Dorico - An Ongoing Journey

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Dorico v2 has been announced. It adds lots of new features, including composing for video.

https://youtu.be/hKaqprDhslU

Time to make a purchase.

[leigh]

What's new in Dorico 2:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNvdf-MifaY

Tempo Maps, CC automation, timecode, oh my!

**Leigh

[mhschmieder]

Steinberg is pleased to announce the release both of a new version of its professional music notation application, Dorico, and of a new entry-level music notation application, Dorico Elements. With the introduction of Dorico Elements, Dorico is now called Dorico Pro, to reflect its high-end capabilities.

Dorico Pro 2 adds significant new functionality across the whole application, with a particular focus on supporting media musicians working in film, TV, video games and other production environments. First, Dorico Pro 2 now allows composing to picture, with features to attach a video to the project, add markers for specific events in the action, and tools to help find the best tempo for the material. Second, new tools for automation in Play mode have been added, allowing users to make fine adjustments to tempo and MIDI controllers using familiar graphical tools.

Scores and parts can be given the Hollywood look with new options for time signatures, allowing them to be shown centered on every instrument bracket or drawn above particular instruments, drawing attention to them — essential in action-packed music with many meter changes.

Support for notations widely used in commercial and jazz music has also been expanded in Dorico Pro 2, with new support for rhythmic slashes and bar repeats, widely used in music that includes repeated patterns, and which help players keep their place and understand the structure of the music more quickly.

New time-saving tools for arrangers and orchestrators have also been added, including multi-paste for copied material to be pasted to multiple staves in a single operation, new explode and reduce tools for repurposing material for more or fewer instruments, and powerful new tools to scale existing notes into tuplets.

Dorico Elements is the new entry-level member of the Dorico product family. Boasting many of the powerful and time-saving features of Dorico Pro, Dorico Elements is the perfect starting point for composers, arrangers, and students. With a simple user interface that is quick to master, Dorico Elements provides fluid input and editing, beautiful graphical notation, and great-sounding playback, delivering results that maintain the overall standard for which Dorico is renowned.

Dorico Elements is ideal for home use or use by students in secondary education. Allowing the creation of publication-quality music for ensembles of up to 12 players, with the same automatic music layout and engraving of Dorico Pro, Dorico Elements is the ideal choice for musicians starting out in composition and arranging.

“With several new features aimed at commercial music, we are excited about accelerating the use of Dorico Pro 2 in composition, arranging and orchestration work for film, TV and games,” commented Daniel Spreadbury, product marketing manager for Dorico, “and the introduction of Dorico Elements provides an inexpensive way for the next generation of composers and arrangers to experience these features in a simpler, more streamlined package.”

Dorico Pro 2 is available through resellers and through the Steinberg Online Shop. The suggested retail price for Dorico Pro 2 is 579 euros, including German VAT. Special educational pricing is available, including for a limited time a further introductory discount: until October 31, 2018, a further 60% off the suggested retail price is on offer when buying five or more Dorico Pro licenses for use in an educational institution. Special crossgrade pricing is also available for users of Sibelius and Finale who want to add Dorico Pro to their toolbox.

An update for existing Dorico 1.x customers is exclusively available through the Steinberg Online Shop.

Customers who have activated Dorico 1 since May 2, 2018, are eligible for a free, downloadable grace period update to the latest version.

Dorico Elements 2 is available through resellers and through the Steinberg Online Shop. The suggested retail price for Dorico Elements 2 is 99.99 euros, including German VAT. Special educational pricing is available.

New features of Dorico Pro 2:

• Play video in sync with your project, add markers, and manipulate tempo to compose to picture
• Edit tempo and MIDI controllers in Play mode with familiar graphical automation control
• Add ossias, handle complex divisi writing for string sections, and change the number of staves used by an instrument with smart new staff management tools
• Quickly write rhythmic slashes and bar repeats for rhythm section parts
• Hollywood-style large time signatures draw attention to meter changes in action-packed film score cues
• Quickly select, insert, and delete material with the new System Track
• Powerful new tools for arrangers, including multi-paste, explode, reduce, and tools to scale existing notes into tuplets of any ratio
• Playback of repeat structures, including repeat barlines and repeat endings
• New popover for adding tremolos and repeat endings
• Edit the appearance of playing techniques and notehead sets, and define new playback behaviors for playing techniques in VST Expression Maps

Key features of Dorico Elements 2:

• Quick to learn — comprehensive video tutorials and on-screen help
• Compose or arrange for ensembles of up to 12 players
• Fully compatible with Dorico Pro
• Best automatic notation and engraving of any software
• Easy note input
• Clear user interface
• Excellent results by default — saves time
• Intelligently adjusts notation as you write
• Any number of movements or pieces in a single project
• Sequencer-style piano roll MIDI editor
• Transfer to and from other programs via MusicXML, MIDI, PDF, etc.
• Supports VST 3 virtual instruments and effects processors (30 included)

[mhschmieder]

The cross-grade is $279, which is $30 more than Dorico 1's pricing.

