At the Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association conference in Helsinki, Finland this past weekend, I was honoured to be invited to give a presentation on our in-development application, and we chose this event to reveal the name, expected availability date, and provisional pricing information for the project we’ve been working on for the past three and a half years.
So it gives me great pleasure to announce that Steinberg’s new scoring application will be called Dorico, and it will be released in the fourth quarter of 2016.Β If you’re interested to find out more about the name and how it was chosen, read on.
From code name…
“Dorico” started out as the internal code name for our new project. Because of our focus on fine engraving, I suggested that each successive version of the application could take its code name from a famous historical music printer or engraver.
The thought was that the first version could be as revolutionary as the music printing process invented by Ottaviano Petrucci at the end of the 15th century. His innovation was to pass the paper through the press twice: a first impression to print the staff lines, and a second to print the notes, text and other symbols. However, Petrucci’s name is already closely associated with the first music font for another well-known scoring program, so using “Petrucci” as our code name was out of the question.
I started looking around for contemporaries and successors, and came across the name Valerio Dorico, one of the most important music printers in Rome, active up until the middle of the 16th century. Although Venice β where Petrucci had plied his trade β was by far the most important centre of music printing in this period, responsible for more than 90% of all music printed in Italy in the 16th century, Rome was nevertheless an important city for music printing, and Dorico the most prolific tipografo plying his trade there.
When Dorico began printing music in the 1520s, Petrucci’s double impression method was widely used, though the difficulty of ensuring the music was registered precisely for each impression meant that many printers produced copies that were inferior to those produced by Petrucci and others in Venice. Prints bearing Dorico’s imprint, however, are of a very high quality, comparable to those from the north.
As Dorico was beginning his career in Rome, a further revolution in music printing technology was taking place in England and France: music printed via a single impression process using movable type, where each piece of type includes not only the note or other musical symbol, but also the staff lines upon which it should be placed.Β It is disputed whether it was John Rastell of London or Pierre Attaignant of Paris who first achieved it, but in either case, this new technique swept across the music printing centres of Europe within the space of a few years.
Many music printers who had used the double impression process were left behind by this revolution, but not Dorico. As far as we know, Dorico was the only music printer in Rome to bridge the technological gap between the old double and new single impression processes.Β Dorico is also famous for publishing the first editions of several of Giovanni Pierluigi de Palestrina’s works in the 1550s, including madrigals and masses.
Dorico (pronounced with an emphasis on the first syllable) was attractive as a code name primarily because it rolls off the tongue nicely (in English, at least, and our colleagues in Hamburg seemed to think it was pleasant in German, too), it is short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and so on. Dorico the man also embodied some relevant qualities: he was resilient, surviving the sack of Rome in 1527 and going on to do his best work once the city was rebuilt; he embraced changes in technology and used them to his advantage; and he was something of an underdog, competing with much better established and famous printers in Venice and elsewhere.
…to product name
Meanwhile, I was also working with my colleagues in the marketing team on coming up with the go-to-market name for the application. Naming a product is notoriously difficult, and fraught with dangers (there are many famous examples of companies choosing names that turn out to have hitherto-unknown meanings β occasionally offensive or tasteless β in other countries around the world). Obviously any name must be possible to protect legally by way of trademarks, which generally means that the name should be unique (or close to it).Β In this Internet age, it’s also crucial that the product should be returned early in Google results. The name should also be short, easy to spell, easy to pronounce, and (according to linguists, and in English at least) should ideally start with a plosive consonant sound.
We came up with well over a hundredΒ possibilities, from the banal to the fanciful, from made-up acronyms to portmanteau words, from the abstract to the concrete. We tried musical terms, we tried the names of famous composers, the names of famous works, places, and on and on.Β But none of them cleared all of the hurdles: either they were too obscure, or used too widely already, or hard to pronounce, or too long, or some other problem.
All the while, we had been talking about our application within Steinberg using its code name, and we had started to get very comfortable with it. Eventually, Dorico started to feel natural, as if that was the name we should have chosen all along.
That’s how we came to choose Dorico as the name for our new scoring application. You might not immediately love the name, but I think it will grow on you, as it has grown on us. We are pleased that our product now has a name that we can share with the world, and hope that you will spread the word: Steinberg’s new scoring application will be called Dorico.
Congratulations, Daniel!
BTW: Wasn’t there a famous composer who came from Finland?
