Steinberg Dorico

Recommendations concerning notation and publishing software in a non-partisan environment.
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Fred G. Unn
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Steinberg Dorico

Post by Fred G. Unn »

Well, the Steinberg notation product finally has a name: Dorico

http://blog.steinberg.net/2016/05/meet- ... /#more-396
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/steinb ... n-q4-2016/

I would love to hear Daniel comment on this, but I was incredibly disappointed to hear that at least in the initial release Dorico would not include the ability to input chord symbols. While I have eagerly awaited each of his "Development Diaries" and applaud all the attention to higher end engraving details they have tried to implement, the lack of chord symbols, at least as a visual entity if not auditory, seems like a colossal mistake to me. Obviously they are catering to the better classical publishers with some of these finer details, but by lacking chord symbols Dorico will be unusable in the markets for Jazz, Broadway, Film/TV, many educational settings, and many religious/church settings, in addition to just casual users who want to make a lead sheet. I think they are unnecessarily excluding the vast majority of their potential customer base.

Additionally, initial reactions to a product are hard to overcome. Once all the reviews are out that say this is a $600 notation product that can't do a lead sheet, it will be a huge uphill battle for them to ever regain any footing in any of those above markets. They also will likely will have to deal with many returns from irate customers who didn't realize that they couldn't input chord symbols.

I don't think I have ever used the chord playback features of either Finale or Sibelius. While that might be a useful feature to some, it doesn't matter to me at all. They ability to have chord symbols as a visual element though is absolutely necessary in 99% of my paid work, so the lack of this feature is a deal-killer for me. I truly hope they reconsider this decision. If they rush the software to market without chord symbols I think it will be a mistake from which they may never recover.
Knut
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Knut »

Fred G. Unn wrote:Well, the Steinberg notation product finally has a name: Dorico

http://blog.steinberg.net/2016/05/meet- ... /#more-396
http://www.sibeliusblog.com/news/steinb ... n-q4-2016/

I would love to hear Daniel comment on this, but I was incredibly disappointed to hear that at least in the initial release Dorico would not include the ability to input chord symbols. While I have eagerly awaited each of his "Development Diaries" and applaud all the attention to higher end engraving details they have tried to implement, the lack of chord symbols, at least as a visual entity if not auditory, seems like a colossal mistake to me. Obviously they are catering to the better classical publishers with some of these finer details, but by lacking chord symbols Dorico will be unusable in the markets for Jazz, Broadway, Film/TV, many educational settings, and many religious/church settings, in addition to just casual users who want to make a lead sheet. I think they are unnecessarily excluding the vast majority of their potential customer base.

Additionally, initial reactions to a product are hard to overcome. Once all the reviews are out that say this is a $600 notation product that can't do a lead sheet, it will be a huge uphill battle for them to ever regain any footing in any of those above markets. They also will likely will have to deal with many returns from irate customers who didn't realize that they couldn't input chord symbols.

I don't think I have ever used the chord playback features of either Finale or Sibelius. While that might be a useful feature to some, it doesn't matter to me at all. They ability to have chord symbols as a visual element though is absolutely necessary in 99% of my paid work, so the lack of this feature is a deal-killer for me. I truly hope they reconsider this decision. If they rush the software to market without chord symbols I think it will be a mistake from which they may never recover.
I too was surprised to hear that Chord symbols likely will not be featured in the initial release of Dorico, and considering the anticipation, I feel the pain of those who use chord symbols on a regular basis.

However, Daniel has said that the plan is to include this feature within the 1.x version cycle, and I am eager enough to try the application that I personally don't mind an early release without chord symbols, just as long as it's eventually implemented the 'right' way, and the wait isn't too long.
I also have some sympathy for Steinberg's economic needs after such a long development process, and I (perhaps foolishly) believe them when they're saying that this will be very high on their priority list following the initial release. I won't mind continuing to use Finale whenever chord symbols or tablature is called for in my work for the time being.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Fred G. Unn »

Knut wrote: However, Daniel has said that the plan is to include this feature within the 1.x version cycle, and I am eager enough to try the application that I personally don't mind an early release without chord symbols, just as long as it's eventually implemented the 'right' way, and the wait isn't too long.
I also have some sympathy for Steinberg's economic needs after such a long development process, and I (perhaps foolishly) believe them when they're saying that this will be very high on their priority list following the initial release. I won't mind continuing to use Finale whenever chord symbols or tablature is called for in my work for the time being.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I would assume tablature is likely less commonly needed than chord symbols so I can understand not including that initially. It also seems like a more serious undertaking to code correctly. Chord symbols as a purely visual element lacking any playback capabilities just doesn't seem like it should be that difficult to implement, at least in a v1.0 type of form. Heck, even a very simple notation product like Touch Notation for iOS has a pretty slick chord symbol entry and formatting system, if not terribly comprehensive.

I pointed out over on the MM forum that if I Google the phrase "finale notation review" (without the parentheses) all of the results on the first page are for Finale 2014 except the one for Sibelius, even though Finale 2014.5 has been out over 6 months now. Even if Dorico 1.5 has the ability to input chord symbols, every time someone searches for Dorico they are going to likely to still get the reviews of Dorico 1.0 which can't.

