The idea of your music: the music model
Dorico’s innovation with the most far-reaching consequences is its thorough approach to modeling musical concepts and their intricate interactions. This might not be apparent right away, as it is not so much a single feature but the accumulation of many small ways of capturing the meaning of notation conventions and not just their appearance.
An example case: the voices paradigm
Have a quick look at Finale’s documentation for the Layers feature (the equivalent to Sibelius’s voices).
In condensed form (italics added for emphasis):
- “Each staff in Finale has four transparent layers of music.”
- “[…] each layer may be taught to flip its stems […] to help distinguish the multiple voices.”
- “In general, you’ll want the stems of Layer 1 to flip up, but only when Layer 2 is present […]”
- “Furthermore, you’ll probably want ties to flip […]”
- “Therefore, you’ll probably want to select options as follows.”
- “The settings for Layers 3 and 4 are up to you, since [settings] probably depend on the piece you’re notating.”
- “In addition, you may wish to specify that the placement of rests […]”
- “You tell Finale how far out of the way you want these rests to appear […]”
- “In the usual situation, you’d enter a positive number […]”
In summation: while Finale offers a solid technical framework and all necessary tools to create the graphically correct appearance for any complex notation, there is an implicit assumption that users can not expect the software itself to infer how to reasonably use these tools.
It turns out that this can indeed be expected. To get there, Dorico does not simply improve upon the status quo, but goes back to first principles. For voices, this means breaking with a presumption taken mostly for granted today: the four-voices-per-staff model.
Sibelius works this way (voices 1 and 3 are up-stemmed, voices 2 and 4 down-stemmed), as does Finale (see above) and even LilyPond — which does support more than four voices in a somewhat straightforward way — does acknowledge the four-voice model in its predefined commands.
Dorico, however, does not make any assumptions in this regard. Instead, it just requires from the user one fundamental decision before starting to input notes: is this voice supposed to be up-stemmed or down-stemmed?
The caret appearing when note entry is started (Shift-N) in Write mode will show a small stylized note symbol, up-stemmed by default.
By pressing Shift-V the user can call for a new voice to be created, which will — nominally — be down-stemmed. (Similar to the behavior of Sibelius and Finale, these directions will take effect once there are two or more voices present; one voice alone will have its stem directions determined by the usual rules.)
Pressing Shift-V again prepares a new voice, with stem direction reversed once more. I use the word “prepare”, because a voice is only ever actually created if notes are entered.
This is where the old paradigm is abandoned. Instead of choosing the “correct” voices from a limited set, users create exactly the voice constellation that is needed; for example: one down-stemmed voice and five up-stemmed ones. Once voices have been created, users can easily toggle through them by pressing V, allowing for polyphonic notat… Wait, wait, wait – just a minute. What? One down-stemmed and five up-stemmed? Who would ever need such a weird voice construction?
Well, one Ludwig van Beethoven would:
In all fairness, this short passage from the third movement of op. 27/2 does only really need five voices. I opted to use a sixth one on the chords, for clarity — and Dorico let me.
If you try to create this example in Sibelius (which you will fail to do without heavy workarounds, since you are at least one voice short), you will spend some time hiding a lot of excess rests, created because Sibelius insists on each voice being complete within a bar, also meaning that a particular voice can technically only start or end at a barline.
Dorico does not offer a feature to hide notational elements yet, so where are these rests? Again, Dorico’s voices work opposite to the way we are accustomed; they can start and end literally anywhere. Appropriate rests shown before or after the extent of a voice are added by Dorico automatically, unless users opt against it.
Instead of having four determined voice “tracks” which can be used to mimic the concept of independent voices, the actual concept is deeply implemented in Dorico. And instead of thinking about where to best place a voice in the available technical framework (and thereby necessarily thinking about that framework itself), users only need to concern themselves with a genuine musician’s decision: up-stemmed or down-stemmed?