Just can’t seem to remember the name β¦ π
Viva Dorico! A couple years ago I joked that the product should be named “Crotchets ‘N’ Quavers”. I was suggesting a joke on my own countrymen. This name would be totally inscrutable to anybody in the USA, my home, since we name note values using numerical fractions and not Latin-derived descriptive nouns like the rest of the world. In the USA, we’re contrary about everything, as it is only in the USA that we cling to the otherwise-abandoned British Imperial measurement system of pounds and ounces and inches and feet, while the rest of the world has gone metric. We also require anything printed, especially sheet music, on our own unique sizes of paper, which are different than those used everywhere else in the world. It was an irritation to us that Sibelius always presented a blank score in the default paper layout size of A4, which is unknown and unobtainable in the USA. Well, let us bring music engraving into the 21st century! Forth Dorico!
We call the English measurements “Freedom Units” π Anyway, Congratulations on the announcement. I’m loving working in Sibelius for now and look forward to using Dorico as soon as possible. I’m betting it will better integrate the VST instruments than the others have so far. Thanks. Dave
Will Dorico integrate Note Performer By Wallander Instruments too?
@Oliver: At the moment, NotePerformer can only be used with Sibelius. Please use your browser’s find feature and type “NotePerformer” in and you’ll find some other discussion among the comments on this post.
I’m looking forward to being able to switch to Dorico from what I’ve seen but integration of NotePerformer is going to be a must, as is a “soundset” (using Sibelius terminology) for VSL or some other way of making it easy to integrate a standard library like this. I do hope that things like this will be in place while you still have a crossgrade from Sibelius — I can fully understand that they may not be ready at launch!
I do hope so. All I can see is a very large price tag. Personally I dont care too much if I can use this or that font, or if the quavers go down or up, what I care about is proper integration with Cubase. I find tghe current score in Cubase not bad at all really if old in the tooth.
Will it integrate well with expression maps? Does it work with a variety of different articulations in different orchestral packages and make it easy to select sounds on the fly? Can you adjust the length of a staccato note and still have it show as staccato? Will you be able to see a score line in the other editors or the project view??
Unfortunately I see little to support the idea that it is properly integrated . I hope I am wrong, to me it just looks like Sibelius again.
Oh I think we British can claim the high ground for muddle-headedness in our metric/imperial measurements. We steadfastly buy petrol (gas!) in litres but quote (and can more readily understand) fuel consumption in Miles per Gallon! And as an older hand(!) I still better relate to feet and inches when estimating size, and metres are sort of inflated yards as far as I’m concerned – I’m only surprised we don’t still use Cubits, though we do use “hands” for measuring horses, (a unit of 4 inches!!!).
While living outside the USA I tried to coin the term “Kilometerage” instead of “Mileage”. Sadly, no one bought it.
Hi and congratulations! From France!
And the fact i’m french is important I believe… π
Because, a few years ago, Steinberg was naming his first software Cubit, isn’t it?
And pronounced in french, it was just a bad joke, it literrally means in english : ” ass-dick” !
So it becomes Cubase…
The problem with Dorico is not so hard, but… it’s not good too in french, absolutely.
Because it’s thinking about “mauricaud” ( pronounced: morico ).
It’s an old name for…the arabs.
Or thinking about “bourricot”, french name for the donkey in…Algeria!
So, we are in a modern world, and i hope your name will be accepted without problem.
But in french… it’s like a joke, believe me.
So i can’t wait to discover your work, thanks a lot.
Would be nice if there was a lite version as for Cubase/Wavelab. I am sure that is on the horizon but for business reasons they can’t tell us this? Also looking at it, a lot of the technology I already own such as Halion and all the effects so I believe, as a registered Cubase Pro owner, I should be entitled to a special discount for a download version. Don’t you agree with all this? I have been a loyal Steinberg customer for many years.
(y)
Yes. It would be awesome if there were a discount for Cubase users!
Finnland?
I can’t seem to find any system requirements on Steinberg’s Dorico page.
Could you provide them please?
@Gerhard: System requirements are provisional at this stage but we expect to support Windows 10, Mac OS X 10.11 (or whatever the current version is by the time the release rolls around), 64-bit only; you’ll need at least 4GB RAM, and I would recommend 8GB or more; and the storage requirements are likely to be around 12GB. An ASIO-compatible audio interface is recommended, and an Internet connection will be required for product activation.
So I need new hardware.
