Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

Four Things Dorico Can't Do (That Sibelius Can)

Dave Connor said:
Is Synth V Integrated in Sibelius or Exported from Sibelius into a DAW? I thought it was the latter.
Click to expand...
Personally, I exported a midi file out of Sibelius, then imported into Synth V. All I had to do was tweak a couple of pronunciations. Synth V even recognized tempo data on the midi file. Synth V does show up as a VST3 in both my DAWs, but I have not gotten that to work (used very little effort due to it working in stand alone).
 
ThomasS said:
Four Things Dorico Can’t Do (That Sibelius Can)
Dorico has a 30% discount price at the moment, so after reading so many great things, I tried a demo in the hopes of switching this month.

I can’t tell you how disappointed I am. Disappointed, not because the program is bad. Far from it. It’s better than Sibelius in a ton of ways. But frustrated that a program so great is still missing deal-breaking features that Sibelius has had for years.

1- It does not playback pauses. Fermatas, breath-marks, and other short silent gaps are essential in a lot of music (particularly accapella choral) and Sibelius has been doing this for years. You can add them to the printout of Dorico, but they don’t affect playback, as they do in Sibelius (which also lets you custom design their behavior, and add your own additional custom articulations)
2 - Dorico midi export does not include lyrics readable by other programs, whereas Sibelius does. This is absolutely essential for me, as I’ve recently taken to using Synthesizer V, which everyone will likely be doing in the coming years. (Listen to audio examples below of Sibelius midi files played by Synthesizer V.)
3 - Dorico does not have video output (of the playback with cursor following the music) whereas Sibelius does. Perhaps this is not such a big deal, as it can be achieved with third party screen recording programs, but I wonder why Dorico can’t include this.
4 - Sibelius has dozens of user-written plugins (using the manuscript language) for which there is no equivalent Dorico feature, nor can I find an equivalent of Sibelius’s Manuscript Language to write them yourself.

As an example, here are four accapella scores I recently made in Sibelius, and played the Sibelius output in Synthesizer V.
View attachment Synth V Choir - A Nightengale Sang in Berkely Square.mp3
Synth-V Choir - A Nightingale Sang in Berkely Square

View attachment Synth-V Singers - Somewhere Over the Rainbow.mp3
Synth-V Choir - Somewhere Over the Rainbow

View attachment Synth-V Choir - Their Hearts Were Full of Spring.mp3
Synth-V Choir - Their Hearts Were Full of Spring

View attachment Synth-V Choir - Early One Morning.mp3
Synth-V Choir - Early One Morning

You can hear lots of rubato, and particularly listen for pauses – little gaps of silence between words and phrases. These were all played by Sibelius. There was no DAW used to prepare the performance. Sibelius can enter tempo changes at the push of a key, and pauses of any duration (programmable) and playback rall, rit, and other things as well. The entire rubato feel was handled by Sibelius. Dorico can only make tempo variations (sometimes needing to go in and out of Play/Write mode) but not pauses, which are essential to this kind of music.

Furthermore, the examples here have lyrics, sung correctly on each note or melisma, and this too was generated by Sibelius. The midi file generated by Sibelius includes all the lyrics assigned to each note. You need to tweak the pronunciation inside Synthesizer V for some words, but it is 80-90% ready for you. Dorico, for some reason, does not include lyrics in it’s midi file (at least not readable by Synthesizer V) so you would have to re-enter them which would literally take hours.

I could not have made the examples above without Sibelius. I used Sibelius shortcuts and custom articulations and tempo changes to get the rubato feel, and the lyrics were exported with the notes. In some cases I used custom text search/replace routines (in Microsoft Word) to quickly alter the lyrics to a form that Synthesizer V needs, and this is easily done in Sibelius, just exporting all the lyrics as a single text file.