Dorico’s promotional material claims that there is no limit on the number of voices for a stave, and I have not been able to create an example to refute this. It surely is an impressive achievement in algorithm design, even though there is, in practice, rarely a use for more than three voices, let alone an infinite number.
But okay: here is the first full entry of all 40 voices from Thomas Tallis’s Spem in alium. I hope we can agree that this example is exhilarating, but not really helpful for anything (click for PDF).
Re-thinking “articulations”
So rigorously from the ground-up is the program designed that finding one’s way into working with Dorico often serves as a useful refresher course in notational thinking in general.
Here are the articulations that Dorico offers its users during basic note entry: To the right you have your staccato and tenuto, invoked by the shortcuts ] and #. Adding the Shift key will give you the respective shorter versions of staccatissimo and staccato-tenuto. Likewise, [ will produce an accent, or a marcato with Shift. Convenient, so far.
But what are these two symbols in the bottom left corner? There is a good chance that a number of readers see them for the first time – that is, unless they are also students of prosody, where similar symbols are used to notate patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Arnold Schoenberg introduced them to music notation with the intention of clearly showing how a rhythm is supposed to be articulated against an established overall meter. It would be interesting to hear in the comments from those who use these two articulations on a regular basis, but I won’t hold my breath.
Given the relative obscurity of the “stressed” and “unstressed” articulations, one might easily object their inclusion here. After all, aren’t there many types of articulation that are much more widely used? Where are the circle, the cross, up-bow and down-bow?
But think about it for a minute. The one thing Dorico’s eight articulations have in common, and which distinguishes them from any other “articulations” (as we may be accustomed to think about them), is that their meaning will not change with context.
Put another way, a circle denotes a harmonic on a string instrument, but on a horn it means an open note (after a muted passage). The cross (or plus) will stand for left-hand pizzicato in strings, but for hand-stopping in horns. Up-bow and down-bow really do not make sense anywhere except within a string part. It takes a moment of adjusting one’s preconceptions to realize that both Sibelius and Finale (and most other scorewriters out there) consider symbols as articulations which, on closer inspection, signify playing techniques.
Actually, to say that they “consider symbols as articulations” may be even a stretch for Dorico’s competitors. It would be more accurate to say that they consider notes, and then also symbols that can be stacked above or below these notes.
Case in point: the image to the right shows something that passes as a valid notation in Sibelius. Dorico, instead of just placing glyphs, makes a distinction between notations that have a universally musical meaning (the actual articulations from the left-hand panel) and those which carry technical information (found in Write mode’s right-hand panel, under Playing Techniques).
The differentiation does not stop there. Articulations themselves are separated into three categories.
To use Dorico’s terminology:
- Articulations of duration (the articulation panel’s right half);
- Articulations of force (accent and marcato);
- Articulations of stress (the Schoenberg symbols).
Only one from each category can be applied to a note or chord at a given point. Once one takes articulations seriously as musical concepts and not just as symbols to be placed in relation to a note, this makes good sense. While it is possible (not in Dorico, though) to have a note be simultaneously marked as “stressed” and “unstressed” on the notational level, it really can only be played (articulated) either the one way or the other.
This sophisticated understanding of articulations also is the key to another detail that might look odd at first. Dorico provides a dedicated staccato-tenuto articulation. Visually it is, of course, a combination of the two glyphs for staccato and tenuto. Musically, however, a staccato-tenuto is only superficially a combination of staccato and tenuto.
One and the same note can not be deliberately shortened and at the same time deliberately held out for its nominal duration, of course. An actual staccato-tenuto is a two-step procedure of first shortening a nominal note value and to then taking care to actually emphasize this shorter virtual duration (or the other way round, if you like).
Dorico wisely acknowledges this, even though technically it is not necessary for producing the appearance of the proper notation. In Sibelius, a staccato-tenuto is created by stacking line and dot. Finale, in contrast, not only allows to have the kind of hit-and-miss implementation available in Sibelius, but to additionally add the line-dot-combination glyph, making it possible to mark up a note with a stack of two lines and two dots in total.