Can you tell a bit about the crossgrade options?
I stayed with Sibelius 6 back in the days, will this version be eligible?
And can I still use Sib 6 when I have crossgraded, this bridging the time until Dorico and my new machine ships?
@Gerhard: We are still working out the details of the crossgrade, but any professional/retail or educational/academic license for the full Sibelius or Finale product, any version, should be eligible. You won’t need to surrender your existing software, and you’ll be free to continue using it, upgrading it, or doing whatever else you would otherwise do with it, after buying the Dorico crossgrade, should you choose to do so.
Oh. I. will. choose. to. do. so! π
Daniel, can Dorico (yes, good name) open Sibelius files?
@thh1859: No, it can’t. Please see the FAQ for more information.
Hi Daniel I am a Sibelius user and I want to change to Dorico but 299 is a big price tag for crossgrading. I would happily pay $199 for Dorico + an iPad Pro version and full cubase integration. Everybody will go for it if you offer that.
@Martin: Thanks for your feedback. We feel that the pricing we have set for Dorico is a fair reflection of the value that you will receive if you choose to buy. Ultimately every purchaser will need to decide whether Dorico is worth the price that we are asking for it. When it is generally available you will be able to download a 30-day trial version to make an informed decision.
Oh These are good news. I thought that I would have to give up Sibelius after crossgrading to Dorico.
Excellent and very exiting, really looking forward to the release. According to Gerhards question – will there be a need of some kind of key, iLok or the eLicenser? And on how many computers can you use the license?
@Anders: Dorico will use the soft-eLicenser, so you will not need a USB-eLicenser, or dongle as it’s often known. At the moment I am not sure how many computers the license will be valid for (except to say that it will be at least one!). I will provide an update on this once I know for sure.
To provide an update on this issue: our Director of Product Planning, Clyde Sendke, tells me that all of our existing soft-eLicenser products are limited to activation on a single computer only. As things stand today, if you need to run Dorico on more than one computer, you would need to move your soft-eLicenser onto a hardware USB-eLicenser (which can be done via the eLicenser Control Centre application), which then allows you to run Dorico on any computer to which your hardware USB-eLicenser is connected.
Really not happy to read this single-computer restriction. That’s a very backwards-looking way of licensing software, and I refuse to use a hardware key. As excited as I am about this software, the license restrictions might be a dealbreaker for me.
@Dave: I hear you. Realistically we cannot publish Dorico without using some form of license protection, unfortunately. We will continue to discuss this issue internally and I will provide an update if there is anything new to report.
As someone who regularly moves between my office iMac and home Macbook Pro (ie pretty much every day at busy times), dragging a hardware USB e-Licenser back and forth with me, or de-activating and re-activing software licenses, sounds a right royal pain in the posterior….
@William: Your feedback is noted. We don’t want choice of licensing technology to be a barrier to people choosing Dorico. We will discuss what possible avenues we might have, if any, aside from recommending the use of the USB-eLicenser.
As a Cubase user I don’t mind having to use a USB dongle to store my license. It’s pretty easy for me. Having the choice between soft licensing and USB copy protection is a good point to me.
That’s one reason a lot of products offer two simultaneous licences – loads of people move from work to home or from desktop to roving laptop to work, and switching licences all the time would be a pain point for a lot of users. I don’t think more than two are often needed, but that’s my anecdotal experience. Microsoft now allows five activations on their 365 offering.
Another argument against the USB Dongle is the usage of smaller machines like my Surface 3 Pro, which has only ONE USB-Slot. When I’m not at home ist more or less impossible to carry always a USB-Hub with me, especialy because I always need a powered one. Normally I use a mouse on the USB Slot…
**(except to say that it will be at least one!)**
That’s good to know. π
Hi Daniel great to see a release date. The elicencer is great news and please do all you can to allow two computer registration I work between my studio and theatre and the fact that I can work between the two with Sibelius is a great boon – unlike the VSL hardware based solution for my sample library
@Matthew: I am working on finding out whether we can come up with a solution to allow activation on two computers. No promises, but I know this is a big issue for many potential customers. I will report back in due course.
Good to hear there is ongoing consideration for 2 activations. Having my scoring app on both my Surface Pro and the main studio system is somewhat of a requirement. Looking forward to seeing Dorico in action, and congratulations on the impending release!
