Unusual scores

Dear colleagues,

I work mainly in the classical contemporary music scene; the scores and parts we have to do usually challenge the most usual functions of score editors. I’m not very interested on playback capabilities, but I’m strongly interested in the graphic aspect of the program. I would like to know if Dorico will be prepared for a high level of customization or if it will be oriented for a more common styles of music. I have some questions, I apology if some of them have already been asked:

1- Will the program be able to include graphics and deform them in an easier way?
2- Will Dorico be able to change noteheads easily? Will the native font include unusual noteheads as harmonics, semiharmonics, squares, triangles, etc? Will we be able to use other fonts? There will be a possibilty to include user-createds graphics as notehead?
3- Will Dorico have an in-program basic graphic editor?
4- Will users be able to create articulations and other score elements with graphics, or maybe only fonts will be available for that purpose?
5- Will all kind of rhythmic strange tuplets be possible? Tuplets inside tuplets? All kind of metric measurements? Will time measures be able to be faked? for example showing 4/4 but using different notation values larger than 4 quarter notes? Believe me there are not so unusual scenarios where that’s needed!
6- Will the user have the option to do personalized lines, like arrows, lines made with graphics, lines with symbols or letters at the beginning, the end above or under?
7- Will all this functions be present since the launch of the program?

Thank you for your attention.

1- Will the program be able to include graphics and deform them in an easier way?

Yes, you can include graphics in a graphics frame and set the graphic to fill the frame, then adjust the frame’s size to change the aspect ratio of the graphic. You can import SVG graphics which allows you to resize and reshape the graphics without causing any pixellation of loss of resolution.

2- Will Dorico be able to change noteheads easily? Will the native font include unusual noteheads as harmonics, semiharmonics, squares, triangles, etc? Will we be able to use other fonts? There will be a possibilty to include user-createds graphics as notehead?

Yes, in theory you can use graphics such as SVGs as noteheads, as noteheads are what we call composites, which can be a combination of glyphs from fonts and graphics. However, we do not as yet have the ability to change the notehead type in the current development builds of Dorico. We hope that we will have this possibility before the initial release: if not, it will come shortly afterwards.

3- Will Dorico have an in-program basic graphic editor?

No, not at first, but I would certainly not rule this out for the future.

4- Will users be able to create articulations and other score elements with graphics, or maybe only fonts will be available for that purpose?

Again, in theory you can use any composite for articulations and other notations, but we are currently lacking the necessary user interface to allow you to exchange the symbols. This will come shortly.

5- Will all kind of rhythmic strange tuplets be possible? Tuplets inside tuplets? All kind of metric measurements? Will time measures be able to be faked? for example showing 4/4 but using different notation values larger than 4 quarter notes? Believe me there are not so unusual scenarios where that’s needed!

Yes, Dorico has very flexible support for tuplets, including nested tuplets with arbitrary levels of nesting.

6- Will the user have the option to do personalized lines, like arrows, lines made with graphics, lines with symbols or letters at the beginning, the end above or under?

Yes, in due course, but not in the initial release.

7- Will all this functions be present since the launch of the program?

No, not everything will be included in the first release, but we will continue to develop the software following its initial public release and ship updates on a regular basis to add features that will be available free of charge to users who have Dorico.

Thank you very much for your answers,

Best.

(Daniel:) ‘However, we do not as yet have the ability to change the notehead type in the current development builds of Dorico. We hope that we will have this possibility before the initial release: if not, it will come shortly afterwards.’
I hope I’m misunderstanding this! If the notehead type can’t be changed, we can’t notate string harmonics and a good many other things :frowning:

You’re not misunderstanding it. At the moment you can’t change the notehead type of an individual note, but please do keep reading the next sentence beyond the bit where it says that you can’t yet do it…

Thank you Daniel. I shall watch and hope :wink:

OK so does that mean to say that if Ferneyhough cross-graded from Finale he would be happy with the results?

We tested our nested tuplet code specifically with some Ferneyhough!