Back to first principles: dynamics are dynamics; ottava lines are…clefs?
It is obvious that one guideline that has been observed closely by Dorico’s developers is to not go for solutions which merely give a straightforward technical way to a specific notation’s appearance.
In other programs, a dynamic marking is either a symbol or a text object or a line, depending on what is easiest to do with the existing framework. For Dorico, it is neither; instead it foremost is simply the concept of a dynamic. This concept can then be expressed by the user in different ways, be it a symbol, a text or a line — even combinations. But underneath, it always is the same fundamental type of event.
In going to these conceptual lengths, Dorico shines where existing software starts to stumble. It is inconvenient enough that Sibelius users have to construct text-chain instructions of the “de – cre – scen – do po – co a po – co” variety by arranging individual text objects. But then they might have to do the same work again because of horizontal spacing in a part diverging heavily from the score. And the real frustration starts when such a carefully fine-tuned passage has unexpectedly to be changed substantially.
In Dorico, this poses no such problem.
Sometimes, following Dorico’s music model leads to elucidating surprises. If you thought that ottava lines are… well, lines – consider this: their effect is that any notes to which they apply are displaced to a different stave position. Dorico therefore has them share a category with the only other notational elements with a similar function; ottava lines are now basically clefs.
While this equivalency can surely be debated philosophically, the relation becomes instantly clear once one sees it in practice:
Since Dorico comes with its own fledgling DAW, having ottava lines behaving like clefs has also the clear benefit of keeping the pitch information of a score perfectly intact at all times. This, once again, is the opposite of the commonly used method of having the worst of both worlds: combining notes that refer to the wrong octave with a line that clumsily counteracts this by adjusting playback.
The meaning of the music
Dorico’s model attempts to comprehensively cover not just appearances, but meaning. It does succeed to an unprecedented extent. But music — being art and therefore an act of resilience — is not inclined to take this without a fight.
While the articulation system described above is perfectly logical, appropriate and well researched, the actual practice of seminal (and not-so-seminal) works might not necessarily care. The newest of the many reasons to lament György Ligeti’s passing is that we will never witness how Daniel Spreadbury explains to him that it is wrong to stack three “articulations of force”.
Likewise, there has never before been a scoring program that actually understands how to reasonably handle fermatas. Still, Richard Wagner managed to come up with fermata use cases like this one, which is as invalid as it is ingeniously apt:
It will be interesting to see how the Dorico developers choose to engage this eternal dilemma. Will they be able to expand their model without sacrificing its elegance and consistency? Or will we eventually just barter our Sibelius and Finale workarounds for ones idiosyncratic to Dorico?
Wilkins
It is very disappointing that Dorico will not play Sibelius scores. So I shall not buy it!
Eek
Implementing the ability to do that would be illegal, otherwise other scoring apps would have added that YEARS ago.
Carl-Henrik Buschmann
It is very disappointing that my diesel car doesn’t run on gasoline.
Carsten
@Wilkins: There is MusicXML!
Side notes:
Even if it were not illegal to implement (in certain countries, it’s not): Sibelius’ (since the beginning) and Finale’s (since 2012) formats are encrypted. Therefore, it might be very hard, if not impossible to code such a file import…
The former Sibelius Development team knows of course, how the file format has been implemented—not everything by heard though I suppose. While they could have taken away the file format documentation from Finsbury Park at the time they left, this
would have been data theft (as this is owned by Avid).
Other less known music notation software have open data formats, which makes it easier to implement file imports—from a technical point of view…
By the way: How is Dorico’s file format “composed”? Based on XML? Compressed? Encrypted?
Max Power
It is very disappointing that I can’t play the Pink Floyd CD in my tape player. So I shall not buy it!