Please add another vote for two computer licensing for home/workplace user. I own two dongles for my two licenses for Cubase, but am sure I will only have one license for Dorico. I can’t tell you the amount of anxiety caused last year the week I couldn’t find one of the dongles as it had fallen from my pocket and into (eventually found) the back seat of my car when I had a project due. I’ve always appreciated that I can use Sibelius at home and work without a worry. Most often I have more time to work at home and I know this is common.
Hi Daniel, regarding the requirement for an internet connection for product activation: is the activation process a one-time thing or does the software periodically “check-in” with the Sternberg servers for verification? I try to leave my work machine offline as much as possible and, occasionally, I take myself away places with no internet connection. I am a little fearful of a pop-up message telling me I can’t save a project or use the program until I connect.
Also, if possible, can you give us some more details on how the “cross-grade” deal will work?
I’m really looking forward to using your software! I’m trying to keep a cool head but I’ll probably just go ahead and buy the thing as soon as it comes out!
@James: Dorico will use the soft-eLicenser, which means you don’t need a hardware USB-eLicenser but instead simply type in the provided Activation Code into the eLicenser Control Center, which then phones home to activate your computer. Once the software is activated, it won’t need to check again. Updates and patches etc. will also be provided as downloads via the MySteinberg area of the Steinberg web site, but as things stand, those could be downloaded on one computer and copied to another by way of a USB stick or similar. It’s only for the initial activation that the connection should be needed.
As for the crossgrade, we’re still working out the details, but I expect you will need to provide a valid serial number or System ID for your qualifying product, either at purchase time or before you can activate it. We’ll provide lots more details about this in good time before the release. In any case you won’t have to surrender your existing product at all, and you’ll be free to continue using it, or upgrading it, or doing whatever you would otherwise be doing with it.
Daniel, are you saying there will be no Windows 7 support? If that is the case, I suppose I’d better take Microsoft up on their nagging Windows 10 upgrade offer.
@Nickie: Dorico will not officially support Windows 7, no. It’s more than likely that it will in fact run fine on 64-bit Windows 7 once you have all the necessary updated bits and bobs from Microsoft installed, but I would definitely recommend upgrading to a newer version of Windows if your computer will accommodate it.
OK, Windows 10 it is then. Thanks!
Wow! There are a lot of people who are very keen to stick to their stable Windows 7 machines as so much musical software/hardware has not migrated to windows 10. I can’t wait for Dorico but I’m anticipating another couple of years on my windows 7 music computer.
Same as James here. My music PCs are and stay W7 for now and for a while I guess. It works great and I don’t think W10 will bring me anything better else than expecting troubles for weeks or months…
Yep, definitely reconsider official support of Win 7, please.! It’s still the recommendation of many professional audio PC builders – and Win 10 certainly won’t get anywhere _my_ PC anytime soon.
Will there be an Atari ST version?
@Tomasso: No way, man. But maybe an Amiga version…
Excellent. I have an Amiga emulator running on my Atari ST dual-bridged rig (for 256K memory advancement). It is great for live performance.
Ha! Nice! π
(I ran “Notator” on a 1040STE, back in the day…)
Counting the days! Congratulations Daniel and your team!
Yay. Congratulations, Daniel!
CONGRATULATIONS Daniel and Team, and Steinberg–GREAT job:)
A question please–since the upgrade price is noted to be “time limited” will it in any way coincide with or even come before the AVID/Sibelius subscription deadline?
Thanks so much Bob
@Bob: The crossgrade pricing will be time-limited from the time of Dorico’s release in the fourth quarter of the year. I expect it will run for at least the first three months or so after Dorico becomes available.
Thanks so much for the clarification, Daniel.
What virtual instrument sounds will there be other than classical orchestral?
@Brian: The HALion Sonic SE 2 factory library will be included; I can’t lay my hands on a detailed list of patches right at the moment, but some basic information can be found here. There are certainly a bunch of keyboards, drum sets, guitars, pop brass etc. acoustic instruments, as well as more electronic and synthesised sounds in there.
Thanks for the info about the HALion Sonic SE 2 sounds. Eventually Steinberg is going to have to commission the creation of a new sample library specifically for Dorico with audio realization for music notation in mind. In the meantime I’m a huge fan of Wallander NotePerformer, the light-weight and affordable add-on product one can purchase for use with Sibelius. I hope that Steinberg is providing sufficient “hooks” for third-party sound libraries. While we are on the subject, for years I’ve been beating a goatskin-headed drum asking for somebody to develop a notation-oriented sample library for Baroque historical musical instruments, especially including gut-string instruments, non vibrato. Well, I continue to dream about it.
