Scoring Express for Dorico and Sibelius updated along with more help resources

At NYC Music Services, we’re pleased to announce updates to the Scoring Express suites for Dorico and Sibelius, the collection of professional templates based on the same ones we use regularly. Leading the charge are playlists of approximately a dozen short videos, one each for Scoring Express for Dorico and Scoring Express for Sibelius, that demonstrate Scoring Express features and tips for using the templates. Some of these are specific to the Theatre & Studio collection, but others are applicable across the Scoring Express line.

Further, we’ve made use of the commenting feature in each program to update one of the example files that comes with the Theatre & Studio collection in Dorico and Sibelius. The “Rock band + strings landscape” example file is now annotated with comments that provide contextual tips for many of the features found in Scoring Express, along with links to the corresponding help videos from the playlist.

Helpful for everyone, including Finale switchers

Without question, the already-popular Scoring Express templates received a fresh round of interest from Finale users following MakeMusic’s announcement in August that they were no longer going to be selling or developing Finale. MakeMusic endorsed an official crossgrade path, partnering with Steinberg to sell Dorico to Finale customers at a steeply discounted price. Avid also responded by discounting their crossgrade price and offering additional resources.

With that in mind, it seemed like the right time to augment the Scoring Express help resources. Some of the tips are specific to Scoring Express, while others are more general software tips. It’s far from exhaustive, but hopefully these resources will make it easier for users to make the most of the products, regardless of whether or not they are switching from Finale.

The updates and the videos are the work of the foremost experts in Dorico and Sibelius, respectively: Leo Nicholson and Joseph Trefler, both of whom have steered the course of Scoring Express since their early days. You’re in good hands with them leading the way!

Each video playlist begins with a general guide to usage and features, followed by about a dozen short videos drilling down to specific topics corresponding to specific items from the example file.

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Like the templates themselves, we’ve got to great lengths to keep the videos as similar as possible in each platform, while making necessary affordances for the particular features of one or the other. While not designed explicitly as a “How to do (that thing) in (Dorico or Sibelius)” series, you may find instances where it can guide you on your way.

The status of the Scoring Express templates for Finale

There are still plenty of Finale users, and will likely be so for the foreseeable future, even as many of those users also pick up Dorico, Sibelius, or other software to round out their toolbox.

We intend to keep the Scoring Express for Finale templates available for sale indefinitely, although it’s unlikely that they’ll be updated further, and we have not made any updates or provided additional help resources like the ones made today with Scoring Express for Dorico and Finale. The good news is, they’re relatively current — in fact, the Scoring Express for Finale – Jazz templates just debuted last year. So, if you still run Finale, either exclusively or alongside other software, you’ll find the Scoring Express templates useful in your work.

What’s new

Scoring Express for Dorico

Title pages

• Each of the Page Template Sets now feature a Blank First page template that can be inserted wherever the first page of music needs to appear on a verso (left) page. (Jazz Big Band and Theatre & Studio only)

Divisi

• In order that Dorico’s Divisi functionality can be used to present multiple singers’ lines across one or more staves:
  • Divisi staff labels are set to show above the staff in all layouts (Theatre & Studio only)
  • The Player Labels Paragraph Style (used for Divisi staff labels above the staff) inherits settings from the Staff Labels Paragraph Style, and is 10pt Bold by default. (Theatre & Studio only)

Instrument changes

• Doubling parts now show the playing instrument at the start of each Flow
• Instrument change transitions now occur at the start of the new instrument’s entry, rather than immediately following the final note of the old instrument.
• At quick changes the appearance of the Instrument Change Label at the first entry of the new instrument is prioritised over the Instrument Change Warning that normally immediately follows the final note of the old instrument.
• Instrument Change Labels are now boxed.

Chord symbols

• Brackets around parenthesised chord symbols now scale to include the height of alterations (Jazz and Theatre & Studio)
• 6/9 chord symbols with additional alterations will retain their “6/9”, e.g C6/9(#11) instead of C6(add 9,#11) (Jazz and Theatre & Studio only)

Dynamics

• Very short hairpins no longer disappear from the page.
• Textual gradual dynamics that are split into syllables now end with their final syllable, e.g. cresc-en-do rather than cresc-en-do-
• Where hairpins from and to niente show a circle rather than an n, that circle is now larger

Bar rests

• Single bar rests are spaced as regular bars that happen to be empty, where previously they were spaced as minimum width multi-bar rests.