Henry Howey
It reads MusicXML
Sibelius can export
Steve
I hope that an early adopter will report back on how much work it actually is to export MusicXML from Sib and get it formatted correctly in Dorico! Personally I’m thinking that I’d keep Sibelius around for previously-created scores but move forward with Dorico.
Theo May
I imported a range of my Sib files via music XML into Dorico– I was shocked at how accurate the default output from Dorico was. That being said, I’m no Ferneyhough, so I would imagine that depending on the notational complexity of your scores, your milage may vary!
Chris
All the more Dorico for us!
Hans Nel
Wilkins, it’s not Dorico’s fault that it’s software cannot work with Sibelius file. Sibelius files are created (by the software itself) by encrypting all the properties and objects that make up your score in a file. The ONLY software that has Sibelius’ “decrypting”‘engine (maybe a dll file) can open Sibelius files. Sibelius owns the rights to Sibelius files and will not give other companies like MakeMusic and Avid the right to decrypt Sibelius files. So you see, it’s NOT Dorico’s fault, but Avid’s “fault”. But Dorico will do the same. Steinberg will not allow other DAW’s and Notators to open Dorico files. It’s nobody’s “fault”. Software companies have the right to protect their property, don’t they? But…you are only spiting yourself by not obtaining Dorico’s. The very Sibelius you cling on was built by the very same coders that are creating Dorico! Dorico, in the short future, will surpass ALL other notation software. So, if you are like me…one who always want the latest versions of software, you should get Dorico. In time, Sibelius won’t even come close to it. :-)
Carl-Henrik Buschmann
A absolutely wondrous review, guys. Dorico seems to be a miracle come true. Imagine the work these guys have put down, my deepest and outmost respect! I want to buy them coffee.
Philip Rothman
Thank you!
Stefan
Thanks, we like coffee (and tea incidentally).
Jean-Paul Gilles
Thank you for this exhaustive review of this wonderful software I will hasten to try.
Ron Puente
Hey Philip:
Hope all is well. One question, will “DORICO” accept all of my Sibelius work? Thanks. Ron.
Thijs
You will need to go through your Sibelius projects, export them as an XML-file, and import that into Dorico.
w^3
There’s also a Sibelius plugin that can batch process folders to convert to XML.
Donsta
Looks great! I can’t wait till they add support for chord symbols. The day they do that is the day I buy it.
Steve
Agreed, this is a must-have for me. Hope it comes soon!
Stan Martin
I pulled the trigger yesterday and bought it just to get used to it. I can’t actually use it until the chord symbols are in place. 90% of my writing uses chord symbols.
Bobby Rice
I’m 100% with you on that comment. Perhaps it will be a “jazz/commercial” version of the software?
Gordon Thornett
The boxed package is a little more expensive than the download version. Do you know if it comes with any extras (such as a printed manual)? Is there any other reason to go for the boxed version (e.g. perhaps the packaged version takes a very long time to download)?
Philip Rothman
You don’t get the USB eLicenser with the download. It’s covered in the last section of the review.
Aaron
According to a reply by Daniel in a post in the Dorico forum, the box includes: 2 DVD-ROMs (containing the sound library), an empty USB-eLicenser, and a multi-language quick start guide sheet. Dorico’s program documentation is online-only; there will be no printed manual.
Bob
I realize you can’t cover everything in one review, but I’m eagerly awaiting to hear how well Dorico imports Sibelius 8 XML files.
Tony Rickard
Great article gentlemen. Honest and with the same thoroughness as Dorico! You achieved the impossible of keeping me awake and fascinated throughout my hour-long homeward commute and on a day that had a 5:30am start!
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Tony! That is high praise, indeed. I’m hugely grateful to Alex and Andrew, who worked tirelessly at all hours with me to put together this comprehensive review.
David H. Bailey
Great review — I shall revisit it a few more times as I begin to get into the inner workings of Dorico. This is the first time I’ve ever bought a version 1.0 of any software, but knowing Daniel and his development team I can see great things coming along as Dorico matures.