Gosh, finally someone also wants non-vibrato, historical sound … also quiet positive organ for continuo, non-vibrating human voices, etc … I am absolutely behind this!
Yes! Please! And violas da gamba if not in the original sound package!
+1
I agree too for baroque π
Ok now that I know the story I can get behind the name π Very much looking forward to this release!!!
@Jennifer: That’s great to hear! I think the name will grow on you. I’m not sure anybody else here in the London team particularly liked it when I first proposed it as the codename for the project, but it seems to have grown on them all right by now.
Think I’m with them…when it looks, OK not sounds, like something more banal, like a taco, it loses value a bit. And why have you continued to reference classical antiquity? Why not Ellington? Miles? Django? π Q?! Yes, Q. Steinberg Q.
Whichever, I’m looking forward to seeing it. The facility to use it in the composition process is still important to me so I hope you’ve got chord symbol playback, multibar repetitions and rhythmic notation (ossias?) sorted.
One last question: Will there be different versions of Dorico with different features or will I get the full package when selecting the educational price?
@Gerhard: There will be no difference between the full retail version of Dorico and the product bought at the special educational price. Of course you need to qualify for educational pricing in order to buy the education version β please see here for more details.
Hi Daniel, I checked this link, but am unsure whether I can apply as a self-employed music educator or whether I have to apply through one of the schools where I work as a peri…?
@James: Ideally you would get a stamp/signature from one of the schools at which you teach and put it on the Proof of Eligibility form that you can download from the Steinberg web site here, though of course there’s no rush! You can’t order Dorico today anyway.
OK, really last one:
Will we see a printed manual?
@Gerhard: No, I’m afraid we have no plans to produce a printed manual for Dorico. Our excellent manuals team are busily working on documentation for Dorico, and we plan to make it available online. These days, I tend to search for help with applications by searching Google, so we are doing our best to make the documentation for Dorico Google-able.
Please do create a .pdf version of the manual so we can easily print it out.
Amen to that! I shudder every time I open a box of something (a printer, IKEA furniture, a food processor, a Bluray player, whatever) and inside there is a bundle of paper, which I always end up recycling, since the document is in vast majority of cases obsolete before it was even printed. Even for the pieces of physical hardware (such as items I had mentioned), it makes a lot more sense to have the manuals online, so you know it is always up to date. For software, I cannot remember when was the last time I had looked up something in the Sibelius PDF manual. Literally every time I needed an answer, I could find it much more easily by googling it using a natural speech query (i.e. “How do I copy articulation between staves?”). The top results would almost invariably be threads in Sibelus forum, where someone already asked the same question before.
Obviously, no such forum will exist on the day of the Dorico’s launch, but I have no doubt, it will quickly build up, and even with just the official manual, searching online is infinitely more efficient and faster than flipping physical dead trees…
Will there be any special support between Dorico and Halion Symphonic Orchestra (16-bit VST3 version)?
@Abraham: The plan is that Dorico will be able to automatically load as many instances of HALion Sonic SE 2 as are needed to accommodate the required HSO sounds, which it will automatically load, and things like switching between playing techniques provided by the keyswitches in the HSO patches will also be handled automatically by Dorico. Please understand, though, that playback is at a very early stage of development and it’s not yet clear exactly what shape this automatic and intelligent behaviour will take.
First: Congratulations Daniel and Team!
Btw, is it possible to become a beta tester? Can’t wait to get my hands on this software π
@Ben: We’ll post information about beta-testing as soon as we can. I have already received literally hundreds of requests to join the beta team and I’m afraid we will not be able to accommodate everybody who has expressed an interest to date. We might have to have a lottery system!
LOL! I’m afraid I added to that email pile before reading this comment! No need to respond then. I’ll wait patiently …
…ditto. gulp.
Daniel, here’s a project you can assign to someone on your team. (This would be ideal for an intern.) There is no Wikipedia article for “Valerio Dorico”. You should get somebody to log in to Wikipedia and create one. It will indirectly help to publicize your product.
Actually there is an extremely short “stub” article on Valerio Dorico in the Italian-language section of Wikipedia, but nothing in other languages. https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerio_Dorico
I wonder if Valerio Dorico has an entry in the Grove Dictionary; I don’t have access to it.
