In the most recent installment of his Discover Dorico video series a couple of days ago, Steinberg’s scoring product specialist John Barron devoted most of his time to previewing the new features in the forthcoming Dorico 1.1 update.
Promised for release before the end of June, Dorico 1.1 will likely be the most extensive update yet. If you’ve followed the news about Dorico, you know that we can expect to see headline features such as chord symbols, repeat endings and piano pedaling, among other useful additions.
John previewed all of these features, and many more, in his recent session. Whether you’re using Dorico now or have been holding off from trying it, grab some popcorn and watch the entire 45-minute video — it will be well worth your time.
- 10:24 – Using MIDI keyboard shortcut in conjunction with MIDI entry and chord entry
- 15:49 – Chord symbols
- 20:25 – Pedaling (beware the pun at 22:22)
- 25:13 – Filters
- 27:20 – Linking and grouping dynamics
- 29:07 – Mouse input options
- 31:48 – Repeat endings
- 34:07 – More engraving options
- 35:21 – Editable note spacing, both beat-wide and note-specific
- 38:28 – Layout and casting off with fixed number of bars per system / systems per page
- 39:24 – Exporting flows
- 41:22 – Play mode changes, including MIDI out
There are other promised new features that didn’t make it into this video, and some features weren’t fully finished — the appearance of chord symbols still needs work — but the Dorico team’s willingness to give such a public and extensive preview at this stage is a sign of confidence in their progress.
Dorico 1.1 will be a free update for existing users. New users crossgrading from an existing notation product have until June 30, 2017 to purchase Dorico at a discounted price.
Conveniently, that John mentioned that the next Discover Dorico session will be the previous day — June 29.
Edwin Shenk
Tried the free trial about a year ago. It wasn’t good enough at that point to switch from Sibelius. Is it possible to get another free trial?
Daniel Spreadbury
It will be possible to get an updated trial version when the new version is available. If you previously tried Dorico but chose not to buy it, you will be emailed with a new trial code so you can give it another go some time after the release of the update.
Gil
Hello,
I’m thinking switching from Sibelius to Dorico and one point that would be essential for me is the possibility to have different sounds (from a VST3, EWQL Play to be precise) on different voices on one staff. Exemple: in a staff “Flutes”, voice 1 is playing a Flute1 sound and voice 2 is playing a different sound, Flute2).
Thanks for your answer!
Regards,
Gil.
Daniel Spreadbury
This will not be possible in Dorico 1.1, Gil, but it is certainly planned for the future. If you are happy to have your flutes on separate staves then this can already be done, of course.
Tim
I’m a Sibelius user, and I feel that as more updates come out, this is going to be the gold standard for notation.
You guys are doing fantastic work.
When can we expect drum set notation to be added. Also, are there plans for more jazz / commercial music additions (fonts, articulations etc)?
Daniel Spreadbury
Unpitched percussion notation is the next highest priority item for us to work on after this update is done and dusted, so the wait is not going to be too much longer on that front. And yes, in the fullness of time we absolutely intend to support as many jazz notations as we can. You can already get a third party Dorico-compatible handwritten style font from Abraham Lee’s Music Type Foundry web site, and hopefully there will be more of these in future from other font designers too.
Catherine
Looks increasingly attractive. But I am afraid I will need to wait with moving over from Sibelius until I can use Dorico on two machines (not at the same time) without taking care of hardware dongles or the like. I care less about having all virtual instruments installed on my desktop and laptop in parallel, but the scoring core of the software needs to be available on both of my machines in order to accommodate my working style (and not the other way round). Daniel mentioned that Steinberg is aware of the issue that other potential users are facing, too. Any progress on that?
Daniel Spreadbury
We certainly are aware of this issue, but I’m afraid there’s no new information I can give you about this right now. One thing to bear in mind, though it’s perhaps not a possibility for you, that you could purchase an additional license while the crossgrade offer is in place, which would allow you to use the software on two computers.
Catherine
Thanks, Daniel, for getting back. As an honest user I detest any copy protection measures, although I somewhat understand that you need to undertake these efforts to protect your business case against the less honest folks. While I am more than happy to pay for a superb product, I am not paying for measures to police others. So you are right that the workaround you propose won’t work for me as a matter of principle.
However, I suppose the matter is quite complicated also on your side, as there might be third-party rights involved, there is a established system, etc. I also see that there have been many discussions taken place in the forum. My view, in short, is that a scheme as the one used by Adobe (2 machines, ability to move registrations without hardware dongles) would be a good usability compromise for a software that is used not only in a studio context with periphery, but also on the run.
I am quite ok with Sibelius and will be for a while. In the meantime I trust that Dorico will evolve and stabilize, and the issues with the protection regime get fixed on the way.
Barry Sugden
When Dorico is used for producing orchestral parts, does it have a similar feature to Sibelius for inserting cues into the individual parts. I believe this feature was missing in earlier versions which is one reason that I didn’t purchase Dorico.
Daniel Spreadbury
Dorico does not yet support cues, Barry, but this is one of the highest priority issues for the update following Dorico 1.1.