Dorico -> Sibelius?

I switched from Sibelius to Dorico when Dorico V4 was released. But Dorico is not very stable and has quite a few minor issues that affect my workflow and mood. So I’m trying to get back to Sibelius these days.

ALittleNightMusic said:

if I want to move something in the layout, I don't have to switch "modes". Just grab it with the mouse and position it.

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As a long-time Sibelius user before Dorico, this is something that I didn't like about Sibelius. The number of times that I was trying to select a note or something to change the note, but instead I was selecting everything else, and then I would have to zoom in or move other objects out of the way so that I could get at the object I wanted, and then move those other objects back to where they were supposed to be. Or I would move things by accident. A single misclick and I would send objects flying - that happened fairly often, and I didn't always notice. This was especially the case in really cramped situations where there were a lot of objects. So, I really like having the accidental moves locked down by the mode. Besides, in Dorico, a lot of things you need to move can be moved without having to actually adjust the object in engrave mode. For instance, dynamics can be grouped so they are vertically aligned, etc.

main reason why I prefer Sibelius is the fact it’s based on icons and everything can be grabbed with the mouse. My brain finds this state much more natural and I can work in a relaxed mood. More right brainy than Dorico

I’ve used Sibelius for years, but bought Dorico with the version 5 release and, if I’m honest, don’t find it as brilliant as I thought it would be.

I really like the flows, and the separate modes for writing, playback, engraving etc, but there is plenty that I struggle with!

Condensing never achieves a result I prefer to Sibelius..yes..it’s a button click, but I find I have to tweak everything to get the look I want, and ends up being slower than when I reduce staves in Sibelius.

I miss plugins (I cannot find a proof reading one anywhere) and with the Graphical Midi Tools plugin you can automate everything as well inside Sibelius so I don’t need to use a DAW.

The only thing I really wish Avid would sort out is Sibelius’s mixer..my word it’s rubbish, I’ll admit that in this area Dorico is way better..but Vienna Ensemble and Pro work brilliantly so I host my samples there..but sometimes it would be nice to host them natively and have access to a decent mixer!

I bought Dorico around 1.5, after 20+ years with Sibelius, but only played around a little bit with it on weekends and on personal projects. I took my time and slowly learned how to use it, without any pressure. At the beginning, I was just like everyone else, why did they make it like this? What a terrible design decision!

I stayed with Sibelius 'professionally' until about Dorico 3. At that point I discovered Stream Deck and I started using both with it. Within a month or two I realise, not only am I going a lot faster with Dorico, but I'm also getting much better results. I find Sibelius clunky and awful when it comes to layout. The Engrave Mode allows me to adjust things much faster, without any danger of altering the music.

The condensing feature is also a godsend! You do have to use a lot of manual condensing, but it still is so much better than having to do it in Sibelius, mostly because you can keep all other scores unaltered.

Finally, the ability to just add an instrument to a layout by ticking a box is marvellous. I can create so many different versions of a score and keep everything within the same file!

Change doesn't come easy for most, but it's the old evolutionary adage: adapt or die!

Bollen said:

I bought Dorico around 1.5, after 20+ years with Sibelius, but only played around a little bit with it on weekends and on personal projects. I took my time and slowly learned how to use it, without any pressure. At the beginning, I was just like everyone else, why did they make it like this? What a terrible design decision!

I stayed with Sibelius 'professionally' until about Dorico 3. At that point I discovered Stream Deck and I started using both with it. Within a month or two I realise, not only am I going a lot faster with Dorico, but I'm also getting much better results. I find Sibelius clunky and awful when it comes to layout. The Engrave Mode allows me to adjust things much faster, without any danger of altering the music.

The condensing feature is also a godsend! You do have to use a lot of manual condensing, but it still is so much better than having to do it in Sibelius, mostly because you can keep all other scores unaltered.

Finally, the ability to just add an instrument to a layout by ticking a box is marvellous. I can create so many different versions of a score and keep everything within the same file!