Thanks for posting such an in-depth review — regarding not being able to open Sibelius or Finale scores — I don’t think that’s a big deal. My Sibelius scores will stay in Sibelius format, same for my Finale scores, until/unless I need to modernize them and then it will be a toss-up whether I try to import into Dorico or simply use their native programs to make any changes.
In the meantime I can tell that it will take a while for me to begin to get comfortable working with the various modes of Dorico so any major projects in the near future will still be done in Sibelius.
Thanks again for the great review!
Philip Rothman
Thank you, David!
Peter Roos
Excellent review, many thanks! I’m very much looking forward to getting my boxed version in the mail.
Thien Bich Hoang
Congratulation to Daniel Spreadbury and Philip Rothman and other members who were involved in this creating teams.
Well Done Mate, Big Thanks.
Philip Rothman
Thien Bich Hoang, thanks for your nice comments, and as always for reading the blog! Just to be clear, I am not on the Steinberg development team. Daniel and his colleagues at Steinberg are responsible for creating Dorico. Also, I must give the credit for this blog post to Alexander Plötz and Andrew Noah Cap, for they wrote the vast majority of it.
Bob Zawalich
Great review. Thanks to all of you!
Abraham Lee
This is an incredible review! Well done Alexander, Andrew, and Philip! Everything is exceptionally clear (especially the part about not being able to read Sibelius/Finale binary files) and was a pleasure to read with all the picture examples. I especially loved the short comparison between Dorico, Finale, and Sibelius. For me, that is a major selling point: getting to where I want to end up faster, with fewer things that need tweaking.
The Dorico team should feel very good about where they’ve been able to bring this really amazing piece of software in a few short years. The only direction to go now is UP as long as they remain responsive to user feedback. Nicely done!
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Abraham! Glad you enjoyed it.
Hannes
Will there be a trial version?
Why should I spend money on a product I didn’t even test?
Terence Jones
Near the end of the review it does mention that there will be a 30 day trial available in about a month.
randy woolf
very very well written review. sounds exciting, but for me, no cues=no sale. professional parts have cues.
Philip Rothman
Hi Randy! Absolutely, the ability to place cues is an essential feature in professional notation software. There are a number of other features missing that make Dorico unusable for many people at the moment. From what the Steinberg developers have said, we expect that they will add those items in due course.
Max Tofone
Thanks guys for this extensive review…
I really like what I have read and seen so far about Dorico but I also feel that this release should have been released later with all the important scoring features in place. At the moment for my work Dorico is not an option until they had all the missing important elements and an improved playback.
Cheers, Max
Rich Pulin
To Philip and Staff!
A HUGE Congratulations on your exciting new product!
The Early Childhood Music Education Foundation, a jazz-ed mentorship,
attached to and servicing the Las Vegas School District since 1993, would like to
participate in this launch, in ANY way that we can…PLEASE call upon us, if we can help!
Again, CONGRATULATIONS!
Kindly,
Rich Pulin
http://www.theearlychildhoodmusiceducationfoundation.org
Bob
Dorico is unusable for me till it gets chord symbols, repeat ending lines, cues, etc, but there were several cool things in tutorial video 2 that made me eager to get my hands on it. For example:
1. No meter required – very useful for educational illustrations. I don’t do this very often, so I have to look up how to do it in Sibelius every time, and the procedure is a bit of a hassle. Looks to be much easier in Dorico.
2. I’ve been longing for something like ‘Insert Mode’ for a long time. No more copy/paste to make room for new material (or notes I forgot to enter).
The intelligent dot-adding feature also looks good.
Looking forward to it!
VicDiesel
Could you also do these examples in Lilypond? In the “development diaries” for Dorico I consistently found the Lilypond output better than each of Sibelius, Finale, Dorico.
Abraham Lee
If you are referring to the two “stress test” snippets, here’s the first one ricercare-1-compare-all.pdf.
Philip Rothman
Thanks for posting this, Abraham.
