Hands-on reviews of music notation software, apps, fonts, and related tools.
Managing properties of objects in Dorico is powerful and flexible. You can change properties in two modes: a global mode where the properties are immediately propagated, and a local mode where they are set in the active layout only.
Steinberg has released Dorico 3.5, a major upgrade to its scoring program. Pitch-before-duration note input, semantic figured bass, line style editors, and condensing for section players are among the dozens of new features and improvements.
We look at grouped playing techniques in Dorico 3, where multiple playing techniques can be grouped together with a connecting arrow or line.
Sibelius 2019.1, released to coincide with the opening of the 2019 NAMM Show, introduces a new Review Mode, adds some playback enhancements and integrates Avid Link, the new way for users to manage their Avid account, licensing, and subscriptions.
There are plenty of holiday shopping guides — but none, I assure you, with this unique list of recommendations. I've assembled a list of some of my favorite products that I think you will enjoy as well, and relate to the task of creating music notation (more or less!).
Steinberg has released Dorico 2.2, another enormous update to the program. New features have been added or rebuilt in the areas of trills, group bracketing, repeat markers, jazz articulations, tempo track import/export, real-time MIDI recording, flow headings, tacets, and a new music symbols editor. Many more improvements have been made in other areas, and there are a good 100 or so bug fixes, besides.
MakeMusic has released version 26 of Finale, bringing a number of improvements: new articulation options, better templates and libraries, Mac performance enhancements, and several other items and bug fixes.
Dorico Pro 2.0, released today, is a major update to Steinberg's music notation software, with new features across the board in many areas. Smart staff management, slash notation, bar repeats, a new handwritten music font, a new system track, support for large time signatures, automation in Play mode, video support, and much more round out an impressive release.
Andrew Noah Cap gives a thorough review of Dorico's playback capabilities and the wide variety of needs it attempts to address — from engravers preferring simple playback, to those wanting adequate sound rendering without thinking too much about settings and post-editing, to those that expect playback and editing functionality that is comparable to MIDI editing within a DAW.
Today Avid released Sibelius 2018.4, a broad release with many new features and some longstanding requests addressed. Areas of improvement include multi-edits for text, a new note spacing rule affecting multiple voices and other cases, deleting and adding bars at the beginning of the score, smarter ties, and many more other enhancements. Avid also announced a new naming strategy where the pro-level version is now called "Sibelius Ultimate".
