Timely news and announcements about music notation software, related products, and the fields of music notation and music technology.
A delightfully nerdy take on new Notation Express updates for Dorico and a major overhaul to the PDF Batch Utilities. Plus, the notation software tools hiding in plain sight, and where they could go next.
Dorico 6.2.10 arrives with further guitar tablature refinements, a more granular approach to smart quotes controlled at the paragraph and character style level, a new option for tuplet bracket position, and more than three dozen bug fixes.
The PDF Batch Utilities for music printing get their biggest update yet: native Apple Silicon, codesigning, new icons, bookmarks in output files, bug fixes, and a brand new app — PDF-Counter.
Notation Express for Dorico 6 introduces real-time bidirectional feedback, chainable Note Tools, and a refined product lineup. This major update represents a significant architectural step forward for Stream Deck control in Dorico.
Dorico 6.2 adds smarter handling of repeats, expanded guitar tablature features, improved harmonic notation, engraving refinements, and workflow updates.
Sibelius 2026.2 introduces dark mode on desktop, refreshed UI icons, early cross-staff engraving improvements, scripting updates, and bug fixes.
At the 2026 NAMM Show, Avid’s Joe Plazak and Sam Butler have a conversation about Sibelius’s access, product positioning, and development philosophy.
At the 2026 NAMM Show, Fender’s Chris Swaffer talks about where Fender Notion finds itself at a moment of subtle but consequential transition.
At the 2026 NAMM Show, klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul talks about a category that sits just adjacent to music notation — and yet increasingly intersects with it in practical, unavoidable ways: music transcription.
At the 2026 NAMM Show, Steinberg’s John Barron talks about where Dorico finds itself at this stage of its evolution.
At the 2026 NAMM Show, Piascore founder Hiroyuki Koike shows how his company is transforming digital sheet music through MusicXML-based interactivity and AI-driven tools that respond to musicians in real time, pointing toward a more practical and musical future for notation.