Thanks, Craig. Great review.
Larry Eden
> On Jul 3, 2018, at 10:57 AM, Craig Parmerlee <cr...@parmerlee.com> wrote:
>
> I am a month into my serious usage of Dorico 2 and thought I'd provide an
> update on my experience. Everything about Dorico is more elegant. But that
> means it is radically different from the mode of operation deeply ingrained
> in long-term Finale users. Many of us have learned Finale over a span of 10
> or even 20 years. There is a big learning curve with any product of this
> complexity. There are many resources for Dorico information (help pages, a
> comprehensive manual, YouTube videos, monthly Facebook live sessions etc.)
> The product is evolving so quickly that none of these sources is definitive
> and up to date. So the user is on his or her own to assemble one's own best
> practices and workflow. In my case, I started compiling a Word document of
> tips and techniques for everything I do regularly. Otherwise I would not be
> able to remember most of it. Over the course of the month, this document has
> grown to about 30 pages and 100 procedures, but I don't have to refer to it
> very often now.
>
> The heavy Dorico user relies on PC keystrokes and shortcuts. These can be
> hard to remember until you develop muscle memory. Once you have that, I think
> productivity with Dorico is far greater than Finale because Dorico takes care
> of so many of the tedious details automatically. For example, there is an
> "Engraving" mode in Dorico where you can make your final layout changes.
> With Finale, this part of the process often represented 20% of my time.
> Layout decisions with Dorico are far beyond Finale and Sibelius. I have done
> some projects that literally required no layout changes whatsoever.
>
> There has been practically no investment in Finale functions most of the past
> decade, and I believe we should not expect much from the company. People who
> are completely satisfied with what Finale does for them today may have no
> reason to look at Dorico. People who spend many hours per week doing
> composing, arranging or engraving really can increase their productivity (and
> possibly income) by learning Dorico. I do think there is a threshold of use
> needed to make it worthwhile to take on this new learning curve.
>
> The big issue is this. Almost everything Dorico does is more productive and
> more elegant than the equivalent processes in Finale. While Dorico probably
> does 90% of the things you can do with Finale today (and a great many things
> you cannot easily do with Finale,) that last 10% can be a real roadblock. I
> have not seen a comprehensive list of the things that a Finale user would not
> be able to accomplish in Dorico, but here are a few examples.
>
> * Playback in general is not advanced. There is no support for D.S., D.C.
> and similar variations. You can engrave these with text symbols, but
> playback will not recognize that.
>
> * There is no ability to set swing in playback
>
> * If you are heavily dependent on Staff Styles in Finale, there is no real
> equivalent (other than the slash regions and bar-repeat regions, and they
> don't have the flexibility associated with Finale Staff Styles)
>
> * Chord support in Dorico is light years ahead of Finale and you can really
> fly through that part of a project that requires chord symbols. However, it
> is very difficult to have different chord spellings for different instruments.
>
> There are more issues. I'm not trying to be comprehensive. However, I have
> reached the point that I am so much more productive with Dorico that I
> probably will not be creating any new Finale projects.
>
> A couple more observations to wrap up. There many bugs in Version 2.0. The
> Steinberg team is large and heavily engaged in fixing these things. There
> should be a patch release out in the next few weeks that will bring the
> product up to a normal "stable production" level. Also, there is a very
> active, and growing, user community, and that definitely helps.
>
>
>
>
> On 6/2/2018 12:45 AM, Craig Parmerlee wrote:
>> On 5/31/2018 3:40 PM, David H. Bailey wrote:
>>> While I'm disappointed that the major thrust of Dorico version 2 seems to
>>> be scoring to video, I realize that's a very large and growing segment of
>>> the notation/composition software market so it should be a means to even
>>> better cementing Dorico's future.
>>
>> I did the free trial of Dorico 1. I used it to do a re-transcription of
>> several orchestral pieces that had multiple movements ("flows" in
>> Dorico-speak) and some irregular meter / beat patterns. It was slow going
>> because of the learning curve but I was struck at how well the music layout
>> happened, almost completely automatically. I find myself spending many
>> hours fiddling with Finale parts to get them to lay out reasonably. It is
>> clear to me that Dorico does many things (including layout) better and will
>> save a lot of time.
>>
>> However, for me, I must have slash notation and rhythmic notation because
>> mostly I do jazz band arrangements. And those things were not there in
>> Dorico 1. The final release of Dorico 1 included chord symbols, and they
>> did a fantastic job with that -- much more coherent than Finale.
>>
>> Dorico 2 adds slash and rhythmic notation, so I bought the crossgrade and am
>> now working on my first jazz band project. It is unfortunate that the
>> product does not play back DS al coda, but that is not required in this
>> project.
>>
>> Anyway, I actually wanted to respond to your comment about video being the
>> focus of 2.0. Certainly that is part of it. But a big portion of the
>> "video support" is a better structure for varying tempos, and this can be
>> useful even without video. And this tempo business has been one of the most
>> troublesome parts of Finale playback. It seems we have been told more than
>> a year ago that this was a big focus of Finale development, yet we haven't
>> seen anything in that time.
>>
>> Apart from video, I'd say there was a major effort to address
>> jazz/pop/commercial writers as noted above. And also there was a big focus
>> on playback. That is not just the Note Performer integration. They also
>> have added depth to the "DAW portion" of Dorico with support for automation
>> curves and unlimited controller functions. This adds to the existing
>> capabilities for MIDI editing separate from the notation itself (e.g, if a
>> note sounds just a little too long, you can change the MIDI very easily
>> without having to change the notation) These things add up to major
>> advancements.
>>
>> ---
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