I’m very happy to have a few of my questions addressed on a recent episode of Scoring Notes (listen here).
Philip and David have been doing a series of episodes featuring listener questions. In part 3, the questions are centered on educational topics. Their responses are insightful, considered, and practical.
Dorico 5 was released last month! The Dorico blog has a a thoughtful introduction to version 5. I find these posts and videos so insightful and clarifying, that I almost enjoy reading and watching them as much as I do using the software. You can see the love and intention they put into every detail.
Dorico 5 helps you create music that moves – Dorico:
We are delighted to announce the immediate availability of the brand new generation of our music notation and composition software, Dorico, with updated versions available now for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS. Dorico 5 is packed with powerful and useful features throughout the application, all designed to help you get great-looking and great-sounding results as quickly as possible. Let’s dive in. Keep reading here…
My school year is coming to a busy close this year, and I haven’t had enough time with Dorico 5 to generate anything more meaningful to say here. So, as usual, I recommend you read the excellent review at Scoring Notes.
MuseScore 4 has been released. This is exciting news, particularly for many of my students who need more composing power than a web app but are limited by the expensive costs of the professional options.
You can download MuseScore 4 for free here. I also recommend you read David MacDonald's Scoring Notes review by clicking the link below.
Long-awaited MuseScore 4 release brings major improvements to engraving and audio - Scoring Notes:
Today’s release of MuseScore 4 is a major update and quite possibly the most significant one in the open-source application’s history since the release of MuseScore 1.0 in 2011. It includes major improvements to the user interface, layout, engraving, and playback features.
MuseScore 4 is delivered via a hub which installs both the MuseScore scoring application and the orchestral plug-in Muse Sounds, The MuseScore application can be downloaded separately, as well.
Not coincidentally, this is also the first major version of of MuseScore to be released under the product leadership of Martin Keary (Tantacrul). Coming nearly two years after the last MuseScore update (3.6) and nearly four years after the release of MuseScore 3, Martin told Scoring Notes today that, “I’ve worked on a lot of complex creation software and this is the largest release I’ve ever put out,” including the launch of Paint 3D and a variety of PS3 games.
Robby does hot takes on macOS Ventura, iOS and iPadOS 16.1, and new iPads.
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Dorico 4 is out! I've been testing it for the past few months, and I'm not even sure I am scratching the surface of what it can do. It is, in my opinion, the most important and exciting update to Dorico since its release in 2016.
This past summer, Dorico released an iPad app, which has many of the design updates and features seen in Dorico 4. You can read my first impressions about the iPad version of Dorico, and hear my conversation with Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury, here.
Fortunately, the Scoring Notes blog posted a review, which you can read here.
Here are some quick things that I am excited about in Dorico 4
Dorico 4 uses Steinberg's brand new Steinberg Licensing, replacing the Steinberg e-Licenser. The e-Licensor was one of the two or three most frustrating licensing processes on my Mac. The new Steinberg Licensing is one of the least frustrating processes for licensing software on my Mac.
Once Dorico 4 launched, I was presented with the option to move my existing Dorico 3.5 license over and log into my Steinberg account. Once completed, Dorico can run on up to three machines without connecting to the web. This is a super easy and generous way to handle licensing.
I covered this in my iPad First Impressions post, so I won't go into too much detail here. The bottom area, which previously only contained project properties, now includes new note input methods like a piano, fretboard, and drum pads. It also integrates a piano roll and mixer right into Write Mode.
I really enjoy writing with notation and a piano roll visible on the screen at once. Perhaps this is because I am comfortable with DAWs. But I think it also speaks to how easily I conceptualize and edit rhythmic duration on a piano roll. Ethan Hein summarizes this well:
This is so cool, the piano roll and the score are great complements and they balance each others' weaknesses, all I want is the ability to jump back and forth between them in a single view https://t.co/dcYTipvsNB
— Ethan Hein (@ethanhein) January 14, 2022
You can also view a mixer in the bottom area while in Write Mode. Cool.
"Command pallet," "command search," "quick open"... whatever it's called, this feature is becoming very popular in pro-software. If you have used Sibelius, you might be familiar with their Command Search feature. The feature is also quite popular in productivity software. I love using Command+O in OmniFocus to open projects and perspectives quickly. In my note app Obsidian, Command+O smartly searches my notes, and Command+P acts upon them.
The idea is that you have a keyboard shortcut that brings up a search, you start typing, and then the software smartly displays some options on the screen for places it thinks you want to go or things you want to do.
