Dorico -> Sibelius?

[ALittleNightMusic]

I'm curious, what are your use cases?

Me and most composers I know IRL (we all primarily write concert music) use Sibelius. Dorico seems like the "default" notation software here, which is obvious seeing as it has better ways for plugging in sample libraries and the ability to write "piano roll style" in Play mode. For composing directly with notation, I always felt Sibelius is quicker and more intuitive.

I guess I'm biased, sort of being a Sibelius veteran at this point (ca 15 years now), but it's interesting to see that your experience with these softwares is very similar to mine and most of my friends who tried Dorico. It gives me hope that it's not only a matter of me "getting old".

My use cases are simple at the moment - I need to import some pre-made worksheets (MusicXML) to do some exercises and I also made a notated score based on a Logic mockup (once again, based on the MusicXML output). In general, Dorico's MusicXML import has not been very good. If it takes me 15 min to clean up the worksheet, as an example, that's a waste of 15 min. I have also repeatedly found that quickly adjusting the layout, moving elements a bit here and there, etc. is much faster with Sibelius because there's no mode split. With Dorico, some things I can move with the mouse in Write mode, but other things, I have to switch to Engrave mode to do so - one more step. The plugins and automatic chord detection has also been helpful, both in terms of workflow, but also in terms of helping me check my work. The plugin library is extensive and I think a huge functionality advantage for Sibelius. Lastly, and this is despite me using Dorico for years, I just find things really fast in Sibelius - the ribbon just works in that sense (as does the search box).

The "much fewer steps" thing has come up before, but I haven't been convinced that it isn't usually just not knowing how to do something efficiently in Dorico. Can you suggest an example or two?

Well, if it takes me 30 min of Googling to find that "efficient" mechanism in Dorico (or not find anything at all), that eats into the efficiency too. As a brand new user to Sibelius, it was sort of surprising how quickly I found answers to my questions to keep me moving along. On the other hand, I had to do a ton of searching or forum posting with Dorico - and I still didn't get to the solution that Sibelius gave me. As one example, if I want to break a tie (because my MusicXML import from Logic wasn't quantized perfectly), in Dorico, I have to enter insert mode, go to the right spot, hit U, then delete any extraneous notes / adjust durations. In Sibelius, I can just click on the tie and hit delete. Or if my piano part imported all on the treble staff and I want to split it across a grand staff, in Sibelius, there's a plugin to do that automatically for me and I can set the split point. In Dorico, I have to manually select appropriate notes and move to top or bottom stave. That takes a long time if you have like 100 bars.

Sibelius does some things much easier than Dorico for sure. but the things Dorico excels in are quite a bit better than Sibelius.

Indeed! There's no absolute winner - Dorico has some great features that I miss in Sibelius. I know the Sibelius team has staffed up and is accelerating product development - I think a lot of that has to do with Dorico's advancement. Good to have these two tools pushing each other to get better.

 

[Bollen]

Concert music composer here too, used Sibelius for 20 years and will never go back. Dorico has cut down my workflow time enormously!

I partly blame Dorico's terrible manual for a lot of people's struggles.

 

[jbuhler]

I struggled with Sibelius for years, but have so far found Dorico a breeze. I'm only three months in, and haven't been able to go at it full tilt yet, but I'm already far more comfortable working in Dorico than I ever was with Sibelius, so sort of the opposite of @ALittleNightMusic's experience. (I haven't, however, tried to work with XML yet.)

 

[Al Maurice]

Concert music composer here too, used Sibelius for 20 years and will never go back. Dorico has cut down my workflow time enormously!

I partly blame Dorico's terrible manual for a lot of people's struggles.

Well that's more an issue for Steinberg to address. All their online manuals are very long winded, disjointed and not easy to gleam out the essential details. It would be nice to think they may address this ... we can only live in hope I suppose.

 

[sinkd]

… if I want to break a tie (because my MusicXML import from Logic wasn't quantized perfectly), in Dorico, I have to enter insert mode, go to the right spot, hit U, then delete any extraneous notes / adjust durations. In Sibelius, I can just click on the tie and hit delete.

I will stop nitpicking after this, but I believe the above is not really correct. No need for insert mode or note entry, just select the notes that include a tie, and hit "U" Same number of steps. Now if you want to keep SOME (or one) of the ties in a long series, then Dorico is a bit dumber…

 

[mducharme]

in Dorico, I have to enter insert mode, go to the right spot, hit U, then delete any extraneous notes / adjust durations.

No need to enter insert mode to untie. You just have to activate the caret.

