A week into my second month and the second movement is almost complete. Possibly.
I finished the first movement with a frustrating failure to add reverb, or any effect, to the different instrument tracks. Dorico is a powerful tool–and the interface is generally well-designed–but there are enough quirks that mixing can be different from edit session to edit session. There are very good tutorials provided by Steinberg whose wisdom I have not yet absorbed. I suspect that many of the issues are random artifacts from importing from MusicXML files.
Along with inconsistent mixing issues are the inconsistent playback issues. For example: string set to pizzicato may lose their pizzicato randomly; a note for a single instrument (usually horns?) may cut out immediately after its initial attack, just once in playback but consistently every playback (MP3 output is, thankfully, clean); timpani has inconsistent support for tremolo (short notes but not long ones). Using the CPU/hard-drive setting helps some, but not always.
That said: it’s sometimes too easy to focus on the bad and not realize how much power the tool provides. Money well spent.
The above issues hit hard when starting the second movement, but once I arrived at a working detente I got into a good working pace. Some nights at it for a couple of hours and only reluctantly stopping for sleep. 6 a.m. comes early.
One curious change in moving from MuseScore audio to Dorico: my orchestration at time sounds very “thin”. I can’t explain the cause (likely the former’s MP3 generation algorithm?). I made small adjustments to the first movement, but I’m in the middle of a section in the second that requires drastic changes. Generally doubling winds with horns but sometimes additional harmony in the strings. Satisfying results. I’ll probably re-visit the first movement to re-attempt mixing, and will just as probably re-visit the second after I move on to the next movements and become more skilled with using the app.
Finally: I’m getting better at assigning percussion instruments, but it’s still a bit of a puzzle. If I hadn’t read others’ complaints I’d think I’m just ill-adept at this. I am, but I’m not alone.