They will get a reasonable amount of crossgrade purchases initially, and maybe that's what Steinberg is counting on to keep this project afloat, but a Q4 2016 release will miss all the back-to-school purchases that occur before the fall semester, and by Fall 2017 students and educators will be reading reviews stating that this can't even do lead sheets and will opt for Finale or Sibelius. I'm not sure how they will make any advancement into the education market before Fall 2018

Look at both the Finale and Sibelius pages where they brag about the accomplishments of their users:
http://www.finalemusic.com/products/fin ... spotlight/
http://www.avid.com/sibelius#David-Pritchard-Blunt

For Finale, ok maybe Jennifer Higdon doesn't need chord symbols, but every other person or movie on the list does. For Sibelius they use David Pritchard-Blunt, James Horner, and Simon Hale, all of whom need chord symbols for film/TV writing. To whom are they going to market Dorico? Classical publishers, sure, but in total those sales will be measured in the dozens, not thousands, all of whom are going to be paying the crossgrade price rather than full anyway. Most of us here will probably give it a shot, but the decision to deliberately exclude the majority of the music notation market is definitely a head-scratcher.

I'm really glad they are paying attention to what a lot of us here would like to have in a notation program. Many of the things Daniel has blogged about have been things I've wished for years to see in Finale and/or Sibelius. I'd like to see them be successful, but I think they are shooting themselves in the foot right out of the gate by not including a feature that is a requirement of the majority of the music notation market. It's great that they are talking to Boosey & Hawkes, but they need to talk to people in other genres too as that is where most of their potential customers are. Considering virtually every market other than classical will require chord symbols at some level, the deliberate decision to eliminate them from the 1.0 release just seems like a huge miscalculation to me.
Knut
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Knut »

You're probably right that tablature is less commonly used, and also a more complicated feature to implement, than chord symbols. Nevertheless, I share the Dorico teams desire not to implement half baked features, and I doubt that a fully featured, slick and easy to use chord tool, which can handle the entire scope it's likely meant to as the program matures (figured bass, harmonic analysis, etc.) is as easy to develop as one might think.

I take your points about the negative consequences of leaving a chord symbol feature out of the initial release, but I highly doubt that this will be a major issue for the professional users that the program is targeted towards. After all, those types of users do not switch or buy their software before doing more thorough research. If the Dorico's main target was the education market and amateur musicians, I think this would have been more unfortunate.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Fred G. Unn »

Knut wrote:I take your points about the negative consequences of leaving a chord symbol feature out of the initial release, but I highly doubt that this will be a major issue for the professional users that the program is targeted towards.
By "professional users" I'm guessing you mean professional copyists, composers, and publishers who never do any jazz, commercial, pop orchestra, Broadway, Nashville, pop solo piano/lead sheet, or any film/TV work. What percent of the total music notation market could that possibly be? 1%? Less than .01%? Whatever it is, it is a tiny fraction of the market, and even then these aren't guaranteed sales, they will have to convince users to make the switch. It just seems incredibly short-sighted to release it with such a crucial bit of functionality missing.

They are basically limited to high end classical-only publishers, and even then if you take a look a Boosey's site, the first thing under "New Releases & Highlights" is a piece by Will Todd that includes parts for jazz ensemble or jazz trio. I'm assuming that a piece like that couldn't be done with Dorico so Boosey couldn't completely switch over either: http://www.boosey.com/shop/Default.asp

Finale has of course recently locked up one of the largest US publishers and largest publishers of music education materials, Alfred, so they won't be doing any switching (although plenty of companies that they distribute will be probably be free to use whatever they want). I'm not sure to what degree they will be able to use their leverage to support the use of Finale (or how legal that even is) but it's worth noting:
http://www.smartmusic.com/blog/alfred-m ... re-family/

I don't mean this to be overly negative or targeted toward anyone in particular, I just have gone from eagerly awaiting the release of Dorico, to being depressed about it and the viability of the project in one press release. I'm sure Steinberg execs have given the developers a budget and timeframe and expect them to produce, but I think rushing it out without a feature so essential to the vast majority of their potential customers is a huge mistake. I love all the higher end notation stuff they are doing, as I'm sure everyone on this forum is, but if they failed to plan for chord symbols from the initial planning stages then that just seems like a pretty big screw-up. Music notation is enough of a niche industry without eliminating the majority of it as a potential customer base.
Knut
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Knut »

Fred G. Unn wrote: By "professional users" I'm guessing you mean professional copyists, composers, and publishers who never do any jazz, commercial, pop orchestra, Broadway, Nashville, pop solo piano/lead sheet, or any film/TV work. What percent of the total music notation market could that possibly be? 1%? Less than .01%? Whatever it is, it is a tiny fraction of the market, and even then these aren't guaranteed sales, they will have to convince users to make the switch. It just seems incredibly short-sighted to release it with such a crucial bit of functionality missing.
No, that's not what I meant. Professional users of any stripe probably won't buy software based on a single outdated review, like you're implying. I'm thinking they will at least visit the website and read the updated feature list before buying new software with which to earn their living.
Fred G. Unn wrote: They are basically limited to high end classical-only publishers, and even then if you take a look a Boosey's site, the first thing under "New Releases & Highlights" is a piece by Will Todd that includes parts for jazz ensemble or jazz trio. I'm assuming that a piece like that couldn't be done with Dorico so Boosey couldn't completely switch over either: http://www.boosey.com/shop/Default.asp