Abraham Lee
For the curious, here’s the Chopin prelude that Daniel showed during the London live stream: chopin-prelude-no-7.pdf.
The only “local” adjustment I had to make was the horizontal position of the very first dynamic marking. I made two other “global” setting changes: increased the vertical space between the staves a little and allowed the slurs to be a little more curved. Everythjng else is the default appearance. It’s not a complicated score, but take it for what it’s worth.
Abraham Lee
And here’s the second of the two stress tests: ricercare-2-compare-all.pdf
Both stress tests show 100% default LilyPond spacing/layout although I’m not entirely sure I voiced each passage properly. Anyway, here it is.
Philip Rothman
Thanks for doing this, Abraham!
Abraham Lee
You’re welcome, Philip!
Abraham Lee
By the way, I used LilyPond version 2.19.36 for my additions.
@Andrew Noah Cap: which version of Sibelius and Finale were used in the stress tests?
Harvey Richardson
These examples are not really useful.
I would want to see both default output and secondly an improved/edited version. For example with the Sebelius examples I would have moved horizontal note positions and edited ties to make the score more readable.
What would be a very useful community service would be a site that would host score snippets which people could provide
default and edited renderings from so we could compare withouth having to purchase trial applications. A trial is only as useful as your ability to learn the application in time.
Sanley Auster
“There is no reason to doubt that this will happen eventually.” Hmmmm . . . I think this should be a bumper sticker or t-shirt slogan. I’m skeptical. Today, we live in a corporate environment where there is every reason to doubt that something will happen eventually or not eventually. I worked in the music business for many years and watched the corporations and start-ups run it into the ground. I’m skeptical but maybe, just maybe, this will be the exception to the rule.
Jorge Grundman
Great, Great, Great Review! It is almost a tutorial on how to use Dorico.
The only thing I miss from this review is if Dorico has script abilities like Sibelius Manuscript. Does it have this?
Brandon
A $500 notation program that lacks the ability to do standard things like *transpose a section of music* at release is…kind of unacceptable to be honest.
My understanding was that Steinberg was wanting Dorico to be taken seriously as a music notation software product. Sure, it’s coming “later”, but why is it not there at release? This is bare bones stuff.
Dan Kreider
I agree, and this was my first thought upon reading the review (which was excellent, by the way). Why not wait and release Dorico without these fundamental, glaring omissions?
As an almost 20-year Finale user, I’m very intrigued. I’ll be watching Dorico’s progress closely over the next couple months.
Steven Lebetkin
One of the nice things about Sibelius is its interface with NotePerformer whose algorhythm takes all the brain damage out of the process. Simply take the time to notate your score carefully with attention to the detail of dynamics and articulation and press the play button. The you have a really good demo of the music without programming and having to be a sound engineer.
The question is can Dorico do this? Or is there brain damage involved?
Bob Zawalich
>The only thing I miss from this review is if Dorico has script abilities like Sibelius Manuscript. Does it have this?
It does not currently have the ability to write plugins like Sibelius does. There is a Script window that will let you record and play back a single macro.
A full plugin facility, using the Lua programming language is planned for a future release, but I would not expect it to be available in the very near future. There are some threads about this on the Dorico user forum.
Fabian
Great review of a great software! Thanks a lot!
One question concerning playback: does it integrate Vst-Instruments in the articulation and dynamics of the score like it does with its own HALion instruments? In Sibelius, Vst-instruments are played with reduced dynamics…..
Thanks for an answer!
Best wishes,
Fabian
Aaron Gervais
This was so exciting until I got to the last page and saw that you can’t create cues yet. It seems really odd to release the product with no cue capability. Basically makes it useless for professional use.
Martha
I ordered the boxed version the first day. No word about it yet–what is the wait time?
I eagerly await. . . .
