Steinberg has released Dorico, a new music notation application, for Mac & Windows, that is tailored to the needs of composers, arrangers, engravers, copyists and educators.
Key features:
- Next-generation 64-bit scoring software for macOS and Windows, designed by musicians for musicians
- Beautiful engraved output with unrivaled attention to detail
- Flexible note input and powerful editing, including ability to insert and change duration of existing notes
- Streamlined, single-window interface puts every tool at your fingertips
- Powerful score management features to handle multiple independent pieces of music within the same project
- Unlimited number of staves and movements, sections or pieces within the same project
- Easily create layouts for full scores and instrumental parts with independent page size, staff size and system layout
- Use your computer keyboard or MIDI keyboard to input music quickly and efficiently
- Superior note spacing with optical kerning of adjacent elements, with tighter default spacing and no rhythmic distortion
- Import and export in MusicXML, MIDI and graphics formats
- Award-winning 32-bit floating-point Steinberg audio engine with flexible routing for virtual instrument and effect playback
- Compatible with VST 3 virtual instruments and effects processors
- Outstanding virtual instruments with more than 1,500 sounds, including HALion Sonic SE 2 workstation and complete HALion Symphonic Orchestra library
- Suite of high-end VST effect processors, including channel strip modules (compressor, EQ, limiter) and convolution reverb
Dorico Tutorial Videos:
Pricing and Availability
Dorico is available now for US $559.99. Educational pricing is available for qualifying teachers and students and also a crossgrade offer for qualifying Sibelius and Finale users. See the Steinberg site for more info.
Longing for my Atari ST system with Notator, which was good and affordable
Hoping my Atari 800XL is still okay and not cooking in my mom’s attic.
OS/2 had a beautiful melody tool for making your own melodies for this or that alert or whatever. It was soooooo easy to keyboard around writing notes while holding an instrument or some thing else or doing my actual job with the other hand. I just want something like that; I’d run OS/2 to have that tool again; it was very very very well written.
For some reason I have always struggled with notation programs. I have some kind of mental block about using them. Both Sibelius and Finale were troublesome to me. Judging from all those videos, they’ve taken care to make sure the program is as logical as it can be, as well as being flexible enough to change what you don’t like.
I’ll be curious to see what the pros say once this has had some time to update a few times. Comparisons with Finale and Sibelius will be pretty important and useful. If it compares favorably, I’d consider changing from Finale which I’ve never really taken to.
BTW, anyone interested in a notation program should check out Muse Score which is free.
The other thing I’d like to know is how long they will support a release version with maintenance updates vs the Finale model of charging high prices for updates and forcing users to choose old OS vs updates.
Perhaps someone can comment on how Steinberg is generally when it comes to software updates and costs to keep current/working.
Steinberg is really good about backwards compatibility. For example, I’m still running Cubase 5, which came out 10 years ago, on a current Max OS X version. No reason to upgrade for me and it’s still fully supported.
How is the support for the various microtonal accidental systems? Good? Comprehensive?
“Define your own tonality systems, including custom accidentals that modify the written pitch by any number of EDOs, and create custom key signatures.”
Hey that sounds great, and it seems to be claiming integration with the microtonal support of the VST3 standard. However, microtonal accidental systems are not only about EDOs. What about JI? What about EDNOs? What about NJNE systems such as found in nearly all ethnic musics in practice?
Well I guess EDOs is better than nothing and since they have built in a substrate then there’s the possibility they’ll expand and further develop it.
Integration between accidental inflections and the plugins is the real big thing though that people have been missing in other software, so this is pretty good news.