It’s only been a few months since Notation Express Classic and XL for Dorico 6 arrived with real-time bidirectional feedback and the chainable Note Tools — what I described at the time as a fundamental shift in how Dorico is controlled, not just how fast. True to that word “chainable,” the next update takes the same idea and turns it on dynamics.
Notation Express for Dorico, our family of Stream Deck profiles for Dorico from NYC Music Services and Notation Central, has just been updated, and it’s almost entirely focused on dynamics — specifically, on making the fiddly, multi-step process of entering and modifying dynamics, hairpins, and gradual markings into something you can do with a few taps, in whatever order is most natural to you.
The centerpiece: the Dynamic Chain
If you’ve ever entered something like a crescendo from piano to forte in Dorico, you know it’s normally three separate moves: place the starting dynamic, place the hairpin, place the ending dynamic — or type the whole thing into the dynamics popover (Shift-D) if you’d rather avoid the back-and-forth. Either way, it’s a sequence you have to get in order.
The new Dynamic Chain collapses all of that into one fluid gesture, built from the dynamics buttons you already have on your deck. Select the passage you want the marking to span, press Dynamic Chain to arm it, and then — in any order — press a gradual (crescendo, diminuendo, a text gradient like cresc. or dim., or, on XL, messa di voce) and two dynamics. The instant the chain has all three pieces, Notation Express assembles the marking and places it over your selection, exactly as if you’d typed it into the popover yourself.
What I like about this is that it doesn’t ask you to think in a new way — it just removes the part where you had to remember the order. Press f, then p, then crescendo, and the chain knows you mean a crescendo from piano to forte (it sorts ordinary dynamics by loudness to match the gradual you chose). Messa di voce is the deliberate exception: because a swell can begin loud or soft, the chain preserves the order you press the two dynamics, so f then p gives you f<>p and p then f gives you p<>f.
The same goes for non-graded dynamics like sf, fp, and sfz, and for the new Blank button, which stands in for “no dynamic here” when you want an open-ended hairpin (think f< or <f).
It’s also forgiving. Press the wrong gradual and the chain swaps it out without losing your place; press a third dynamic and it simply forgets the oldest of the two; press Dynamic Chain again at any point to cancel. And because everything the chain produces is a genuine Dorico dynamic — not an approximation — it engraves and plays back exactly the way Dorico intends.
Niente, hairpin styles, and poco a poco — tools that already know what’s selected
The rest of 4.1 builds on the bidirectional foundation that arrived with the Dorico 6 update: rather than just sending commands, these buttons read Dorico’s own settings for whatever you have selected, and light up to show you the current state.
The niente buttons (n and o) now do double duty. Inside an armed Dynamic Chain, they act as niente endpoints — treated as the softest possible dynamic, so a crescendo from niente or a diminuendo to niente falls naturally into place. Outside of a chain, they toggle Dorico’s Niente property on the selected hairpin and switch between the two ways Dorico can display it (as text, or as a small circle on the line) — and because Dorico reports these settings back, the buttons light to match whatever’s already in your score.
On the XL layout, two more tools round things out. Hairpin line style cycles a selected hairpin through solid, dashed, dotted, and the Engraving Options default with each press, drawing a sample of the current style right on the button. And poco a poco toggles that property on a selected gradual dynamic — turning a cresc. into a cresc. poco a poco and back again with a single tap.
The Dynamics folder as a control center
As you can see, the Notation Express Dynamics folder is becoming more of a control center for not just entering dynamics, but working with them afterwards. We already had the Increase Dynamic and Decrease Dynamic buttons there for quick adjustments immediately after you apply your new dynamics, or anytime thereafter. You can switch between the two niente buttons or toggle them off completely without ever opening the Properties window. On XL, the existing sub. button works similarly to the new poco a poco button — easy to toggle on or off, and the Filter All Dynamics button (remember, in Notation Express for Dorico, filter buttons have an orange outline) is right there to make quick work of specifically selecting dynamics from a larger selection, right from the Stream Deck.
What’s new on Classic vs. XL
As with most Notation Express updates, the bulk of this release builds on buttons you already have, so the list of brand-new buttons is short — but where they land differs by layout.
On XL, you get everything: the full Dynamic Chain (including messa di voce), the dual-purpose n / o niente buttons, Hairpin line style, and poco a poco.
On Classic, the Dynamic Chain (minus messa di voce, hairpin line style, and poco a poco, which are XL-only) and its Blank button now live in the Dynamics folder. To make room, Classic gains a new More Dynamics subfolder. To it, we add for the first time on Classic the cresc. and dim. text gradients, fff, ppp, fz, and ffz. Classic also sees the niente toggles appear here. Other dynamic, sf, and sfz move down from where they previously lived at the top level of the Dynamics folder to join them.
Two smaller, unrelated additions round out the release on XL: Go to Rehearsal Mark in the Navigation, View, and Proofreading folder, and a Click button in the Playback folder that toggles the metronome click and lights up when it’s enabled — the Stream Deck equivalent of the Click button in Dorico’s transport.
The Note Colors and Rhythm Dots buttons also get refreshed artwork across both layouts.
Learn more
Our documentation is fully updated. For more specific information on how to use Notation Express, including the new features, head over to the Using Notation Express Classic and XL for Dorico page on Notation Central.
Getting the update
This is officially version 4.1.0 of Notation Express for Dorico. As before, it ships as two components: The updated profile (for Classic or XL), and the updated plugin file. You only need to install the plugin once even if you run more than one profile; the same plugin serves Classic, XL, and Keypad alike.
If you’re already on Notation Express for Dorico 6, this 4.1 update is free. If you’re still on the Dorico 5 version of Notation Express, you’ll need the paid update to the Dorico 6 version first, at the established upgrade pricing — once you’re there, the dynamics tools come along as part of that. For everyone else, regular pricing applies, with no separate discount for this release.
To install, you’ll need both the updated plugin file and the updated profiles — head to the Notation Express Classic or Notation Express XL product page and consult the documentation for the full steps.
One important note: importing the new profile creates a copy rather than overwriting your existing one, so you’ll want to delete your previous Notation Express Classic for Dorico 6 and/or Notation Express XL for Dorico 6 profile once you’ve set up the new one. If you’ve already customized your profile, though, you may prefer to keep it — just take note of the button changes above and copy and paste the updated buttons or folders into your own layout. And the updated profiles in this release were built with Stream Deck 7.4.2, so if you run into trouble importing them, updating the Stream Deck app first is a good move.
Finally, there are no updates to the Notation Express Keypad for Dorico 6 profile today; however, the plugin that ships with it is updated to the same version shipping with Notation Express Classic and Notation Express XL.
If you’d like to hear more about the thinking behind Notation Express’s bidirectional design — the foundation that makes tools like the Dynamic Chain and the smart niente buttons possible — David MacDonald and I talked through it on a recent episode of the Scoring Notes podcast.
Enjoy Notation Express!