Chinny
I have used Sibelius for over twenty-five years and Finale since 1986. I use both for teaching. Although I settled more on Sibelius for that purpose. Since Avid took over, it has become increasingly difficult to use the product in the class. Just as soon as you boot up you are confronted with activation even though they have an automatic deduction from my credit card. Of course my students now know to steer clear of Sibelius. I was hoping that Dorico would come to the rescue. But unfortunately with the absence of chord symbols etc, and for a very heavy price tag of over $500 for an unfinished product, is unacceptable. It would seem these software companies are now writing the products for themselves.
Peter Hamlin
I spent about a week trying to figure out an activision issue with Sibelius — turns out if I activate on my Surface Pro 3 with the expansion dock plugged in, Sibelius will not launch without the dock. Or vice versa. I ended up reactivating without the dock so I can use it on the road, and when I’m home I have to unplug the dock when I launch, then plug it back in to reactivate.
A long way of agreeing with you about activation annoyances in Sibelius!
Paolo
I’m surprised they didn’t use the Apple Store, with its handy way of installing on multiple computers. Steinberg has never been too friendly with Mac users.
Paolo
Paul Rose
Can one scan sheet music on paper (printed or handwritten) and then edit it with Dorico? I don’t remember a mention of this in the review.
Abraham Lee
Not directly, but since it can import MusicXML, you can use any scanning software you want to create the MusicXML file and then load that file into Dorico.
Orion
Fine review. But haste needn’t lead to lousy grammar: “Being a scoring software, one would think that Dorico creates and edits scores.” What, is anyone out there (including the writer) a piece of software? I hope not, but the dangling modifier in that sentence does imply that at least one of us is exactly that. Eek. How about, “Since Dorico is a scoring software, anyone might think that it creates and edits scores.” Computers and software have grown powerful and precise, but our ability to write clearly and precisely has faded.
Hans
Off course you’re right about the grammar (as if I should know), but you must be an alien from Orion because we humans are fallible and do err at times. I suggest using “Grammarly” to check one’s comments because without it, MY post will look like Egyptian glyphs!! ;-)
Peter Hamlin
Well, thank you for this very thorough and enjoyable review. I bought Dorico and am in the initial stages of learning it.
For me, the flexibility of players and layout will be a big game changer.
Dorico is a very welcome new player in the music notation world. I hope it does well!
Peter Hamlin
I hope Steinberg will change the licensing. (The comments on this in the review make me cautiously optimistic.) I have a home studio and a travel computer and work on both interchangeably virtually every day. My travel computer has only one usb port.
I just ordered the dongle to see how it goes — but a two-computer e-license would be a significant improvement for me.
Martha
Somewhere in all the reviews/blogs/forums I saw a spreadsheet of key commands. Now I can’t find it. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
Martha Bishop
waltmart@comcast.net
Wolfram
Hi Martha, you can find an excel file of key shortcuts on the dorico forum. It’s posted by Derrek and the thread was opened by JGM 51 under the title of “key shortcuts”.
Sanifu
Outstanding review Philip; thank you!
Dick Lopez
1. How does HALion Symphonic Sounds compare with MakeMusic’s Garrison Sounds in Finale (especially the Grand Piano sounds)?
2. Can Dorico files be saved as AIFF? Or only as WAV?
Martha Bishop
I bought Dorico specifically to do early barless music. I’ve tried my best to get NO cautionary accidentals, and that aspect simply does not work properly but is vital to early barless music.
I also very much miss the dot on the number pad for adding time to a note. It’s awkward to have to mouse it.
Additionally I’m having a great deal of difficulty in keeping the audio aspect working unless I do certain maneuvers which don’t ever seem to save. I’m working on a Mac with Keystation 49es.
I think the program will eventually be a super program, much more powerful than Sibelius which I’ve used for years. I eagerly await every upgrade in the hopes that it will meet more of my needs, but Meanwhile Sibelius works for my modern compositions.
Davis Eccott
Not impressed! No sound on playback! Can’t find any help to resolve problem anywhere! Very disappointed!