There is an entry in the New Grove Dictionary on page 576, book 5.
@Christopher: I didn’t even think to look in the New Grove Dictionary! Can you take a snap of it and send it to me? I’d love to read it and see how it matches up with Cusick’s book.
@Wheat: There’s an excellent little book on Dorico, which I had to go to the British Library to read in their music reading room. It’s by Suzanne Cusick, and it’s called Valerio Dorico: Music Printer In Sixteenth-Century Rome. Quite difficult to get hold of!
Hurray! I’m so excited!
And hurray also to not needing a hardware eLicenser… Please know that this is very much appreciated!
Will there be any interaction with Cubase? Cubase is a great product but the Score Editor doesn’t make anyone happy. So if Dorico and Cubase could work together somehow that would be fantastic…!!!
@Johan: In its initial version, Dorico is a completely independent and stand-alone application from Cubase. Over time we hope to find useful and powerful ways of bringing Dorico and Cubase closer together.
Hi Daniel, at the moment I’m really interested into buying your new product soon ^^
I live in Indonesia, so I guess there would be no retailer here; But anyway, are we able to purchase Dorico online? I’m thinking of some kind of online purchase and download.
@Nicholas: Yes, you will be able to purchase Dorico from the Steinberg online shop when it is released, and download it directly to your computer.
Will Sib files be somewhat, in some way, be useable with some work? Most important for me.
That’s what MusicXML is for.
@Steven: Only by way of MusicXML, I’m afraid. However, we have worked hard to make the default appearance of projects that start life as MusicXML files as good as we can. My advice would be to keep finished projects in your existing scoring software, and only bring across projects that are either early enough in the process that reviewing the layout, parts, etc. will not be a big problem, or finished projects that require substantial revision.
This is wonderful Daniel, congratulations and all of the best with this product. I will most certainly be an ardent supporter!! If Sibelius was anything to go by, you’ll do a fantastic job here!!! Looking forward to “working” with you and your team. Steven van der Merwe
Hi Daniel!
Great news!
– since it’s using the soft e-licenser will the initial puchase also be available as a download?
– I assume there is MIDI step time note input – will there also be real-time note input?
All the best,
;-f
@Frank: Yes, you will be able to buy Dorico as a download from the Steinberg online shop. We will very likely not have real-time input in the initial release, but it is certainly planned for the future.
Hi Daniel, congratulations, any multi seat licenses for schools?
Jesper
@Jesper: We plan to provide multi-user pricing in the same way that we do for our other products. If you ask your local distributor or reseller for a quote for multiple seats of Cubase, that kind of price will be directionally correct for a similar brand new Dorico license. We are looking into special crossgrade pricing for existing multi-seat Finale and Sibelius licenses, and more details about that will be made available closer to release.
Brilliant, thanks Daniel.
Jesper
So:-
Doh Rick-Oh..? Doh reek-o..? Dot – lose the ‘t’ you’re left with Do-Ricko/Reek-o..? Or is the ‘C’ pronounced ‘Ch’ as in chair (Italian..?)
Or easier – say the word ‘Doric’ (architectural style) and add ‘Oh’..?
Just asking… π
All the best to you Daniel and team…!
I read in an earlier thread that v1 of Dorico will focus on classical music. Will I able able to use v1 to do a traditional 5444 big band chart? Can I manually attach chord symbols etc to the piano / guitar / bass parts?
I hope so!
(will probably end up purchasing this software either way – light the fire under the competitors – win win win!)
No answer – so – there goes a bunch of enthusiasm. Meeeeeet the NEW BOSS! Saaame as the old boss.
@Dave: Sorry, there are so many comments and questions coming at me from so many directions that you’ll have to excuse me if I miss the occasional one. We absolutely plan to support big band music and jazz in Dorico. We may be missing a few crucial features in the very first version, chord symbols being chief among them, but it’s absolutely our intention to support every genre of music that is written with common Western music notation. However, software development is hard and everything takes time, particularly because we want to get it right.
Any idea on the timeframe? Weeks months or years after v1.0? Am v. excited about your product but will hold off until native support for jazz.
@Arthur: Predicting the future is hard, and generally speaking unwise. All I can say with certainty today is that we will do our very best to address the functional gaps in Dorico as fast as we possibly can. We want the program to be a viable choice for scoring musicians working across every genre, including jazz, so we will get cracking on these areas as quickly as possible.