There is no program that can convincingly sing choral music as well (and intelligible) as Synthesizer V. Hollywood Choirs and other worldbuilder choral libraries are hard to understand, and take hours of time, whereas it takes a fraction of time in Synthesizer V, and the results are remarkable. If you are not familiar with it, you may be surprised to learn that the above examples are all AI (artificial intelligengence) generated by a computer. At the moment, it is limited in the size of choirs it can emulate, but in the near future, with the addition of more English voices, this will certainly become the go-to plugin for composers who want to mock up their choral arrangements.

Dorico needs to improve its ability to work with Synthesizer V if it wants to keep up with the times. There are other things about this, but I have said enough. So, for the moment, at least, I am going to stick with Sibelius, but keep an eye on Dorico (Version 5 maybe?)
Click to expand...
Thanks for this geat demo and info. - But can you use Synthesizer V Pro with Sibelius like any other VST, I mean, together with other VST-instruments? Does it have built-in effects, like verb and delay? Regards Svennis
 
Another important feature that Dorico does not have is version management. For relatively large and complex projects, version management can greatly improve the project process.
 
DavidDong said:
Another important feature that Dorico does not have is version management. For relatively large and complex projects, version management can greatly improve the project process.
Click to expand...
I agree, although to a certain extent you can just save as a different version and use the Library to compare many aspects. You can also then open them as Flows and look at them side-by-side using the Window > Vertical Split.
 
Svennis said:
...can you use Synthesizer V Pro with Sibelius like any other VST, I mean, together with other VST-instruments? Does it have built-in effects, like verb and delay?
Click to expand...
Sibelius doesn't support VST3 so it would not run the Synthesizer V plugin. Dorico can host VST3, but very few users find it as useful as simply having the two programs open at the same time. In this regard, Sibelius is more compatible with Synthesizer V for quick transfer of data because it imports and exports both lyrics and notes, which Synthesizer needs, as it is a vocal program. Until Dorico adds lyrics to its MIDI import/export protocol it will always be inferior for Synthesizer V users, although it is great in so many other respects.

Nickie Fønshauge said:
It does now, after the 5.1 update. All kinds of pauses, fermatas, caesuras, and breath marks. So, one less reason to dislike Dorico 😀
Click to expand...
Thank you for this information Nickie. It's great that Dorico finally has the ability (which Sibelius had for decades) of playing back pauses, fermatas, etc. I can confirm that I had a friend test it with playback in Synthesizer V and it is working perfectly. That is, the pauses are imbedded in the tempo track of the MIDI file and recognized by Synthesizer V. That is a great, and sorely needed, upgrade, which DSpreadbury has promised for some time. Now Dorico needs to add lyrics to its MIDI import/export (which Sibelius and lot of DAWs have been doing for years too) and it will finally bring its otherwise fine program into the 21st century.
 
Last edited:
Please forgive my ignorance, nut does that mean that you export MIDI-files from Sibelius? You said that your Synthesizer V-arrangements were made with Sibelius.
 
Svennis said:
Please forgive my ignorance, nut does that mean that you export MIDI-files from Sibelius? You said that your Synthesizer V-arrangements were made with Sibelius.
Click to expand...
Synthesizer V has its own internal sequencer, it runs in time with your DAW or notation program but yu need to get midi into it separately. Dorico exports midi but doesn't include the lyrics in the midi file but Sibelius does.

Though I think that there is a new update, IIRC, from Dreamtonics that does accept midi input directly from a DAW into Synthesizer V, though not sure about how it deals with with lyrics that way.
 
Svennis said:
Please forgive my ignorance, but does that mean that you export MIDI-files from Sibelius? You said that your Synthesizer V-arrangements were made with Sibelius.
Click to expand...
I write the arrangement in Sibelius, because it can playback tempo changes, pauses, fermatas and other things beautifully, and also enter lyrics. Then I export the Sibelius file to MIDI and open that up in Synthesizer V and it plays with all the tempo changes and lyrics perfectly. You have to learn how to enter lyrics the way Synth V likes them, but that is not too hard.

