# Dorico, first experiments



## Rob (Jan 31, 2019)

new Dorico user here, but already kind of addicted. I'm finding ways of doing things I used to do in Finale (for the time being, for serious jobs still my only choice). It's a bit slow, but maybe that's because I'm on w7... spacing is very good but I'm having a hard time formatting pages, especially constraining bars to stay in a system. As I do further work on the score bars lose formatting. Must be something wrong I'm doing, for sure... anyway, as I don't see many scores around written in Dorico, I'm posting the first pages of a piano reduction I've done of Debussy's "Apres midi". It's not perfect, but for a first approach to the program I'm quite satisfied and it could give an idea of the output...


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## jamwerks (Jan 31, 2019)

Hi Rob, yes it's kind of addicting. I put the tuplet on & of key commands on page up & page down (right next to the numbers). And I'm using a third party macro maker for automatically typing "'page up" tuplet) "3:2", and assigned that macro to the "Pause" button, just above the Page up.

For the page layout you'll want to be using "make into system" & "make into frame" keystrokes.


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## Rob (Jan 31, 2019)

jamwerks said:


> Hi Rob, yes it's kind of addicting. I put the tuplet on & of key commands on page up & page down (right next to the numbers). And I'm using a third party macro maker for automatically typing "'page up" tuplet) "3:2", and assigned that macro to the "Pause" button, just above the Page up.
> 
> For the page layout you'll want to be using "make into system" & "make into frame" keystrokes.


yes I did that, but as I do further editing the bars don't stay in place... I also tried locking frames, but no... needs more investigation


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## Guillermo Navarrete (Feb 5, 2019)

Hello, 

This might be a little bit helpful: If you are using system and frame breaks in Engrave mode to try to lay out the pages, maybe the issue is that you are setting those up before puting in the music, and then the music is ending up wider than will actually fit across the system, so it then ends up changing the formatting. If so, then you might find that after creating e.g. a system break, if you select the system break signpost and open the Properties panel at the bottom of the window, if you switch on 'Wait for next system break', that will ensure that all bars until the next explicit system break (or the end of the flow, whichever comes first) will be forced onto the same system. This can of course have really bad results if there are no further system breaks and many bars until the end of the flow!

In general, that is why we will advice you that even if you are doing your best to recreate an existing edition, it's more efficient to input all the music first (e.g. in galley view) in Write mode and then turn your attention to the layout work in Engrave mode afterwards – that is one of the reasons why those two modes are separate in Dorico, after all.

Best regards, 
GN


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## TimCox (Feb 6, 2019)

I've got Dorico all mapped out for all of my VI's, I bought it only two weeks ago. To put this into perspective: a composer friend of mine has been working on mapping Sibelius out for well over a month so, yow! I'm having a _fun_ writing music the "right" way again. I haven't enjoyed a notation software since the early days of Notion and I'm still discovering quicker and quicker ways to do things.

I do have some questions which I have admittedly not looked too deeply into but wondering about the possibilities of setting playback offset depending on the current articulation. Right now I have to select my notes and input it manually. For VI's like Cinematic Studio Strings all of the shorts are very close but the legatos are intentionally delayed. In DP that's no issue, you either play ahead or select and drag. I'd love it if I could have a preset delay (or in this case...pre-delay?) for slurred/legato lines assignable in the expression mapping.


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## Wallander (Feb 6, 2019)

TimCox said:


> I've got Dorico all mapped out for all of my VI's, I bought it only two weeks ago. To put this into perspective: a composer friend of mine has been working on mapping Sibelius out for well over a month so, yow! I'm having a _fun_ writing music the "right" way again. I haven't enjoyed a notation software since the early days of Notion and I'm still discovering quicker and quicker ways to do things.
> 
> I do have some questions which I have admittedly not looked too deeply into but wondering about the possibilities of setting playback offset depending on the current articulation. Right now I have to select my notes and input it manually. For VI's like Cinematic Studio Strings all of the shorts are very close but the legatos are intentionally delayed. In DP that's no issue, you either play ahead or select and drag. I'd love it if I could have a preset delay (or in this case...pre-delay?) for slurred/legato lines assignable in the expression mapping.


I don’t want to swear on it, in case something has changed recently, but I don’t think you can time-shift an articulation automatically from Dorico’s Expression Map, but you can only do so manually on a note-by-note basis from the Play view. 

There are only a few fields in the Expression Map for transforming the MIDI data of the note, more specifically you can scale a note’s length or velocity or choose to transpose the note. But last time I looked into it, only the transpose feature had yet been activated and worked. 

To Dorico’s defense, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this in Finale or Sibelius either.


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## TimCox (Feb 6, 2019)

Wallander said:


> I don’t want to swear on it, in case something has changed recently, but I don’t think you can time-shift an articulation automatically from Dorico’s Expression Map, but you can only do so manually on a note-by-note basis from the Play view.
> 
> There are only a few fields in the Expression Map for transforming the MIDI data of the note, more specifically you can scale a note’s length or velocity or choose to transpose the note. But last time I looked into it, only the transpose feature had yet been activated and worked.
> 
> To Dorico’s defense, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this in Finale or Sibelius either.


Yeah, and it's nowhere near a "deal breaker" or what-have-you. It's really the same amount of tediousness I get from dragging notes back a couple ticks in Digital Performer -- a negligible amount. But MAN would it be an awesome feature


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## SimonCharlesHanna (Feb 6, 2019)

Working in notation is great - I just wish I could come up with ideas/sketch easier in them. I still have to start in Cubase



Wallander said:


> I don’t want to swear on it, in case something has changed recently, but I don’t think you can time-shift an articulation automatically from Dorico’s Expression Map, but you can only do so manually on a note-by-note basis from the Play view.
> 
> There are only a few fields in the Expression Map for transforming the MIDI data of the note, more specifically you can scale a note’s length or velocity or choose to transpose the note. But last time I looked into it, only the transpose feature had yet been activated and worked.
> 
> To Dorico’s defense, I’m pretty sure you can’t do this in Finale or Sibelius either.


FYI Arne, after the Dorico update, harmonics are playing back a bit odd - usually the first note of a bar will play but then the others play as normal.


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## Wallander (Feb 6, 2019)

SimonCharlesHanna said:


> Working in notation is great - I just wish I could come up with ideas/sketch easier in them. I still have to start in Cubase
> 
> 
> FYI Arne, after the Dorico update, harmonics are playing back a bit odd - usually the first note of a bar will play but then the others play as normal.


Sample libraries aren’t usually well-adapted for playing back quantised MIDI... It’s an issue for sure, that I’m well acquainted with myself. But to able to shift the timing of an articulation from the expression map is a great idea. 

Regarding the issue with harmonics, could you please check that the ”articulation” is also listed as harmonics in the Play view, if you expand the track?

Also, make sure you’ve updated to NP 3.2, and that you’ve updated the score to the most recent expression maps (explained in detail in our support guide for Dorico).

If that doesn’t resolve it, please send me an email (because I don’t want to hijack this thread!  I just wanted to share some insider info on Dorico’s expression map) and please let me know what you’re using to notate them, e.g. artificial harmonics notation, circle etc.


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