Okay, it’s only my second day trying out Dorico, but with no manual, it’s eating up hours for the simplest tasks. Example: I imported 4 midi tracks from a Cubase project. For some reason, Dorico decided they were 4 flutes (they’re not, these are for SATB choir). No matter how I try to rename the tracks as Soprano, Alto, etc., they are stilled named Flute 1-4. The lower staves should be bass clef. When I try to change the treble to bass clef, it just writes new notes on the staff…it seems the note tool is still active when I choose the bass clef tool, and the clef doesn’t change at all, but new, unwanted notes are written instead. These things are all very simple in Cubase notation, I don’t know why they seem so non-intuitive in Dorico, and completely unlike Cubase notation. But a manual would certainly save hours of frustration and wasted time. I understand it will take time to develop, but don’t understand that functions that are well established can’t be comprehensively described in a manual.
Dorico is a completely different animal than the Cubase Score Editor. Have you explored the Help menu?
Perhaps this will help you get started. Once you understand the thinking behind Dorico’s workflows it will make more sense.
As far as getting the correct names and instruments for the staves, try exporting a Music XML file from Cubase, rather than a midi file. If the staves are correctly named in Cubase, importing the xml file into Dorico should yield the correct staff names and it should load the corresponding instruments. (I have not tried with vocals myself, so ymmv.)
Import from MIDI won’t tell Dorico what instruments are represented. It tries to guess, but there’s no definitive way for it really know. There isn’t currently a way of changing the type of an instrument, so creating a new instrument of the correct type and then pasting into it may be better. In general import from music XML preserves far more data and is usually preferable.
And it’s also true that MIDI import only uses a small set of around a dozen possible instruments, rather than the 200+ that you can create in the program directly or that the program will use when importing MusicXML files. Once we have a means of changing the instrument held by a player while retaining the music, this will get a lot easier to fix up.
I work primarily in Cubase on compositions and then import to Dorico. I’m currently working on a large piece: orchestra and choir. I exported a midi file (Music XML is not an option at this point) and then imported it into Dorico. I found that if I name my tracks correctly, it imports (almost) flawlessly. Took me a few tries to figure it out.
There’s only one problem: in the SATB section, the Bass is outside the grouping of SAT and Dorico automatically listed the part as “Bass in Bb.” The parts are in the correct order. Any ideas what’s going on?
That “Bass” instrument is probably not a singer, but a brass instrument. The easy fix is to change instrument in Setup mode>Player’s card opened clicking on the chevron on its left>Instrument menu>Change instrument and choose Singer>Bass. Easier to do than to explicit. I’m not sure you could do anything ahead to avoid this kind of error.
@dspreadbury, I wonder if some bit of special intelligence could be added to Dorico someday for exactly this case. It happens this way to everyone trying to import midi for choir. The Bass always comes after other tracks that Dorico knows are voices.
Thanks, Marc. That did it.