[SMS]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible. YMMV

I'm with Mike on this one.

Has Doritos at least added cues for parts?

Dunno- I'm a gonna download the demo once more specifically to evaluate the chord symbols feature... will report back

[motet]

Getting rid of the competitive upgrade seems like a mistake.

[BuonTempi]

I'm very impressed by the update. It fixes many of the limitations that prevented me from doing any 'serious' work in Dorico. I'll be putting the app through its paces over the next week to see how it fares. I have a few projects for which Dorico's concepts of Flows and Players would be perfect.

I imagine I'll get frustrated by my lack of familiarity, but that's to be expected. Dorico's collision avoidance and vertical spacing saves loads of fiddling about in Finale.

What is does, it does very well. And even if it can't do what you want now, it probably will be able to by this time next year. It's certainly worth getting in on the cross-grade deal now, while you still can.

[N Grossingink]

Have you tried chord symbols yet?

No, but a video on the Dorico You Tube channel details the many new features in this latest update. The chord symbols look good. I also notice that they have seem to have implemented a feature similar to Finale's "Edit Filter" for copying and pasting items. Looking forward to downloading and trying the update when I get some holes in my schedule.

N.

[John Ruggero]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible.

Mike, could you elaborate? This is my biggest concern, not yet having tried Dorico.

[CraigP]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible.

Mike, could you elaborate? This is my biggest concern,

I have not had hands on, but I have followed it closely for a couple of years. Most of it seems quite elegant, and the chord implementation is no exception. I find FInale maddening in its chord support. I frequently have revisions to prior arrangements, and I often find that my chord libraries are not consistent from one chart to the next. With Dorico, there is no chord library per se. You enter the chord information in any recognized format and the program displays the chords in the standardized notation style you select. That is very nice.

I think it can be stated accurately that the Dorico development team is dominated by people who are passionate typesetters and not professional writers/arrangers. Over and over in the design of this product, they relish in having solutions to some of the most obscure, esoteric engraving challenges, but the day-to-day stuff often misses the park, IMHO.

Such is the case with chords. The chords live at the system level, not as objects on each instrument. You can tell each instrument whether or not it should display chords. So if you want chords running through the entire piano and guitar parts, that is easy. But if you have a 16-bar sax solo, for example, you must enable chords for the entire sax part, then hide the chords in all measures except for those 16 bars. Very awkward, it seems.

In general, it just doesn't seem like a product for arrangers and composers. It seems like a product for people who engrave hymnals, baroque, and experimental far-fetched academic music.

Personally I was excited about the prospects, but so many of the practical things are missing that I am not going to do the cross-grade. In another year or two it may be mature enough for the kind of work I do and I bet there will be reasonable cross-grade pricing available at that time.

[N Grossingink]

I purchased Dorico a week or so ago and have spent 20+ hours watching the tutorial videos and goofing around with an empty file. So far as the raw input goes (notes, expression text, slurs, lyrics and now chords) the "workflow" is remarkably like Finale.

I'd suggest if anyone wants to know more about the most basic aspects of the software they watch the following series of videos. There are 10 of them, no more that 3-4 minutes each. Actually having the software helps, but may not be entirely necessary to get the gist of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYgUJvY ... uHh6cs9-Cp

N.

[SMS]

Thanks for the last two posts which are very helpful. I downloaded the demo and tried to start a test project designed to evaluate the chord symbol functions and right off the bat couldn't figure out a way to just to start with a blank single stave not currently assigned to any instrument. The Dorico concept of "players" seems like a good idea until I realized sometimes I have a staff that nobody is ever actually going to play but it's designed for a conductor or just for reference. I also frequently have a piano staff that is just a single stave, and I couldn't figure out how to delete the bass clef staff from the piano part I was creating to enter chords.

I realize every program has a different way of doing things so I chalk it up to having to learn their way... next time I sit down with it I will try to ignore the dual staff problem and just test the chords....

I can see advantages of having chords exist in a separate level that can then be assigned to staves however sometimes I want different chords to appear on different staves .....

[CraigP]

sometimes I want different chords to appear on different staves .....

That is an excellent point that totally slipped my mind.

For the bass part, I often write a suggest part (explicitly notated) and also offer the chords if the player would rather make his own line. But I often simplify the chord suffixes for the bass part.

And in the solos, I often leave out some of the rapid chord changes that may appear in the piano part. Most soloists don't want or need that much information, and I really don't want the soloist arpeggiating every last chord like a robot.

