Sibelius 2020.1, released to coincide with the opening of the 2020 NAMM Show, introduces automatic staff spacing, dashed and dotted ties, ties into notes, new house styles, accessibility improvements, and more.

Sibelius 2020.1, released to coincide with the opening of the 2020 NAMM Show, introduces automatic staff spacing, dashed and dotted ties, ties into notes, new house styles, accessibility improvements, and more.
Dorico 3.1, released to coincide with the opening of the 2020 NAMM Show, introduces condensing changes, lines, bracketed noteheads, a new dynamics lane for playback, local chord symbols, Hi-DPI support on Windows, user-defined chord shapes, and loads more.
Steinberg has released Dorico 3 with a first for any music notation program: automatic condensing of individual players into a full score layout. Guitar notation, harp pedaling, harmonics, grouped playing techniques, and comments are just a few of the dozens of new features and improvements in this major paid upgrade.
The first in our series exploring the major new features in Dorico 3, condensing is the process of combining the parts of multiple players on a single staff. This is a crucial step in the preparation of usable conductor’s scores because it helps save precious vertical space and improve legibility.
When a player has finished playing for the remainder of a piece, this is indicated “tacet al fine”. Learn how to consolidate remaining multirests in a part and display this instruction in Sibelius.
MuseScore 3.2 has been released. Single note dynamics, more flexible automatic placement, percussion sticking, changing durations, and more improvements are featured in this latest update, along with design refinements and better performance.
Essential to any good printed part layout is the page turn. The easiest way to check for good page turns on-screen is to view the music as a two-page spread. We’ll quickly run through how to view music this way in all the major desktop music notation applications as well as in Adobe Acrobat and Mac Preview.
The space is the unit of measurement that defines the appearance of all other notational items. These basic settings in Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico matter as much as anything to affect how your music appears.
Finale users know that Jari Williamsson’s plug-ins are practically essential for working efficiently in Finale. JW Fit Music is another valuable tool that will make page layout easier and quicker, automating several steps to get good results.
Dorico makes it quite easy to preface a score with reference pitches, such as timpani tunings or handbells. In this post we’ll walk through the process of creating reference pitches using flows and frame chains.