IMO - the reason for not allowing selecting ties and hitting delete is simple - keeping things the same as in Play Mode (with the piano roll). Being able to select the tie and hit delete would make it different from the piano roll view, as ties do not exist in a piano roll, and you have to use the scissors tool (untie) to get the same result. Making the user experience as similar as possible means providing a scissors tool the same way as you would have in a DAW. This provides some advantages on the notation side, as you can "untie" where there isn't even a tie (in the middle of a note). It's really not a big problem to me - hit enter, use the right and left arrows to move to the right spot, and U.

Also, they try to maintain a selection across both the piano roll and the notation. If you select a note in the piano roll, you still have that selected in the notation and vice versa, so it is clear either way what you have selected if you switch between notation and piano roll and do an operation like deleting. If you select a tie in the notation, you won't see anything in the piano roll because in the piano roll, ties don't exist. In the worst case scenario, you might select a tie while in notation, and then go to piano roll with seemingly nothing selected (meanwhile the tie is still selected, you just don't see anything), happen to hit the delete key, and now you've deleted the tie that you had selected in the notation. The more you bring the notation editing out of sync with the piano roll editing, the greater the risk of things like that happening.

 

[ALittleNightMusic]

Now if you want to keep SOME (or one) of the ties in a long series, then Dorico is a bit dumber…

Precisely - you cannot just delete one of them with U. Hence the need for extra steps.

No need to enter insert mode to untie. You just have to activate the caret.

By insert mode, I meant note input mode. You do need to navigate to the right area if you need to untie specific things in a series of ties (which is a common case for importing from a DAW I've found).

Dorico is trying to be a DAW - hence the strong correlation to the piano roll. Sibelius is explicitly not trying to be a DAW (as mentioned by their product designer). Different philosophies and approaches. Both valid.

 

[mducharme]

(I haven't, however, tried to work with XML yet.)

MusicXML import in Dorico is not the greatest, but that's mainly due to design flaws in the MusicXML spec itself, as I've written about extensively in other posts. Steinberg can improve the import by spending lots of man-hours on , but with MNX around the corner (the new replacement for MusicXML that should correct all of these issues), it's possible that it might not be at the top of their priority list. I know from spending a lot of time on the Dorico forum that there is not necessarily a lot of clamouring for significant improvements to MusicXML import, so without that feedback, they would not prioritize improvements.

Dorico's MusicXML import is mostly geared towards importing music. Exercise worksheets by definition will have a lot more text instructions compared to your typical piece of music, and the Dorico importing is not geared at all towards being able to import large blocks of text. The way Dorico is designed, those text blocks would be best created in engrave mode instead of in write mode, designing the document entirely differently and just having the musical examples in write mode by themselves, probably as separate flows. Getting an importer to handle that correctly would be very tricky.

 

[Elliot A]

I've been flirting with Dorico for a few months and I'm going to give the trial a go either starting tonight or tomorrow. I'm a bit heartened hearing the complaints are mostly surrounding moving MIDI into Dorico, as that is something I don't ever foresee doing. I'm enjoying writing in Musescore and moving the MIDI into a DAW; I really don't enjoy writing in a DAW. I'm not there yet, anyway.

An acquaintance posted a picture of this discount:



Does anyone know what the conditions of that offer are? If I enjoy the trial period enough to throw down some money, it's between Dorico + Noteperformer, and Dorico + Iconica Sketch; Iconica I doubt is something I'd receive if I bought secondhand, but if Noteperformer behaves+sounds better then it'd seem like going secondhand was the better decision, anyway.

 

[Daryl]

Precisely - you cannot just delete one of them with U. Hence the need for extra steps.


By insert mode, I meant note input mode. You do need to navigate to the right area if you need to untie specific things in a series of ties (which is a common case for importing from a DAW I've found).

Dorico is trying to be a DAW - hence the strong correlation to the piano roll. Sibelius is explicitly not trying to be a DAW (as mentioned by their product designer). Different philosophies and approaches. Both valid.

But the tie is just a graphical notation of one note. You'll see how powerful this is if you even have to import a new tempo and time sig track to an existing orchestration. In Dorico, there is no cleaning up required. In Sibelius your nightmare is just starting.

However, I'm still not seeing how just deleting a tie helps anything. You now have two notes, instead of one. This is not correct what you want, is it? What am I not understanding?

 

[mducharme]

I'm a bit heartened hearing the complaints are mostly surrounding moving MIDI into Dorico, as that is something I don't ever foresee doing. I'm enjoying writing in Musescore and moving the MIDI into a DAW; I really don't enjoy writing in a DAW. I'm not there yet, anyway.

The complaints of the O.P. in this thread are not about MIDI import into Dorico (which I feel is quite strong), but is instead about MusicXML import. In this case it is not only MusicXML, but MusicXML exercise worksheets that heavily uses large text blocks that you wouldn't find in most scores, and the large text blocks happens to be a weak area of Dorico's import, due to the fact that they've implemented this sort of "exercise worksheet" functionality in a different way in the program that makes it very easy to create such exercise worksheets yourself but complicates exchange of them with other programs via MusicXML.