Finale has of course recently locked up one of the largest US publishers and largest publishers of music education materials, Alfred, so they won't be doing any switching (although plenty of companies that they distribute will be probably be free to use whatever they want). I'm not sure to what degree they will be able to use their leverage to support the use of Finale (or how legal that even is) but it's worth noting:
http://www.smartmusic.com/blog/alfred-m ... re-family/

I don't mean this to be overly negative or targeted toward anyone in particular, I just have gone from eagerly awaiting the release of Dorico, to being depressed about it and the viability of the project in one press release. I'm sure Steinberg execs have given the developers a budget and timeframe and expect them to produce, but I think rushing it out without a feature so essential to the vast majority of their potential customers is a huge mistake. I love all the higher end notation stuff they are doing, as I'm sure everyone on this forum is, but if they failed to plan for chord symbols from the initial planning stages then that just seems like a pretty big screw-up. Music notation is enough of a niche industry without eliminating the majority of it as a potential customer base.
I hear you, but I personally don't think there is much cause for alarm based on the factors you mention. I don't really see how it matters to professional users whether Steinberg would postpone the Dorico release until a chord symbol feature is finished, or release the product in Q4 without it as intended. This part of the user base would need to get their work done either way, and would probably need some time (at least 6 months, I imagine) of testing before completely abandoning their old software. If a chord tool would appear within that time frame, which I think is very likely, It seems like a zero sum game to me. and of course, even with the chord symbol functionality implemented, Dorico has a way to go before it can match the feature set of any mature application like Finale or Sibelius, so it seems unlikely that any serious publisher would completely switch their platform before the new application is more mature.

Of course it sucks to have to wait even longer for a key feature, but you would have had to do that either way.
DatOrganistTho
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by DatOrganistTho »

I'm not convinced that logically it follows that deal-breakers are made on this kind of issue.

This kind of thinking only makes sense if you take into account any important feature to some group of people that isn't implemented immediately. I feel as though it overshoots into oblivion the setback of not having "one" feature that is coming quickly when the rest of the application can score and notate the majority of music.

I even had a composer friend who used Finale for the longest time and created their own figured bass worksheets with it without any figured bass plug-in. He didn't complain a lot, and even when the feature was added he still made his worksheets the way he had for the longest time.

Am I missing something, though? We are seeing the initial release of the first major scoring program to potentially offer alternatives to the juggernauts of music publishing Finale and Sibelius. What if you had all of the features in less than a year's time? Would it not be worth it then? And wouldn't publicity be able to push past whatever outdated articles are on the internet?
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Fred G. Unn »

DatOrganistTho wrote:I'm not convinced that logically it follows that deal-breakers are made on this kind of issue.
You might be right, but it also has me wondering what else is being left out or not possible. The engraving quality of Finale's examples that they have used in ads has traditionally been pretty atrocious, but Dorico's aren't exactly inspiring a ton of confidence either. Take this one for example:

Image

No sub-brackets on like instruments. Is that because the marketing guy didn't know or care, or because they aren't possible and will be coming within a year of the release? What other options for staff set up will be available? I would set that score up in Finale like the following, will anything like this even be possible?

Image

Check out this example as well:

Image

There are several obvious stems that should be flipped. Looking at the part, I wouldn't want a bracket like that on a single part, nor the abbreviated part name appearing. Normally I would assume that these would simply be options, but as this software is being rushed to market incomplete, I'm a little concerned these options will not be available upon release, making the software unusable for any sort professional work.

I guess with all of Daniel's blog posts about higher end engraving issues, including many that Finale and Sibelius have continued to ignore, I sort of assumed they had the basic stuff covered. I hope I'm wrong and all this other stuff is good to go.
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Fred G. Unn
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by Fred G. Unn »

I just realized Steinberg has started a Dorico forum and Daniel is very active over there. One of his comments is sort of concerning:

"2. At the moment, everything is entered assuming concert pitch. I hope we will introduce a toggle to allow you to input music in written pitch, for copying out existing parts, etc."

As I have several clients who still write a transposed score in pencil, having to transpose everything back to concert just to input it would be pretty annoying.
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David Ward
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Re: Steinberg Dorico

Post by David Ward »

Fred G. Unn wrote:As I have several clients who still write a transposed score in pencil, having to transpose everything back to concert just to input it would be pretty annoying.
I would probably not feel comfortable using Dorico if I had to enter all notes at concert pitch. When entering in Finale from my pencil drafts I do so in transposing pitch as appropriate.
Last edited by David Ward on 21 May 2016, 22:31, edited 1 time in total.
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