Using Dorico with Sagittal?

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JacobBarton
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Using Dorico with Sagittal?

Post by JacobBarton »

I have Dorico Pro 3.5 and am starting to lay things out and get towards being productive. I'm wondering who else is doing this work?

(There needs to be a middle ground between the feeling of needing to create universal template libraries and such, on the one hand, and the feeling of wanting to follow and gratify one's personal artistic issues and their related technological challenges, on the other. A few years back I was trying to promote a template library idea for sagittal, given that the particular configurations of accidentals for working with each tuning are so numerous. But perhaps it is better "left as an exercise to the" creator?)

This is just an "Am I doing this right?" screen clipping:
sag22.png
example of 22-EDO symbols palette in Dorico
(52.08 KiB) Not downloaded yet
What I notice so far:
  • Dorico allows the wholesale import and export of "Tonality Systems" which encompass an equal division, a collection of accidentals related to that divison, and any custom key signatures
  • Dorico permits easy duplication of Tonality Systems for creating variations, which I am going to try to use to make a mixed 22-EDO version of my above pure sagittal set
  • Dorico prohibits the deletion of a Tonality System which is in use in the score. I'm worried that this means no swapping in and out entire sets of accidentals on scores already created...a sort of feature which I had hoped would be useful in creating alternate (mixed/pure/HEJI/etc.) versions of accidental sets. But that may need to all be created manually, which could be a pain.
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cmloegcmluin
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Re: Using Dorico with Sagittal?

Post by cmloegcmluin »

Jacob! Good to see you here.

I'm using MuseScore myself and haven't played with Dorico much since the previous UnTwelve workshop at Gesundheit. So if you're asking "Am I doing this right" w/r/t Dorico, I'm sorry, I can't say. But I can at least confirm you've got the right notation and Sagispeak and all that good stuff for pure flavor Sagittal for 22-EDO, yes (though I'm pretty sure you were confident about that much).

By the way, we've gotten to calling mixed "Evo" and pure "Revo", thinking it might prevent certain types of confusion about how they work... curious if that's to your liking?

I can certainly empathize with the tug-of-war between working to express yourself and working to remove barriers for others to express themselves. And so the latter team is winning for me now and I've barely opened MuseScore in months too. Though I think before I get to writing new stuff in MuseScore again I'd be working on a notation plugin for it, heh.

Say more about this "template library" idea. I'm not sure I follow.

And re: the "no swapping in and out entire sets of accidentals on scores already created" this sounds like a potentially infuriating problem. It sounds like something we could do a low-investment experiment to confirm or disconfirm. Let me know if you want to do a remote pairing session sometime soon and give it a shot.
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JacobBarton
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Re: Using Dorico with Sagittal?

Post by JacobBarton »

It's less of an "am I doing this right?" and more of a "is there a precedent or best practice here, and if so, what is it?"

Ok, I think the simple version of my "template library" idea is that, for each and every notation software out there capable of notating with sagittal, X for each and every tuning system that sagittal has been imagined to be used to notate, there should be a sample document with the full palette of accidentals demonstrating scales, chords, etc.

This idea was conceived somewhat in response to the sheer informative density of some or all of the tuning charts, sagittal and beyond. I imagine people in the role of "average enterprising composer-mastermind" who would want to be able to experiment with a single tuning system at a time (i.e. have a composing tool pre-loaded with all the needed notation and patches), and perhaps a distinct role of "average enterprising improviser-performer" who might have a separate set of needs for scales and modes and chords (much like Ron Sword has compiled for some systems). And whilst an understanding of the deeper underpinnings connecting all tunings is ultimately essential, I'm a fan of seeding these fields with multiple entry points.

I have noticed that this kind of imaginative, divergent work *is* adjacent to a lot of thankless work and drugery, if done wrong. And I don't want to encourage that kind of thing, or suggest that it is necessary. Some approaches to music theory that claim to be exhaustive have this effect on me.

So, if a project can be designed that has *just* the right amount of repetition, just the right amount of variation, that it actually gets done, and that it is actually of use to musical explorers, without negative side effects, ...well, that would be nice.

I'm remembering the genesis of Sagittal with some small diagram of George Secor's for notating 17, 22, 41 ETs and the like. And so I'd like to start by creating some documents celebrating and enabling the use of those tunings.

The subject of this reply has drifted, forgive me!
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