Dorico

The new standard in scoring software

Dorico is the next-generation scoring application from Steinberg, with a whole new way of working with music notation. Built from the ground up by musicians for musicians, Dorico is like having an intelligent assistant by your side. Dorico’s output is the equal of the finest music engraving, and brings music to life through Steinberg’s award-winning audio engine.

What is Dorico

Dorico redefines the gold standard in scoring software. Built from the ground up with today’s multi-core 64-bit CPUs in mind, Dorico will take advantage of all of your system’s horsepower while the intuitive workflows help you focus on each aspect of score preparation. The beauty and balance of Dorico’s output is unrivaled, with hundreds of options to control every aspect of your music’s appearance. And with Steinberg’s award-winning audio engine at its heart, Dorico allows you to use your VST instruments and effects to produce great-sounding playback too.

Workflow

Dorico is designed to provide comfortable and efficient workflows, whether you’re working on the move with your laptop or in your studio with multiple displays.

Streamlined workflow

Dorico has a simple, uncluttered interface that is intended to disappear and allow you to focus on the music. Designed to be comfortable and efficient on a laptop computer with a single display, but expanding effortlessly into the studio with multiple large displays, Dorico’s single-window design puts all of the application’s power within easy reach.

Powerful project management

Dorico handles multi-movement works — such as sonatas, symphonies, songbooks, musicals and operas — so easily and simply, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it until now. Each project file can contain as many independent pieces of music as necessary, called flows.

Dorico’s five modes

Dorico’s workflows are divided into five distinct modes — Setup, Write, Engrave, Play and Print — that are all one mouse tap away from the toolbar, and can be freely changed at any time. Collapsible panels to the left, right and bottom of the window provide instant access to each mode’s features, and can be hidden with a single click or key command to show as much music as possible on your display.

Efficient window management

Open as many windows onto the same project as you like: keep one in Write mode to allow continued input and editing, and another in Play mode to allow easy tweaking of playback, or switch back and forth within the same window with a single click. Switch between tabs for the conductor’s score and instrumental parts, or split the window horizontally or vertically to allow you to work on both at the same time. Dorico provides the environment to allow you to do your best work, and then gets out of your way.

Notation and layout

Produce beautifully balanced pages that look as good as the finest traditional music engraving faster and with less effort than ever before.

Effortless score and part preparation

Naturally, Dorico allows you to originate both the conductor’s score and parts for individual players from the flows of music in your project as individual layouts. Changes made to the music in one layout are automatically reflected in any others in which that music appears, while allowing complete independence in terms of page and system appearance between every layout.

Flexible input and editing

Inputting music in Dorico is fast and easy. Use your keyboard or mouse to input notes, and learn easy to remember key commands, or define your own, allowing you to fly through note input faster than ever before. Dorico has the flexibility to notate every note according to the changing musical context using its sophisticated understanding of the rules of meter, ensuring that the rhythm is always clearly communicated, even as notes are lengthened, shortened, inserted or removed.

Graphical excellence

Developed in consultation with experienced engravers working with some of the world’s most demanding music publishers, the automatic engraving engine at the heart of Dorico produces the most elegant, beautiful results of any scoring application. Attention has been lavished on every detail of the appearance of the music, from the meticulous design of every symbol in the Bravura font, to the precise placement rules for every notated element.

Powerful page layout

Dorico makes it easy to produce a consistent and attractive layout for every project, thanks to its unique page layout features. Switch to Engrave mode, and its power is instantly revealed to you: frames for music, text and graphics can be laid out in any arrangement for any kind of project.

Beautiful spacing

Dorico’s unique approach to rhythmic spacing allows music to be spaced more tightly than other scoring programs, without sacrificing clarity and legibility. Items are automatically tucked or kerned against each other to avoid the rhythmic distortion that disturbs the flow of the music. Dorico produces spacing of beautiful consistency and balance every time.

How Dorico is better

Dorico is the next-generation scoring application with many unique features that competing applications just don’t have. Here are a few of the reasons why you should consider adding Dorico to your toolbox.

Multiple movement support

Handling works that contain multiple independent movements is a chore in other scoring programs, but in Dorico it’s as simple as adding a new flow to your project. Each flow can share instrumentation or use completely different instruments, and can be brought together in any combination in conductor’s scores and instrumental parts.

Flexible input and editing

Other scoring programs are capable of producing beautiful results, but require advance planning and patience: they are to music what the typewriter is to the written word. But Dorico is like a word processor, not only allowing you to harness the power of its superior automatic engraving engine, but also giving you tools to edit, re-edit and adapt your musical material without ever getting in your way.

Advanced notations

Dorico’s rich support for advanced notations opens up new expressive possibilities for your music. Define your own tonality systems, including custom accidentals that modify the written pitch by any number of EDOs, and create custom key signatures. Write freely in open meter, adding or deleting barlines wherever they are needed. Create tuplets of any complexity, even across barlines. Create slurs with any number of independent curving segments for total control. 

Page layout

Producing consistent page layouts in other scoring programs can be very time-consuming, but Dorico’s sophisticated page layout system makes consistent page layouts quick and easy to achieve. Define and apply master pages with automatic page numbers, headers and footers, and easily override the layout of individual pages as needed.

Direct playback control

Dorico provides a familiar piano roll editor for making fine adjustments to playback without affecting the printed notation, including editing continuous controllers. Control your VST 3 instruments directly, including defining VST Expression Maps to access the advanced playing techniques in your sample libraries. Or simply use the provided HALion Symphonic Orchestra to bring your scores to life — and you can also use the library in any other VST-compatible host.