You can also directly write your arrangement in Synthesizer V, which is easy too, but you cannot get the precision of tempo changes and pauses like you can in Sibelius for free rubato choral music like the above examples. But for strict tempo, writing directly inside Synth V is fine.
 
ThomasS said:
I write the arrangement in Sibelius, because it can playback tempo changes, pauses, fermatas and other things beautifully, and also enter lyrics. Then I export the Sibelius file to MIDI and open that up in Synthesizer V and it plays with all the tempo changes and lyrics perfectly. You have to learn how to enter lyrics the way Synth V likes them, but that is not too hard.

You can also directly write your arrangement in Synthesizer V, which is easy too, but you cannot get the precision of tempo changes and pauses like you can in Sibelius for free rubato choral music like the above examples. But for strict tempo, writing directly inside Synth V is fine.
Click to expand...
Thanks! The problem for me is that I would also like to combine Synthesizer V with, say, a virtual rock or funk band. In that case I might need to buy, for example, Cubase. I am really fond of Sibelius, can't imagine how I can possibly work faster with any othe program. I never got the grip on Dorico. I see here that Dorico works for some, which is great for them.
 
Svennis said:
... I would also like to combine Synthesizer V with, say, a virtual rock or funk band. In that case I might need to buy, for example, Cubase. I am really fond of Sibelius, can't imagine how I can possibly work faster with any othe program.....
Click to expand...
For rock and funk, etc., many users like to combine Synthesizer V with Band-in-a-Box, because it can do things in that style that Sibelius (or any notation program) cannot easily do. Check out Band-in-a-Box Radio, and every song backtrack was created there (usually quite quickly) with Band-in-a-Box. But to use it properly with Synthesizer V, you also need a DAW, like Studio One, Cubase or Reaper.
 
ThomasS said:
For rock and funk, etc., many users like to combine Synthesizer V with Band-in-a-Box, because it can do things in that style that Sibelius (or any notation program) cannot easily do. Check out Band-in-a-Box Radio, and every song backtrack was created there (usually quite quickly) with Band-in-a-Box. But to use it properly with Synthesizer V, you also need a DAW, like Studio One, Cubase or Reaper.
Click to expand...
Thanks again! Anyway, your classy arrangements for sure demonstrate the potentials with Synhtesizer V when it comes to composing for acapella vocal groups. I primarily use Dominus Pro for choir works, but Synthesizer V is in a league of its own.
 
Rob said:
...for the record, these are not arrangements by the OP, but well known versions of the songs....
Click to expand...
Yes, the choral examples I posted at the beginning of this thread were made one year ago, about a month after I bought Synthesizer V, when I was learning how to program it. So I used well-known choral arrangements, which I assume everyone knew, for comparison purpose with the original if anything else.

The posts were only to demonstrate the results of a workflow that is possible with Synthesizer V and Sibelius, not to claim I arranged them myself. But since then I have been making my own choral arrangements using Synthesizer V and Sibelius, and plan to release a whole CD of them, as the process is very easy for me now. Here is one I did, which took not more than a few hours.

View attachment Synth-V Choir - Can't Help Falling in Love.mp3
Synth V Choir - Can't Help Falling in Love

It's actually faster to make your own arrangements than it is to reproduce someone else's score which you have to read the sheet music and play in each part. With the above I just made up the whole thing in Sibelius, with lots of rubato tempo movement and pauses, and typed in the words. Then Synthesizer V played the whole thing, including the words, straight out of Sibelius.
 
ThomasS said:
Yes, the choral examples I posted at the beginning of this thread were made one year ago, about a month after I bought Synthesizer V, when I was learning how to program it. So I used well-known choral arrangements, which I assume everyone knew, for comparison purpose with the original if anything else.