Dorico has added this feature with their new Jump Bar, and I couldn't be happier. Just press the letter J, and you can type "m30" to bounce to measure 30 or "dynamics" to bring up the dynamics popover.
Popovers are my favorite part of the Dorico workflow, but I sometimes forget which keyboard shortcuts belong to which menus. In my opinion, having one command that allows for natural-language searching is a workflow win. Even if it is technically more keystrokes to find things, there is way less mental overhead in just typing what you want plainly.
Play Mode moves a handful of track options to the left, making it more familiar to users who work inside DAWs. Working with inserts and effects feels less esoteric in this design. I like it.
You can now turn any project into a template. Templates appear in the File menu, under the New from Project Template selection.
Previously, I used a Siri Shortcut to manage project templates in Dorico. I wrote about that for Scoring Notes here. My shortcuts method handles some of the file management for you and is worth a look if you want to learn more about macOS and iOS automation.
Generally, I think it is a benefit to store templates inside of Dorico, and I will be taking some of my most frequently used templates in the Shortcuts app and moving them inside of Dorico.
Dorico moves most options relating to customizing the app's behavior into a menu called Library. It drives me nuts when professional creative software stores its settings across numerous custom preference panes throughout the application. This adjustment makes customizing Dorico's various options more discoverable, regardless of the mode or context they relate to.
The new library features also include many new options for font styles, which I am sure will make David MacDonald very happy.
Dorico 4 works with Apple Silicon. From Scoring Notes:
Dorico 4 is the first Dorico version, and the first of any of the major desktop applications, to support Apple silicon Macs, such as the M1 MacBook Pro, iMac, and Mac mini. If you have an Apple silicon Mac, Dorico will run as a native application by default. However, if you use VST plug-ins, Dorico can only load VST plug-ins that can run natively on Apple silicon as well, and these must be VST 3 (there is no support for VST 2 plug-ins on Apple silicon). It is possible to force Dorico 4 to run under Rosetta 2 on Apple Silicon, which will allow VST 2 and Intel-native plug-ins to be loaded, though at the expense of slower overall performance.
Overall, Dorico 4 is a huge step forward. I imagine a lot of the work on this update was done in preparation for the iPad release. Now that both versions exist, I expect that the shared development platform between desktop and mobile will mean that future updates are released in side-step and continue to be feature-rich.
If you are on a Mac and are still debating an update to Monterey, or if you are debating an M1 Mac purchase, I recommend this blog post from Scoring Notes.
They are keeping track of compatibility with Monterey and M1 across all the major music notation apps.
Friends of the show join to answer burning questions about music, education, and technology in 2021 (and beyond).
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I wrote a post for the Scoring Notes blog, published today. The post is all about using the Shortcuts app on iOS (and now the Mac) to create custom templates in music notation software.
I did my best to provide basic context for the Shortcuts app so that this post can be accessible by any teacher, musician, or composer. The post includes a link to download both the shortcut and an example score template so you can tweak it to your heart’s content. Here is an excerpt:
Use Shortcuts to quickly create score templates on macOS and iOS — Robby Burns | Scoring Notes:
Even though apps like Sibelius, Finale, and Dorico don’t come with their own built-in Shortcuts actions, the addition of several new file-based actions from the Automator makes creating templates possible.
The shortcut below is three simple steps. I searched for each action in the right sidebar and dragged them in the order I wanted them to occur. Here’s what each step does:
- Looks for a score I made in Dorico that is set up in 4/4, in concert B♭ major, and with all of the instruments common to a middle school bands.
- Saves a copy of that file to the Desktop.
- Opens it in Dorico.
Click here to keep reading on Scoring Notes.
This blog post from David MacDonald, writing for Scoring Notes, has some great tips about making teaching documents and music worksheets using some of the most popular music notation software.
There is a lot music teachers can learn in this post, and from the associated podcast episode. Click the link below to read more.
Preparing teaching materials in music notation software - Scoring Notes:
If you have ever taught music lessons or classes, you have likely needed to share some small bit of music notation with your students that isn’t quite a full score or part, but still requires some amount of staff notation. Preparing this sort of document can be tricky because notation software is built around a certain set of assumptions suited for performance materials — scores and parts — which may not always serve learning materials like quizzes or scale sheets.
In this article, I’m going to cover some of the workflows, workarounds, best practices, and other considerations that I have used in preparing my own materials for the university music theory and composition courses I teach.
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