Change doesn't come easy for most, but it's the old evolutionary adage: adapt or die!

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Have you tried any recent versions of Sibelius? The good thing about Dorico is it introduced some real competition in the market, but it seems like the Sibelius team has made some updates in recent years too.

Speaking of plugins, I just found out about the Graphical Midi Tools plugin for Sibelius. Wow - looks to be just as, if not more, powerful / efficient as Dorico's MIDI modification capabilities.

ALittleNightMusic said:

Have you tried any recent versions of Sibelius? The good thing about Dorico is it introduced some real competition in the market, but it seems like the Sibelius team has made some updates in recent years too.

Speaking of plugins, I just found out about the Graphical Midi Tools plugin for Sibelius. Wow - looks to be just as, if not more, powerful / efficient as Dorico's MIDI modification capabilities.

Click to expand...

Yes for sure. Between it and Sibelius’ own MIDI playback adjustment control you’re set.

In addition to composing, I do a lot of professional engraving. Used Sibelius for over a decade, and switched to Dorico around V3. While Sibelius is indeed faster in some ways, there are many things that Dorico deals with automatically which, for me, frees up a lot of mental space. In the long run, I've found Dorico to be faster, less stress-inducing, and more reliable. Switching between write and engrave mode with keyboard shortcuts has become a reflex. I still often need to use Sibelius for some jobs, and it's become a real drag to have to go back to it.

I often tell my students and clients that Dorico is like the Apple of engraving software. It has a specific way it wants you to do things, and if you conform to that, then it will make your life a lot easier. But if you fight against it, then it will be a lot more difficult to deal with.

Yes, Sibelius has "Graphical MIDI Tools" available, but from what I've seen, it isn't really a complete replacement for something like Play mode in Dorico. You do get the ability to automate CCs and things like that, but from the demos I saw, it looks like note input and editing is not a part of it.

I actually use the note editing in the Play mode more often than the CC features. When I'm writing a chord for instance, sometimes I end up in a situation where I accidentally have one of the notes in the chord the wrong length. Trying to fix this through editing the notation can be a bit frustrating and time consuming because sometimes I end up changing more than I wanted to. But I pop into the piano roll and can simply adjust the length there without messing up the rest of the chord.

I do have to do manual condensing overrides a lot of the time in Dorico, but it is still better than the manual process in Sibelius. Sibelius starts to get annoying when you've manually condensed and then you want to go and revise the score. I had one orchestral score that I had to revise in this way and wound up having to make the changes to two different files. In the same score, I also had an instance where I had to move a percussion instrument from one percussionist to the other. Both were a pain in Sibelius, which I used at the time, but are easy in Dorico.

For me, another big benefit of Dorico the way that I write is when I'm writing, I'm often writing music that is not very metric, where the time signatures are mostly there to provide coordination. Sometimes I will hear a passage of music and realize that something needs a bit more time, or a bit less time. In Sibelius, making these types of edits was always an annoying experience. I would generally try to just adjust the time signature in one bar to add or remove time, but sometimes that wouldn't be possible, and then I'd have to go through more extensive edits, just to add or remove a bit of time. Even worse would be if I decided I didn't pick the best time signature for a passage and I'd have to spend hours potentially rewriting the entire thing. In Dorico I can change these things anytime later and don't have to rewrite, and the sound of the music doesn't change.

It's also possible to write to picture in Dorico, while it is not in other programs. Yes, I know other programs support video, but in this case the problem is synchronization. In a DAW you can write the music and set the time signatures after the fact, changing time signatures as needed, and the synchronization with picture is maintained. Dorico is the only program to act like a DAW in this way, where you can change time signatures as much as you want without accidentally adding or removing any time, and therefore you can make all sorts of edits without jeopardizing the sync with picture. I think this is absolutely necessary to write to picture (which is why I say it is not possible in other programs), as normally a DAW is the only option for this, but Dorico can be as well.

There are a few smaller things that end up saving time, like auto generated rests. Back with Sibelius I used to have to make a proofreading step to make sure that I amalgamated rests, otherwise when staring at a score for a long time, I could forget to fix rests and end up with weirdness or overcomplexity. It is also a common thing in ensemble pieces like orchestral pieces where instead of writing a whole note in 4/4, you "tie over" to a hanging eighth or sixteenth in the next bar to get a clean precise cutoff. In Sibelius, adding these would always be frustrating and time consuming. I would have to go add a new note, add the tie, possibly adjust the dynamics to match the new location, and rinse and repeat for all the instruments that cut off there. In Dorico I can just select the notes that I want to hang over and shift-alt-right arrow, and suddenly I've got the hanging sixteenths or eighths that I needed. Things like that have been big time savers for me.

In terms of things that I find work worse in Dorico than Sibelius, I'm not finding a lot. After doing many scores and parts that were performed, the biggest issue that I ran into is that the collision avoidance isn't quite so smart as in Sibelius, so in cases where I had a part where there was a dynamic below the staff colliding with something above the lower staff, it would add too much space for collision avoidance, and wouldn't bring the staves to normal spacing if you manually moved things in engrave mode to fix the collision. I wound up turning off collision avoidance in parts to avoid this and that way I can add vertical space myself where necessary. This is really the only area where I find Sibelius is better.

I would strongly recommend getting a Stream Deck (I have a Stream Deck XL and love it) before considering switching, as it really helps too in terms of making things more efficient and providing a nice graphical interface. It works for Sibelius too...

ALittleNightMusic said:

Have you tried any recent versions of Sibelius? The good thing about Dorico is it introduced some real competition in the market, but it seems like the Sibelius team has made some updates in recent years too.

Speaking of plugins, I just found out about the Graphical Midi Tools plugin for Sibelius. Wow - looks to be just as, if not more, powerful / efficient as Dorico's MIDI modification capabilities.

Click to expand...

No, I have not. I stopped at the last version before the subscription system was introduced. To be frank, I would not go back to it at this stage. I work with a lot of composers that are using the latest version and I still see Sibelius screwing up the same old stuff. As @mducharme said, there is just too much stuff that is better, faster, more reliable and easier in Dorico.... If you are willing to embrace change!

mducharme said:

the biggest issue that I ran into is that the collision avoidance isn't quite so smart as in Sibelius

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Funny, for me it's been the opposite. Collisions were always an issue with Sibelius, especially if you have lots of indications, whereas with Dorico I rarely get issues.

Bollen said:

Funny, for me it's been the opposite. Collisions were always an issue with Sibelius, especially if you have lots of indications, whereas with Dorico I rarely get issues.

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This is the specific type of situation that I was referring to (forgive the engraving here, this is a composition in progress, so this is not how I would actually format the part to begin with, but it demonstrates the problem):



Low notes in the tuba, with a dynamic below, and rehearsal mark in the system below, it adds a lot of space between those top two systems. That in itself is fine, but in reality what I would do is go into engrave mode and tuck the forte in and adjust the position of the rehearsal mark a bit possibly as well to avoid the need for collision:



But, unlike Sibelius, Dorico doesn't realize that I've moved those objects and freed up the space, as it uses the original position of the objects before any engraving decisions to determine how much space is needed between staves. So now I have too much space, and what I might do then is go and take every other individual staff on the page and move them up to re-equalize the vertical spacing between systems.

It's not so bad if I only have to do that once, but if I make any edits to the music later (even just changing one note), the vertical spacing overrides get lost, and I'm back to having too much vertical space between those two systems, and it looks stupid again. So I've actually had it happen where I was working on a piece and I spent probably hours moving individual systems up in total because I was taking it to the ensemble, hearing portions, making edits, going back, etc. Each time after changing notes I would lose my vertical spacing and have to go back and often move all systems on the page one by one.

At some point though I discovered that things worked out a lot better if I turned off the vertical collision avoidance in parts.