The posts were only to demonstrate the results of a workflow that is possible with Synthesizer V and Sibelius, not to claim I arranged them myself. But since then I have been making my own choral arrangements using Synthesizer V and Sibelius, and plan to release a whole CD of them, as the process is very easy for me now. Here is one I did, which took not more than a few hours.

View attachment Synth-V Choir - Can't Help Falling in Love.mp3
Synth V Choir - Can't Help Falling in Love

It's actually faster to make your own arrangements than it is to reproduce someone else's score which you have to read the sheet music and play in each part. With the above I just made up the whole thing in Sibelius, with lots of rubato tempo movement and pauses, and typed in the words. Then Synthesizer V played the whole thing, including the words, straight out of Sibelius.
Click to expand...
Just jumped on the bandwagon and installed the latest version of Synthesizer V and currently work with Dorico, but read that Sibelius also includes lyrics in the MIDI file. Following an on-line choir arrangement course and love your arrangements. Which Synthesizer V voices did you use? I'm aiming at a SATB choir to begin with.
 
Last edited:
Franklin said:
What Synthesizer V voices did you use? I'm aiming at a SATB choir to begin with.
Click to expand...
I started with four singers for SATB - Solaria, Natalie, Kevin and Asterian. (The two women can both sing Sop or Alt, and the two men both Ten or Bas, but Asterian is the best low bass)

With these four you can make a pretty good small choral group, like some of the early examples posted above. But it sounds more like a big choir if you double this to 4 men and 4 women. For men, I added Jun and Hayden, and for women I added Sheena and Mai. (Mai is the weakest of the 8, but she is free.) I am still waiting for another good female to have a perfect octet, and maybe I will also add Saros at a later date.

Some users combine Synthesizer V with Dorico, but use a bridging program that accepts music xml and exports to MIDI. So if you save the Dorico file as music xml, it will have the lyrics. Then open that in either MuseScore (free) or Reaper or Studio One, or even Sibelius, and re-save as MIDI and you can get lyrics from Dorico into Synthesizer in three steps instead of two. You can also just learn to enter all your lyrics directly into Synthesizer V and only program the music in Dorico. I recommend doing this first until you get used to the way Synth V needs lyrics.

Once you get going, there are lots of tricks we've learned to make the choir sound good, so send me a PM once you know the program and I can perhaps help you a bit. But the first thing to do is to go through the excellent online manual HERE to learn how to use Synth V.
 
Last edited:
ThomasS said:
I started with four singers for SATB - Solaria, Natalie, Kevin and Asterian. (The two women can both sing Sop or Alt, and the two men both Ten or Bas, but Asterian is the best low bass)

With these four you can make a pretty good small choral group, like some of the early examples posted above. But it sounds more like a big choir if you double this to 4 men and 4 women. For men, I added Jun and Hayden, and for women I added Sheena and Mai. (Mai is the weakest of the 8, but she is free.) I am still waiting for another good female to have a perfect octet, and maybe I will also add Saros at a later date.

Some users combine Synthesizer V with Dorico, but use a bridging program that accepts music xml and exports to MIDI. So if you save the Dorico file as music xml, it will have the lyrics. Then open that in either MuseScore (free) or Reaper or Studio One, or even Sibelius, and re-save as MIDI and you can get lyrics from Dorico into Synthesizer in three steps instead of two. You can also just learn to enter all your lyrics directly into Synthesizer V and only program the music in Dorico. I recommend doing this first until you get used to the way Synth V needs lyrics.

Once you get going, there are lots of tricks we've learned to make the choir sound good, so send me a PM once you know the program and I can perhaps help you a bit. But the first thing to do is to go through the excellent online manual HERE to learn how to use Synth V.
Click to expand...
Thomas,

Thanks for your detailed reply and advise.
I'm thrilled about the possibilities SV provides.
I also recently have heard a few choir examples with Vocaloid and shortly thereafter bumped into SV which is way better in all aspects.

Also thanks for your help down the line and I will surely contact you when I'm ready.

Keep up the good work!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom