Steinberg Dorico 5 is out today

[mhschmieder]

https://www.steinberg.net/dorico/new-features/

Not sure I can justify $100 for the update, as the majority of features are playback-oriented, which is the direction Notion went in right before StudioOne/PreSonus absorbed them.

Maybe I am underestimating the depth and importance of some of the less-publicized changes though, such as the new fonts and improved MusicXML.

My jazz bandmates use MuseScore and I've had a devil of a time (i.e., 100% unsuccessful) getting any of the output they produce to work in any other app or to convert to other formats. I doubt that will change though, as it doesn't seem to really produce MusicXML; there was some web confusion because they do use XML for some stuff, and they do music.

[mikehalloran]

Dorico’s MusicXML support has not been stellar but MuseScore’s is terrible. Now that Michael Good has retired from MakeMusic, I have no idea what’s going on in the world of MusicXML. I’ll see him tonight at an opera rehearsal but we don’t talk shop about jobs neither of us have anymore.

I’ve never liked Dorico but have to use it now and them. No doubt, I’ll have to spend for the upgrade.

Thanks for the heads up!

[mhschmieder]

Mike, I didn't know that you also know Michael Good. You may know that he and I worked together for several years at Digital Equipment Corporation in Maynard MA and that we were in a Chicago tribute band. Due to my aversion to traffic, I never connected in person with him after we both moved to CA (me to North and East Bay, him to Silicon Valley and South Bay) but we stayed in touch for a while electronically (and through this forum) until my contact info went south.

My understanding is that he moved back to the Boston area in recent years, probably due to his heightened role in MusicXML and related endeavors. I don't think he has stepped into this forum in a number of years by now, but he used to be an active member. Anyway, say hi for me. He's a great person and also an excellent trumpet player.

[mikehalloran]

He has made a couple appearances here in the last few years but it has been a long time. When MakeMusic/Finale moved to Colorado, he was able to stay with them while remaining here in the SF Bay Area where he still lives.

We first met in a Gilbert and Sullivan orchestra playing Utopia in 1979 (bass for me and French horn for him) and our paths have crossed now and then over the years. At the moment, we are in a production of Der fliegende Holländer in Palo Alto. There are two male choruses with different rehearsal schedules so we’ve not exchanged much more than "Hi Mike" to each other.

[mhschmieder]

Cool. It's kind of funny the trajectory things took. I was one of the very earliest adopters of PostScript and in fact was a primary developer of the first consumer/office graphics laser printer, and Mike was in the video wing of that organization, which also was starting to make use of PostScript. This exposure alongside SGML no doubt informed much of Michael's approach to structuring notation in an ML context once XML came along as a vehicle for creating new domain grammars.

[mhschmieder]

I gave up early on Finale last night as I found chord entry too cumbersome compared to Dorico, but once I had finished my lead sheets in the latter and had studied the user manual in depth as well as the long document of v5 changes, I decided I need to use my MusicXML export from Dorico in Finale and see if I can achieve the things (and easily) that are still (even in v5) impossible in Dorico (too many to list, frankly). I spent 5-8 hours overall on Dorico alone.

I may still do the v5 upgrade just for better MusicXML operability and improved fonts. We'll see.

I understand the philosophy behind Dorico's workflow and feature focus, but I am not convinced I am part of that audience. As I speculated earlier, it appears they are going after the same market that Notion did. I was an early adopter of Notion, having met its founder and respecting him as a collegiate colleague (though we're not sure we shared a class). But it by necessity went in a direction that was primarily education market driven. Obviously, there's a big need there and someone has to do it.

I think my own needs are probably best met by apps that focus on composers and publishers than those handing out big band charts to switch-hitter players who need player-specific consolidated charts -- Dorico's chosen area of focus.

I think my copy of Overture 5 still works (most of my other notation apps went by the wayside), so maybe I'll give that another try. I also want to see whether my jazz quintet bandmates have any luck with the MusicXML I sent them from Dorico, as they all use MuseScore, which I tried and despised and found inflexible towards integrated workflows with other apps.

The most important bottom line for me with Dorico is that I can meet way more of my needs with QuickScribe. There are obviously things I can and need to do in Dorico that QuickScribe can't address, but at least I have control over Consolidate Rests and other aspects of getting a lead sheet onto a single page of sheet music!

[mhschmieder]

Here's a review of the new version. I don't have time to read it in depth as I'm behind on production tasks, but I skimmed it, and am leaning towards the upgrade now.

https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews/do ... c-forward/

[mikehalloran]

I went through the PIA upgrade to Dorico 5 but haven't used it yet. I did my string orchestra arrangements in Finale last week since I was under a deadline (the devil I know better).

How did you make out with Overture 5?

Don Williams hasn't updated it in a year and a half. Likewise, his planned Encore 6 / Overture 6 release is six months behind. We talk now and then but it's not my job to nag him.

[mhschmieder]

I was surprised how well Overture 5 imported the Music XML output from Dorico 4, actually. It's a pretty easy app to use and looks nice, but I think I found it lacking feature-wise, though I may be thinking of Dorico itself as it is heavily crippled in some pretty important areas. I won't have time to go back to chart refinement for a bit now. Hopefully by end of month, but I'm busy on audio production at the moment.

[mhschmieder]

Wow, I am SO glad that I upgraded tonight! The feature that I most need is present, even though not listed in the lengthy Release Notes, unless the way they talk about it is so obtuse that I didn't notice!

My extracted parts are all now the best of any of my gazillion notation options (although admittedly a few of those are now abandonware and/or don't work on 64-bit computers).

Amongst the many improvements (new fonts being the most obvious one, as well as off-color background for easier on the eyes viewing), Consolidated Rests are now applied even with chord symbols being present, and it retains the cue divisions so that musicians don't get confused where they are when they are sitting out across cues.

One thing I have not figured out how to do in Dorico is to have repeats with alternate endings and RETAIN the letter codes, as one does in jazz charts. But I haven't tried tonight as I just finished the installation, authorization, and launch, and now have to go back to more overtime on the day job.

[mhschmieder]

Steep learning curve tonight, towards producing better jazz lead sheets after my combo rehearsed my latest song for Thursday's gig. All notation apps are crash-prone, buggy, and full of glitches and quirks, but so far I am finding Dorico 5 (but not necessarily Dorico 4) to be the easiest to use for creating proper markers, cues, consolidation of scores, parts extraction, note renaming, etc., and especially chord entry and alignment (VERY frustrating in Finale).

Steinberg chose strange points to accent in their long Release Notes and announcement. The stuff I am personally noticing in V5 vs. V4 was barely mentioned or used unusual terms to describe, but someone in marketing must think the main audience for Dorico is people who use drum loops and want audio mockups of their work without buying/learning Cubase.