Davis Eccott
I now have sound on playback working. The fault was entirely of my own making. I didn’t realize that the “edit” referred to was the edit on the mac menu. I was looking for an edit on the play section of Dorico. As soon as I changed the device setup to use “built in audio” everything worked, all thanks to the great team in Germany!
Haven’t explored all of Dorico’s possibilities yet, but it looks to be a great piece of software with many thoughtful and interesting capabilities.
My sincere apologies if my earlier grumble caused anyone to be put off. All I can say is, don’t be put off!!!
Steve
I’m a relatively new user of notation software. I got Finale 25.1 and then 25.2, and find it maddening to use. It seems buggy, and things don’t work like the manual says it will. Is Dorico pretty stable? I’d rather have fewer features and it be robust!
Hans Nel
Ok, personal opinion so far.
Dorico is a well fed fat toddler at the moment and is quite a tough little bugger to learn, but make no mistake, it’s growing like “Smallville” and will soon be a SUPERMAN! I really like Dorico (shortcomings and all), but their has a LOT of work being done creating it so far and I see NO competition in the near future!
Hans Nel
there (Orion)
Maximumspatium
First of all, thank you for the review!
My enthusiasm for Dorico’s impressive innovations is quickly tempered by some obvious “legacies”:
1) Steinberg’s legacy high-margin low-volume business model behind Dorico plaguing users with restrictive and intrusive copy protection systems like eLicenser (do you know that you have to buy their hardware key in order to run demo?)
Steinberg‘s advertising is speaking about customer‘s freedom but what‘s about the freedom to use your legally purchased software in more than one machine? No way! This situation isn‘t likely to change soon. Otherwise, why to swallow Syncrosoft together with their nearly uncrackable copy protection if not for forcing it unto the customer to make a bunch of money?
2) I‘m quite sure Dorico is working with its own (binary, compressed and encrypted) file format like Sibelius and Finale do so it‘s subject to the same legacy like its competitors. The legitimation of this decision doesn‘t matter much. The fact is that encrypted binary formats are useless as far as their creator becomes unavailable. This is in short the old good way to lock customers to expensive proprietary products. Did you even try to switch your score library from Sibelius to smth else? Don‘t tell me about MusicXML export! It doesn‘t work that way!
What‘s about customer‘s freedom to use tools of their choice? Or even the ability to share your work/ideas with non-Steinberg customers? What do you think, what‘s the reason for not having an interchangeable, open file format for score exchange?
That‘s why I ain‘t going to buy Dorico, at least in the near future. My advise would be to wait and watch where does this journey end up. Dorico‘s price is high and there is neither „Dorico first“ nor „Dorico lite“. Dorico‘s advanced features are impressive but honestly rarely needed (unless you‘re going to publish that unnatural piece by Ferneyhough :)) There are several notation products outside of this Finale-Sibelius-Dorico circle doing less but being both cheap and good…
Kristian
Being a bit lazy I’ve never bothered to properly learn notation since I mostly write music on the guitar and use tabs (with notation attached) for composing. It seems like a simple request, but is it possible to add inputting music by tab?
Being a guitar player I find myself thinking more of the movements along the neck than as notes themselves. Harmonizing and adding melodies is alot easier if I can visualize my self playing the notes on the guitar.
I guess at some point I should just learn notation once and for all, but untill then, I’ll stay lazy :)
Deke Roberts
Maybe I’m not understanding something here, but writing a program that would allow you to feed music written on program A into program B is not illegal, only using anything that is part of either programs A or B is illegal. This is why Open Office can read documents produced on other word processing formats.
I will lay odds that somewhere, someone, probably in the open-source community, is even now working on writing a program for this very purpose, at which point the owners of the propitiatory software which they perceive as being under threat will tear the program apart searching for matching code, and if they genuinely can’t find any, they’ll rewite their code so that their next update won’t work with the ‘pirate program’.
And that’s when the phrase “Cat and mouse” will start appearing in reviews.