Does anyone know what the conditions of that offer are? If I enjoy the trial period enough to throw down some money, it's between Dorico + Noteperformer, and Dorico + Iconica Sketch; Iconica I doubt is something I'd receive if I bought secondhand, but if Noteperformer behaves+sounds better then it'd seem like going secondhand was the better decision, anyway.

Not sure what the terms and conditions are. Dorico comes with Iconica Sketch for free but you're probably going to want NotePerformer anyway.

 

[jbuhler]

MusicXML import in Dorico is not the greatest, but that's mainly due to design flaws in the MusicXML spec itself, as I've written about extensively in other posts. Steinberg can improve the import by spending lots of man-hours on , but with MNX around the corner (the new replacement for MusicXML that should correct all of these issues), it's possible that it might not be at the top of their priority list. I know from spending a lot of time on the Dorico forum that there is not necessarily a lot of clamouring for significant improvements to MusicXML import, so without that feedback, they would not prioritize improvements.

Dorico's MusicXML import is mostly geared towards importing music. Exercise worksheets by definition will have a lot more text instructions compared to your typical piece of music, and the Dorico importing is not geared at all towards being able to import large blocks of text. The way Dorico is designed, those text blocks would be best created in engrave mode instead of in write mode, designing the document entirely differently and just having the musical examples in write mode by themselves, probably as separate flows. Getting an importer to handle that correctly would be very tricky.

For me, MusicXML will mostly be used for importing Logic projects into Dorico.

 

[Elliot A]

The complaints of the O.P. in this thread are not about MIDI import into Dorico (which I feel is quite strong), but is instead about MusicXML import. In this case it is not only MusicXML, but MusicXML exercise worksheets that heavily uses large text blocks that you wouldn't find in most scores, and the large text blocks happens to be a weak area of Dorico's import, due to the fact that they've implemented this sort of "exercise worksheet" functionality in a different way in the program that makes it very easy to create such exercise worksheets yourself but complicates exchange of them with other programs via MusicXML.


Not sure what the terms and conditions are. Dorico comes with Iconica Sketch for free but you're probably going to want NotePerformer anyway.

Thanks for clearing all of that up so quickly. I can see the benefit of preserving dynamics markings/expression text etc when moving projects around, but until Dorico and Cubase marry, Reaper is blind to all of that anyway and it's all I use.

 

[John Wilson]

For me Dorico is a better choice. I would not return to Sibelius now that I am using Dorico. Creating the parts in Sibelius was a nightmare, time consuming and messy. In Dorico doing the parts is so much better, that alone makes Dorico worth it. I usually input notes via a Midi controller so note input and moving around the score feels similar to Sibelius to me.

 

[ALittleNightMusic]

But the tie is just a graphical notation of one note. You'll see how powerful this is if you even have to import a new tempo and time sig track to an existing orchestration. In Dorico, there is no cleaning up required. In Sibelius your nightmare is just starting.

However, I'm still not seeing how just deleting a tie helps anything. You now have two notes, instead of one. This is not correct what you want, is it? What am I not understanding?

So far, Sibelius has not been a nightmare. Deleting ties is due to importing a MusicXML from Logic where everything isn't hard-quantized and thus, you need to clean things up to make it look like the expected score should. The clean up process is taking me far longer in Dorico than in Sibelius.

The complaints of the O.P. in this thread are not about MIDI import into Dorico (which I feel is quite strong), but is instead about MusicXML import. In this case it is not only MusicXML, but MusicXML exercise worksheets that heavily uses large text blocks that you wouldn't find in most scores, and the large text blocks happens to be a weak area of Dorico's import, due to the fact that they've implemented this sort of "exercise worksheet" functionality in a different way in the program that makes it very easy to create such exercise worksheets yourself but complicates exchange of them with other programs via MusicXML.

It's not just MusicXML from worksheets but also from Logic. Dorico does better there, but still the overall process hasn't been as smooth as with Sibelius. Also, regarding worksheets, MuseScore imports them just fine as well - so this is very much a Dorico problem that they have decided not to invest in, while other programs have.

 

[Beyond4A]

No need to enter insert mode to untie. You just have to activate the caret.

You don't even have to go into insert mode/activate the carat. You click on the note you want to untie and hit "U". Or you can reduce the length of the original note. Either way works.

 

[John Wilson]

So far, Sibelius has not been a nightmare. Deleting ties is due to importing a MusicXML from Logic where everything isn't hard-quantized and thus, you need to clean things up to make it look like the expected score should. The clean up process is taking me far longer in Dorico than in Sibelius.

I would not want to be cleaning up anything in either Dorico or Sibelius that hasn't been hard quantized before MIDI Import to notation.

