one Dorico "Defect"

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MichelRE
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one Dorico "Defect"

Post by MichelRE »

I love Dorico, since it creates parts for me, properly spaced, while I'm creating the score. This saves me HUGE amounts of time.
Its auto-spacing also saves me immense amounts of time.

But there are tiny issues (such as Dorico not taking vertical space into consideration with dynamics... ideally it COULD move dynamics horizontally when space is tight to free up space between staves.)

But there are a few more important issues.
For example, right now I'm working on a score that has 2 flutes, 2nd doubling piccolo.
The only way to have Dorico handle this "with ease" is to allow it to incorrectly place the piccolo part below the 1st flute staff.

If I want my piccolo part above the 1st flute, where it belongs, this creates an issue where the 2nd flute and piccolo are now no longer able to be "linked" as a single instrument.

So it's showing a condensed staff of 1st and 2nd flutes (ie: a single staff marked "flute 1/2"), and a piccolo part above. The implication is that there are in effect 3 flautists playing, instead of the two actually in the score.

Apparently, no software at this time can actually handle this situation correctly!

(other major issues are: the default spacing/placement of slurs when there are grace notes that are distanced from the main note; condensing onto a single staff - except in the absolute simplest of circumstances - can get very messy with collisions; and some playback issues that hopefully will be addressed relatively quickly. Dorico still doesn't playback fermatas, for example. While Finale handles them beautifully.)
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David Ward
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by David Ward »

I don't think there's anything inherently ‘wrong’ in an absolute sense with having the Piccolo below the Flute(s) in a score. Ricordi full scores of Verdi and of most of Puccini place the Piccolo below the Flutes, as do some other full scores on my shelves from reputable publishers. However, it is indeed more usual to place the Piccolo at the top.

BTW, Piccolo at the top is what I always used to do in my manuscripts, but I didn't feel it was worth fighting for in Finale when the player was doubling on Flute. A recent score of mine complicates the thing further with the first player doubling on Flute and Alto Flute and the second on Flute and Piccolo. It seemed wise to keep the player order irrespective of the instrument being played.
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John Ruggero
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by John Ruggero »

You may have uncovered a flaw in assigning the music strictly to "players". In this case, you want to assign the music to a certain instrument order and this is in conflict with your player order. On the other hand, assigning the music strictly to "instruments" won't link the two parts together as one part. This is a serious issue that should be brought to Daniel's attention. Gould shows several intricate situations of this type that I think would be impossible to handle in Dorico or Finale.
Last edited by John Ruggero on 22 Apr 2023, 02:08, edited 1 time in total.
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MichelRE
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by MichelRE »

I was thinking that maybe the good folks at Dorico weren't in a rush for a single instrument... then I saw my score of Bolero, and realized there are a SLEW of instruments - rarer, mind you - but still, instruments for which this would be an issue.

I simply cannot make myself place piccolo below flute 1.
In Finale I managed to make my parts work for this, it was a ton of work, but it worked.

In Dorico I'm going to have to create a "ficta" staff for a parts-only picc./fl. 2.
hautbois baryton
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by hautbois baryton »

In Finale, I would create 3 staves — Piccolo (placed at the top per convention), Flute 2 (placed below Flute 1), and then the Flute 2/Piccolo staff (this is the staff that I would use for the part). The Piccolo staff would be hidden when the player is on Flute; the Flute staff would be hidden when the player is on Piccolo, and the combination staff would always be hidden in the score.
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MichelRE
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by MichelRE »

yes that was what I did when I used Finale.

it's just a shame that Dorico, which does so much automatically, and better than Finale, does not handle this particular situation with grace.
Last edited by MichelRE on 22 Apr 2023, 00:34, edited 1 time in total.
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David Ward
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by David Ward »

Score order is nowadays very close to standard, but it certainly was not always so. In Wagner operas the order can vary from passage to passage, even page to page, according to how the instruments are being used, which must have been a nightmare for the original copyists (and would likely be an even worse nightmare for computer software).

In Elektra, Strauss puts the four Wagner tubas below the trombones, but when the same four players are on horns, they are above the trumpets. However, in Die Frau ohne Schatten the extra four are above the trumpets, whether they are playing horns or Wagner tubas. (Best not to ask about the zany Wagner tuba transpositions in that opera: Wagner tuba parts are usually recopied by the orchestra librarian to transpose as for horn in F, whoever the composer.)

I'll admit to being guilty of one persistent abnormality in the order of my own scores, going right back to my adolescence in the 1950s. I place plucked strings and keyboards below any voice parts in all my full scores. Nobody has ever complained, but if I were starting out in these days of computers, I would almost certainly place them conventionally, ie above the voices.
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MichelRE
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by MichelRE »

I guess I'm neurotic about this topic.
For me it should always be from highest to lowest, top down, except for horns which have a historical raison d'être for being where they are.

While there are probably many "classic" scores with wonky instrumental order in them, I don't believe that the default behaviour of a software package, particularly one that aims at being an industry standard, should be to default to that less-than-ideal unusual score order.

While there are Wagner operas with strange instrumental order, are all of his scores using that same order? Do all of Strauss' operatic scores follow the same order?

If neither of them could settle on a default behaviour for their own scores then that example shouldn't be the basis of a standard, when a far larger majority of orchestral scores DO seem to agree on a standard order.
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John Ruggero
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by John Ruggero »

You are absolutely right. This is a glaring issue that Dorico needs to get right.
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NeeraWM
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Re: one Dorico "Defect"

Post by NeeraWM »

One way you can work around it is to have a fictitious player handling just the "Piccolo" and place it on top.
Then you fiddle with player/instrument/layout names until you are happy, manually hide that stave when not playing as necessary and hide the flute 2 when doubling piccolo when necessary from the score.
Dorico's legendary automation contains a pinch of clever marketing. As soon as you get below the surface, you need to work around things. Luckily, it is 99% of the times possible to do that.
I suggest you keep the mindset you had before starting to use Dorico, then take what it does well with a thankful bow, and proceed as usual for the rest! :D
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