As far as I know, these real world things are not possible with Dorico. You can certainly hide some of the chords in the solo parts, but I don't think there is a way to simplify the chord suffixes for different parts. I could be wrong.

[Harpsi]

I believe the competitive crossgrade offer has been extended to the end of September.

Regarding being incompatible with the workflow - of course this is different from person to person, but IMO it is just a matter of time to get used to another program. I have been switching between Finale, Sibelius and Dorico quite a lot recently. I am above all a Finale user, but there is always somethings I miss from the other two programs when I am using the third. I think it is important to remember that it is almost impossible to have exactly the same workflow in all programs. Shortcuts can always be adjusted and streamlined across the applications. But to each one his own. My way of working with Finale relies heavily on plug-ins and external macro solutions so maybe I am far away from "normal" Finale workflow.

[John Ruggero]

All of these comments are very helpful. And I will watch the videos.

Shortcuts can always be adjusted and streamlined across the applications. But to each one his own. My way of working with Finale relies heavily on plug-ins and external macro solutions so maybe I am far away from "normal" Finale workflow.

I may have a similar setup to yours, Harpsi, and use metatools, plugins and KM macros extensively now and loving it. My biggest concern is being able to have a similar kind of setup in Dorico or something to replace it, plus being able to duplicate my house style exactly.

I think it can be stated accurately that the Dorico development team is dominated by people who are passionate typesetters and not professional writers/arrangers. Over and over in the design of this product, they relish in having solutions to some of the most obscure, esoteric engraving challenges, but the day-to-day stuff often misses the park, IMHO.

It is precisely the Dorico designers' "solutions" to engraving problems that concern me. I don't think that any program can do all fine tuning necessary for high quality engraving, especially having read the Dorico forum; and, as always, will need maximum flexibility, which I am not sure Dorico provides.

[MikeHalloran]

The workflow and I are utterly incompatible.

Mike, could you elaborate? This is my biggest concern, not yet having tried Dorico.

I make no secret of the fact that my needs are not the same as most. I became handicapped due to a massive stroke in 2009 leaving my left arm useless. Any notation app must be one-hand friendly.

Dorico was impossibly slow for me using one hand only. The videos for 1.1 are fairly impressive and claim much easier mouse entry. I may give it another shot.

Getting rid of the competitive upgrade seems like a mistake.

Oh yea. I own a number of apps in my quest for workflow that, well, works for me. Crossgrade pricing lets me work beyond the 30 days and if it doesn't pan out, I've not lost much $$.

Encore 5.0.7 is the easiest but it looks terrible and MusicXML 1.x means that I can only export notes into Finale. Notion 6 looks good but its workflow doesn't for me, Overture 5 is getting better. MuseScore 2.1 is no longer horrible (but still pretty bad)—hey, it's free and worth every penny. LilyPond falls into the "are you kidding?" category.

Finale is almost as easy as Encore for note and lyric entry. Almost is still a lot slower for me. Finale looks great and is easy for layout and printing. Plus it's the devil I've known for over 25 years (as is Encore).

I may do the crossgrade to Dorico in the hopes that it can be useful. I like where it's going but not what I have to do to get there.

[michelp]

sometimes I want different chords to appear on different staves .....

That is an excellent point that totally slipped my mind.

For the bass part, I often write a suggest part (explicitly notated) and also offer the chords if the player would rather make his own line. But I often simplify the chord suffixes for the bass part.

And in the solos, I often leave out some of the rapid chord changes that may appear in the piano part. Most soloists don't want or need that much information, and I really don't want the soloist arpeggiating every last chord like a robot.

As far as I know, these real world things are not possible with Dorico. You can certainly hide some of the chords in the solo parts, but I don't think there is a way to simplify the chord suffixes for different parts. I could be wrong.

Exactly the way I function, too. I would be very frustrated if I cannot use different chord suffixes for different instruments in the situations you describe, Craig.
If this is not possible, I won't even look at Dorico. How could they not understand this obvious need !

[John Ruggero]

Dorico was impossibly slow for me using one hand only. The videos for 1.1 are fairly impressive and claim much easier mouse entry. I may give it another shot.

Thanks, Mike. I am also need a mouse-friendly workflow. I will watch the videos.

[CraigP]

I would be very frustrated if I cannot use different chord suffixes for different instruments in the situations you describe,

I have asked Dorico for clarification but haven't heard anything yet. I suppose you could add BOTH chord spellings to the system and they hide the ones you don't want to appear on each instrument. It just seems an awkward way to go. Maybe they have anticipated this and have a more elegant solution already.