 

[wing]

Sibelius is named after a composer. Dorico is named after an engraver, isn’t it?

Which is interesting, because Dorico keeps the two worlds separate: composing and engraving, with a very clear boundary in the tabs (write/engrave). When I started with Dorico, having come from both Sibelius and MuseScore, I found it maddening that in Dorico I couldn't easily perfect the placement of text, hairpins, slurs, visually, while writing, as you can in Sibelius. However I began to embrace the fact that write mode truly is for writing, and when composing there really is no need to perfect visual engraving details – in fact it's just a distraction. Just like if I was writing a book in a word processor, my focus would be on the words and not the fonts or spacing etc.

Not necessarily what you are saying, but to that point, I actually find Dorico to be more enjoyable for writing - and I personally don't do much engraving, but the times I have used the engrave mode in Dorico, I kinda hate it.

My point being, Dorico in my personal experience actually feels like a better writing tool than engraving tool, but professional engravers and publishers might have a different opinion there.

One thing I know for sure, times I've re-opened Sibelius since then, I now find it maddening when I go to select notes or move compositional things around, it's also easy to accidentally adjust bar sizes, system distances, hairpin sizes—visual engraving stuff—and if you're not paying attention things can start to look rather inconsistent. I enjoy that Dorico frees me up to not think about these things when writing - it handles all the back-end consistency for me and makes stuff like condensing an absolute breeze.

With popovers, shortcuts, and the way the input mode / caret so elegantly handles math for me, I find I can write at a blazing speed. Of course that's not to say someone can't write fast in Sibelius – I had a composition teacher who flies through Sibelius in the blink of an eye. I guess what you get used to and develop muscle memory for. But I really enjoy that Dorico allows me to focus on just writing plain and simple.

That said, I do agree the D. developers have a stubborn air about them. I've made suggestions on their forum many times which are met with skepticism, "why would you want to do that?" or some roundabout explanation how the team has already decided on something and will not change it, which I think is funny if several people find something confusing and keep asking about... There are some UI suggestions I've made and the general response I've gotten is - deal with it, or "here's a complicated workaround..."

But on the other hand and to be fair, considering the short lifetime of the product, their pace of development and updates outshines Sibelius by far. Every update is rather comprehensive, not just a couple bug fixes, which I appreciate. And there are a few things I've noticed added lately which they said previously "they will never do" – one example, they were flat out refusing to allow clefs with an 8vb or 8va to affect playback, because they considered this to be wrong; but in a recent release, you can now toggle this in preferences. So they listen, just with a little bit of a 'tude I guess.

 

[sinkd]

No need to enter insert mode to untie. You just have to activate the caret.

You don't even have to do that! Just select the note in write mode!

 

[mducharme]

It's not just MusicXML from worksheets but also from Logic. Dorico does better there, but still the overall process hasn't been as smooth as with Sibelius. Also, regarding worksheets, MuseScore imports them just fine as well - so this is very much a Dorico problem that they have decided not to invest in, while other programs have.

Issues importing from Logic is one thing. There are various issues importing MusicXML music objects that can be fixed if they put effort into making a much more defensive MusicXML importer, which is very time consuming due to the poor design of the format.

Regarding the worksheets, I suspect Dorico will probably never be able to import them in an ideal way without duplicating a lot of the functionality of the program in different places. The issue is that, while Dorico basically has a desktop publishing engine embedded into the Engrave mode of the program, intended for creating worksheets and such (and it is really fantastic at it), MuseScore and Sibelius and other programs do not, so the only way to create worksheets in those programs is to use a workaround of creating text blocks in the music score with some advanced formatting tricks. So, Sibelius and MuseScore have had to really enhance the text block functionality in those programs so that users who want to create worksheets can still do so by using the text blocks as a workaround. Dorico does not need to implement all those features in regular text boxes because the DTP engine in Engrave Mode handles that. So yes, MuseScore and Sibelius do import those worksheets correctly, because you have to use a workaround in both programs to do the desktop publishing that you don't have to in Dorico.

Unfortunately, MusicXML is not designed to convey desktop publishing information. Dorico would have no way of knowing that what is being imported is a worksheet instead of a piece and therefore it should create engrave mode frames instead of creating text blocks. Even if it could know that, I think there would be no way to easily convert the info over since MusicXML is designed in such a way that it assumes it is communicating over just one document, and not two (the score vs the DTP information). In Dorico, the score and the DTP representation in engrave mode are more or less separate entities, and when importing MusicXML it would not know what text blocks to import into the score and which ones to import into the DTP section (the frames in engrave mode).

Dorico has a much more powerful, flexible and customizable desktop publishing component than either of those programs - but the way it is designed (as a separate program-within-a-program), while making it a much more powerful solution, hinders MusicXML import for worksheets and similar things.