Hello,

my initial post asked some questions which answer was; not in the initial release. I would like to ask them again in order to evaluate if it’s a good moment for me to adopt dorico. Thank you in advance for your help and time:

2- Will Dorico be able to change noteheads easily? Will the native font include unusual noteheads as harmonics, semiharmonics, squares, triangles, etc? Will we be able to use other fonts? There will be a possibilty to include user-createds graphics as notehead?
Yes, in theory you can use graphics such as SVGs as noteheads, as noteheads are what we call composites, which can be a combination of glyphs from fonts and graphics. However, we do not as yet have the ability to change the notehead type in the current development builds of Dorico. We hope that we will have this possibility before the initial release: if not, it will come shortly afterwards.

3- Will Dorico have an in-program basic graphic editor?
No, not at first, but I would certainly not rule this out for the future.

4- Will users be able to create articulations and other score elements with graphics, or maybe only fonts will be available for that purpose?
Again, in theory you can use any composite for articulations and other notations, but we are currently lacking the necessary user interface to allow you to exchange the symbols. This will come shortly.

6- Will the user have the option to do personalized lines, like arrows, lines made with graphics, lines with symbols or letters at the beginning, the end above or under?
Yes, in due course, but not in the initial release.

Thanks!

Great questions asked here.

Thank you Daniel for your thorough answers.

I will have to download and install the demo and have a look.

Best wishes to you Daniel and the team. You definitely have a keeper in Dorico.

seeya.

2- Will Dorico be able to change noteheads easily? Will the native font include unusual noteheads as harmonics, semiharmonics, squares, triangles, etc? Will we be able to use other fonts? There will be a possibilty to include user-createds graphics as notehead?

You can choose between a bunch of preset notehead types. The capability exists under the hood to define your own, but there is currently no user interface to allow this.

3- Will Dorico have an in-program basic graphic editor?

Dorico does not currently have a drawing tool or graphics editor.

4- Will users be able to create articulations and other score elements with graphics, or maybe only fonts will be available for that purpose?

You will not be able to define your own articulations (Dorico considers only the eight shown in the left-hand panel in Write mode to be true articulations), but you will be able to define your own playing techniques. No user interface exists to allow this just yet, however.

6- Will the user have the option to do personalized lines, like arrows, lines made with graphics, lines with symbols or letters at the beginning, the end above or under?

Yes, we still plan to do this, but it is not yet implemented.

Thank you for your answers Daniel.

Hi Dorico team,
do you have any new plans for adding the lacking things DonPuzo asked for above?

As I also need some contemporary engraving techniques to fully switch from Finale to Dorico let me ask some things,
What about:

  • Harmonics in string instruments and their playback
  • custom lines with editor
  • editor for custom symbol creations with graphical elements, arrows, brackets etc.
  • would be nice to have something like a “symbol selector” to choose characters from any musicfont as a text-insert

Cheers
Jörg

Dear Mayasfinest,

I think most of the things asked here are supposed to be on Dorico’s devs plans, but we do not know the schedule. We know for sure that the symbol selector (as in Sibelius) is absolutely NOT in schedule because Daniel stated a while ago that they plan to implement the musical objects as “meaningful” and not just a graphic symbol. This is why Dorico is way ahead Finale or Sibelius : the engraving rules are defined according to the meaning of the symbols, this creates a hierarchy, and FWIW I believe it is the way to go.

I’d love to get hold of that test score if it could be made available without violating Mr. Ferneyhough’s copyrights.

I really appreciate the fact that Dorico supports tuplets and nested tuplets correctly. Not every notation program does this. At the AES convention last October, I had to explain to the people at the A**d Technology booth, who were demoing a certain notation program, what “tuplets” and “nested tuplets”
are.
They gave me the deer-in-the-headlights look and obligingly called one of their SW developers, who told them that nested tuplets would not be supported…

:joy:

Heh, of course Sibelius does already support nested tuplets, and has for years. It’s almost like the people who originally wrote it knew what they were doing…