Then I end up with this, which doesn't look quite right:




*BUT*, I'm actually now in a much better position here - instead of having to drag down every single staff manually one at a time, I can hold down the ALT key (on Windows) and drag that second system down, and all of the systems on the page following that move down proportionally. If I was removing space, I would have to drag all systems one by one, but if I'm adding extra space, I can just ALT-drag the one system.

In Sibelius, I don't remember ever having to deal with this, so my recollection is that the vertical spacing would automatically adjust when manually moving markings to avoid collisions.

That's really the only thing I miss from Sibelius is that working better, but again, I've learned that turning off collision avoidance in the parts in Dorico helps to avoid the grief I went through with my first pieces engraved in it.

Sibelius user for the past 17,000 years. My impression is that Sibelius is better/quicker for writing music and Dorico is much better for engraving. I've tried Dorico, I'm too deep into Sibelius to make a switch. I really can't stand Avid so I would be happy to switch to anything, but I can use Sibelius in my sleep.

Sears Poncho said:

Sibelius user for the past 17,000 years. My impression is that Sibelius is better/quicker for writing music and Dorico is much better for engraving. I've tried Dorico, I'm too deep into Sibelius to make a switch. I really can't stand Avid so I would be happy to switch to anything, but I can use Sibelius in my sleep.

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This is my experience too.

I was totally into changing to Dorico when it came, and did a few jobs with it but it didn't sit right at all for me. I've updated up to Dorico 4, thinking *this time* I will change from Sibelius. But I always end up going back to Sibelius. So, in a way, I guess I qualify as being one who has changed from Dorico to Sibelius, although I never really 100% left Sibelius since it's the notation software we use where I teach.

Sibelius kind of has this "just get in there and get dirty" workflow where you can work with the notation more carelessly. That is something I personally find very important in order to stay in the flow. I'm sure if I spent a few years with Dorico I'd be able to get in, and stay, the zone with it, but I'm not willing to bet those years of productivity on it.

I feel like everything with Dorico is better in theory compared to Sibelius, but in practice something doesn't click for me. The Play Mode is a cool feature, but I actually rather fiddle with all that in my DAW and work "cleanly" with notation in Sibelius. I guess NotePerformer spoiled me, because before that came I used to muck around a lot with getting VSL Playback configurations to sound as good as possible. I don't find it cumbersome or slow to work in Logic and Sibelius in parallel anyway (probably mainly because I work quickly in Sibelius).

I wish I could love Dorico, but alas...

I moved to Dorico in 2018, and absolutely love it as a composition tool. I'm so fast at taking any idea in my head and just getting it entered, I get completely in the zone and it's really just an act of composing without the software getting in the way.

Since this is the opposite experience a few others are saying, I'm wondering if that's just due to people not spending enough time composing in it and getting used to it. I had an adjustment period of a year or two. I'm now writing pieces in Dorico all the time, even pieces that I don't have to write in Dorico, and I'm just crazy productive in terms of getting a mockup done (not using NotePerformer) and getting a notated version of it even though I don't really need notation because it is not always a piece that an ensemble will play.

D̶o̶r̶i̶c̶o̶ -̶> S̶i̶b̶e̶l̶i̶u̶s̶?̶ Finale!

Sears Poncho said:

Sibelius user for the past 17,000 years. My impression is that Sibelius is better/quicker for writing music and Dorico is much better for engraving. I've tried Dorico, I'm too deep into Sibelius to make a switch. I really can't stand Avid so I would be happy to switch to anything, but I can use Sibelius in my sleep.

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Curious to hear what you found better in Sibelius for writing music?