Slurs

• Slurs are allowed to skim the stems of sharp accidentals by 1/4 space, in the same way they’ve always been able to skim the stems of natural accidentals.

Note spacing

• Minimum tie length is no longer enforced for ties crossing barlines, except at the ends of systems.

Playing techniques

• Bowing marks are now positioned outside text-based and grouped playing techniques.

Accidentals

• Sharps on the tops or bottom lines of the staff are given slightly more room where otherwise they may collide with an unshortened first ledger line. (Chamber and Theatre & Studio only)

Markdown formatting

• Fields in Project Info now respond to Markdown Formatting: surround characters with single asterisks or underscores for italics, double asterisks for bold and triple asterisks for bold italics. e.
g.:
  • “From *Philip’s Playbook*, published 2018” will show on the page as 
 “From Philip’s Playbook, published 2018”

Character names

• Lead Sheet and Piano Vocal Templates once again include the {@flowArtist@} token under the Song Title, used to display the characters featured in that Flow/Song. (Theatre & Studio only)

Text

• Default Text and Default Text (Sans-serif) are now the parent Font Styles and Paragraph Styles for most other Font and Paragraph Styles.

Scoring Express for Sibelius

Text styles

• New text style: Common symbols (Helsinki), which can be used for more “commercial”-looking marcato symbols if desired. (Theatre & Studio only)

Plug-ins

• Added:
  • Bracket Chord Symbols
  • Respace Clef Change
• All plug-ins updated to most current version

 Fixes

• In some templates, right-clicking while editing a text object using one of these text styles did not use the Wildcards word menu. This has now been corrected.
  • Composer
  • Composer (on blank page)
  • Copyright
  • Copyright (on blank page)
  • Dedication
  • Dedication (on blank page)
  • Header
  • Header (after first page)
  • Header (after first page, inside edge)
  • Footer
  • Footer (inside edge)
  • Footer (outside edge)
  • Show title
  • Show title (on blank page)
  • Song number
  • Song number (on blank page)
  • Subtitle
  • Subtitle (on blank page)
  • Title
  • Title (on blank page)
• The Cue line text style is now based on Lyrics line 1 instead of Plain text. Visually, this only affects the horizontal scale, which is reduced to 90%. (Theatre & Studio only)
• Legacy chord symbols will now automatically align horizontally with other chord symbols. (This is a change in Magnetic Layout Options for Legacy chord symbols.)
• In Engraving Rules > Accidentals and Dots, “Allow hidden notes to update accidentals” has been unchecked.
• In Engraving Rules > Staves, “Show hidden empty staves when using Focus on Staves” has been unchecked. This allows Hide Empty Staves and Focus on Staves to be used concurrently.
• In Engraving Rules > Staves, “Panorama displays both focussed and unfocussed staves” has been checked. Now, all staves will be displayed when viewing the score in Panorama.

Compatibility

In addition to the aforementioned help resources, new features, and fixes, we’ve updated the files to be compatible with the latest file formats of the software. For Dorico, that’s 5.1.60; for Sibelius, that’s 2023.11 (or later). Dorico files can be opened in previous versions, so if you’re not running the latest Dorico version, the Scoring Express templates should be just fine, although you may find that some features don’t work as intended.

Sibelius files and house styles cannot be opened in certain previous versions when the file format changes. The last file format change was made with Sibelius 2023.11, so the current Scoring Express templates can be opened in that version or any version of Sibelius released in 2024 or later.

If you’re running Sibelius Ultimate 2023.8 or earlier, we’ve included what is now the “legacy” version of Scoring Express in your purchase; however, those files have not been updated with the latest changes and will not be updated further in the future.

Get the update

You can obtain these updates by logging into your Notation Central account and downloading the latest versions from the Downloads area. They are free for existing users.

We hope you enjoy these updates!