I may have to do this tomorrow anyway, as I need to speed up my productivity on quality parts extraction so that I (and others) have an easier time learning parts than when looking at "default" scores that don't follow the rules we're used to with classical ensemble backgrounds. I need to wrap up some of these recordings ASAP.

Yes, I could study Finale harder, but why waste the time when it isn't as strongly supported as it used to be, and when Dorico does indeed seem to be the future? Better to invest the time in learning a tool that will likely be with us longer and develop useful features at a faster pace than Finale or Sibelius lately.

[stubbsonic]

Yes, I could study Finale harder, but why waste the time when it isn't as strongly supported as it used to be, and when Dorico does indeed seem to be the future? Better to invest the time in learning a tool that will likely be with us longer and develop useful features at a faster pace than Finale or Sibelius lately.

I'm thinking along similar lines. Even though I struggled to learn Finale enough to do a pretty big orchestration job recently, so many functions are counterintuitive, or cause you to do what seems to be needless busy-work. If I procrastinate as long as I did with Finale, I expect Dorico 7 will be amazing!!

[mikehalloran]

So, Dorico is adding a number of features that Finale & Sibelius had many years ago, declaring that the beta was really v.1 and asking those who stuck with it to pay for an "upgrade" to what really should have been the first release version.

I passed on it the first time around because it couldn't perform the simple tasks I need, unlike Finale and Overture. I may look at it again and even purchase but, for now, no thanks.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I came to the same conclusion Mike. I almost bit but $600? I don’t think so, even with video sync.

[stubbsonic]

I see the crossgrade price is $280. Does that not apply to you?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

I see the crossgrade price is $280. Does that not apply to you?

I didn't see that. Thanks!

[mhschmieder]

As I mentioned earlier though, the cross-grade price is $30 to $40 more than previously, and considerably more than either Sibelius or Overture charge, which doesn't seem fair given the lack of parity of features at this early stage.

[mhschmieder]

Oops, turns out I had only posted the specific cross-grade prices at another forum.

Reality check on cross-grade prices (it doesn't matter what you currently own, in terms of the cross-grade offer):

SonicScores Overture = $119
Sibelius = $169
Dorico 1 = $249
Dorico 2 = $279

[MIDI Life Crisis]

So I guess the question is whether one is better off with Doritos or Silly Bailius? It would seem that Sibelius has a longer history and I know orchestral librarians that love it. I guess I'll just hang with Finale 2014.5 until it's dead with an OS update and deal with the transition at that time. Maybe I'll get lucky, and Finale will reinstate the movie window or MOTU will develop a notation app. I won't hold my breath on ANY of the above.

[mikehalloran]

Oops, turns out I had only posted the specific cross-grade prices at another forum.

Reality check on cross-grade prices (it doesn't matter what you currently own, in terms of the cross-grade offer):

SonicScores Overture = $119
Sibelius = $169
Dorico 1 = $249
Dorico 2 = $279

Notion 6 = $79

I had to email for the price when I did it in 2016 and don’t know if still current. I decided I don’t like the Notion workflow but the included instruments do sound great. I sometimes drop MusicXML into Notion just to hear it—pretty impressive.

[mhschmieder]

Yep, I only included cross-grades for products I don't already own. Also, I think Notion is part of StudioOne now, if you buy the Professional version, but it's not always easy to tell what someone else's experience and pricing will be when you already have something yourself.

Notion does indeed have a great rendering engine, and well-recorded London players (at Abbey Road as I recall). It was one of their early selling points, but I don't think they went as far as Synful Orchestra in "intelligent" rendering of scores.

WIVI has a notation rendering plug-in, but I think it's only for Sibelius.

Vienna Symphonic Library has some special files that make it play well with one or more notation apps, but I think they might have only supported Sibelius as well. I can't remember where those files are on my disc at the moment.

The only person I know of who uses Sibelius in the classical world is Michael Tilson Thomas. It was what got me to look at that one first, many years ago, along with the admittedly emotional connection to my favourite composer of all time -- though being English, I'm surprised they didn't name it Delius.

[mhschmieder]

Regarding Michael's dilemma about Doritos vs. Silly Bailius, I think the attached photo answers that question quite well, as Doritos are quite unpalatable when they get soggy.