I may have spoken too fast about Sibelius's ease of positioning elements / engraving. Have run into some scenarios already (and I do very very simple scores compared to some folks here) that required a lot more effort and Googling than I originally thought they would. There's also the fact that I know Dorico much better than I know Sibelius, but I am running into a lot where I miss things in Dorico (the popovers, the rhythm grid, the true insert / ripple edit mode, etc).

mducharme said:

This is the specific type of situation that I was referring to (forgive the engraving here, this is a composition in progress, so this is not how I would actually format the part to begin with, but it demonstrates the problem):



Low notes in the tuba, with a dynamic below, and rehearsal mark in the system below, it adds a lot of space between those top two systems. That in itself is fine, but in reality what I would do is go into engrave mode and tuck the forte in and adjust the position of the rehearsal mark a bit possibly as well to avoid the need for collision:



But, unlike Sibelius, Dorico doesn't realize that I've moved those objects and freed up the space, as it uses the original position of the objects before any engraving decisions to determine how much space is needed between staves. So now I have too much space, and what I might do then is go and take every other individual staff on the page and move them up to re-equalize the vertical spacing between systems.

It's not so bad if I only have to do that once, but if I make any edits to the music later (even just changing one note), the vertical spacing overrides get lost, and I'm back to having too much vertical space between those two systems, and it looks stupid again. So I've actually had it happen where I was working on a piece and I spent probably hours moving individual systems up in total because I was taking it to the ensemble, hearing portions, making edits, going back, etc. Each time after changing notes I would lose my vertical spacing and have to go back and often move all systems on the page one by one.

At some point though I discovered that things worked out a lot better if I turned off the vertical collision avoidance in parts.



Then I end up with this, which doesn't look quite right:




*BUT*, I'm actually now in a much better position here - instead of having to drag down every single staff manually one at a time, I can hold down the ALT key (on Windows) and drag that second system down, and all of the systems on the page following that move down proportionally. If I was removing space, I would have to drag all systems one by one, but if I'm adding extra space, I can just ALT-drag the one system.

In Sibelius, I don't remember ever having to deal with this, so my recollection is that the vertical spacing would automatically adjust when manually moving markings to avoid collisions.

That's really the only thing I miss from Sibelius is that working better, but again, I've learned that turning off collision avoidance in the parts in Dorico helps to avoid the grief I went through with my first pieces engraved in it.

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That's because you're using it wrong! That's one of those "I use to be a Sibelius user and this how you can tell!" The philosophy of Dorico is fiddle with it the least possible and let rules (i.e settings) do the heavy lifting.

You shouldn't be moving the dynamic manually, you adjust it in the properties below. That way it'll stay together no matter what you do later.

Sears Poncho said:

My impression is that Sibelius is better/quicker for writing music and Dorico is much better for engraving

Click to expand...

For me Dorico is far superior for everything, it's not perfect and still needs a lot of work. But I used to use pen and paper for writing, Sibelius for engraving and Cubase for playback. Now I just do everything in Dorico!

It's indisputably more composer friendly than all the others that exist. In the way that you can move things around, edit, insert, change time, copy, paste, duplicate to other staves, etc. And most things are right there, either on your right click or in the properties panel...

I've always hoped to write music as a stream, and not as a series of small figures, and finally Dorico fulfilled my desire. The addition of the Key Editor completed all I could wish.

In Dorico, notated music is just the representation of this music stream. There is no container - bar, group - to fill with music. The music goes on, and you just have to make it visible and organize it into groups and bars.

Paolo

ALittleNightMusic said:

Curious to hear what you found better in Sibelius for writing music?

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Dorico seems needlessly complex at times. I'll give you a weird example (at least it was when Dorico came out): For tempos, Sibelius has a few basic ones like Allegro and Andante to start someone off, I usually type mine etc. Dorico had "Allegro Aperto". Really? How many pieces in the history of mankind have Allegro Aperto as the tempo? I know one- Mozart Violin Concerto 5, first mvmt. The same with dynamics, Sibelius has a few like FF and PP if someone needs to choose one. Dorico has like FFFFFFFF and pppppppp. Overkill.

It seems a bit overzealous at times. Sibelius isn't as complex and doesn't need to be. I wouldn't want to do Elliot Carter and Xenakis with Sibelius, but for standard notation it seems laid out with speed in mind.