Congratulations! I will be first in line to purchase!
Great news,looking forward for this release!
As a heavy Steinberg user,i already own Halion Sonic SE 2 & Halion Symphonic Orchestra. Any chance for a reduced price?
@S4410: I’m afraid I don’t have anything concrete to offer in response to this question. It’s something that we are discussing at Steinberg HQ.
Congratulations Daniel and the entire Dorico team. I look forward to the initial release.
I haven’t read all the posts here, so my apologies if it’s been asked and answered previously: Will there be user adjustable settings for the overall look to the palettes, panels, icon colours and the sort (similar to Cubase and Nuendo)?
@Bernie: My colleague Anthony will probably give me a jab in the ribs for this in the morning, since he’s been wrestling with the colour scheme for months now on and off, but we expect there to be a choice between the “dark” theme you have seen in the screenshots we’ve released today and in recent blog posts, and a “light” theme that uses dark text on light backgrounds.
Thanks Daniel.
Ask Anthony to be gentle π
Will there (eventually, I guess) be a “Lite” version? I re-typeset and make tweaks to songs for my SATB group, and live comfortably within the restrictions of Sibelius First, which is a fraction of the price of the full version, and a reasonable purchase for a hobbyist. I know that the casual market isn’t who you’re aimed at, but perhaps someday you can make a visit.
@Avi: Yes, I absolutely expect that there will eventually be a “lite” version of some kind; with our other professional products, whether it’s Cubase, WaveLab or HALion, we have at least one (and sometimes two) lower-cost versions that eliminate some of the higher-end features. However, for the short term we are focused on establishing Dorico as a professional application and you shouldn’t expect a “lite” version to follow especially quickly on the heels of the initial release.
Very exciting news, and congratulations to Daniel and your team!
Question about some of the features that will not be initially available. Are there plans to roll them out as free add-ons as they are developed (thinking things like chord symbols, tablature, etc.), or do you anticipate us having to wait for a full version upgrade for new features?
I know you may not have gotten that far in your planning given the focus on getting a usable version out, but those two features, in particular, are going to be a big sticking point for a lot of potential consumers. A promise that some features will be free when available might push some who are otherwise on the fence about it, particularly given that it’s a bit pricier than its competitors.
Very much looking forward to the final release! Bravo!
@Jeremy: Believe me, the fact that we do not expect to have either guitar tab or chord symbol support in the first version of Dorico is pretty painful for us as well as for our prospective customers. We know it will stop the software from being useable by a decent chunk of users, or at least for a decent chunk of the sorts of projects that our users will want to do in Dorico.
It is absolutely our plan to try to fill in some of the initial gaps as quickly as we can, and we expect to release a few free updates in the months following Dorico’s release to do just that. At this stage I cannot say exactly which features will be included in which updates as they are really not planned, but it’s clear that chord symbols is a big omission for many people, so this will receive a suitably high priority in our planning.
Yes, chord support is an important omission. But I certainly understand the desire to get the foundations in place. Moreover, as you are coming in with a completely new object model (which seems quite well conceived), I already accept there will be a learning curve. Considering I have a ~20 year investment in the Finale work flow and a much lighter investment in the Sibelius way of doing things, I look upon V1 as a non-production environment suitable for learning the new software. I do hope your pricing strategy for follow-on releases take in mind that for many of us, V1 will not be a really usable product.
Are you able to comment on a couple of other items?
1) Referring to the Rothman article, the blog specifically identifies VST3s. There are a great many VST2 products out there. will you not be supporting VST2? I understand you may not want to bridge to 32-bit VSTs, but I would have thought VST2 support is rather important. It isn’t a make or break, but certainly a question of interest.
2) The blog mentions the PLAY mode but did not offer any details other than that you can edit note lengths independent of the notation. My question is whether there has been any effort so far into realistic playback (swing timing, using MIDI controllers to contour attacks, crescendi, trills, etc.) Again, I understand this is a layer of polish that naturally would be build upon the foundation. I am just curious where you see the advanced playback stuff in the big scheme of things.
2a) Bonus question: There are at least two aspects to chord support. One is the nomenclature (with many different traditions that will want to be represented.) That is a huge can of worms as I am sure you are aware. But the other is playback. The chord playback in Finale is horrible — really only useful to turn on momentarily as an audible double-check of the chord spelling. Have you any thoughts about enabling chord playback to actually be a little more lifelike — using voicing rules that might be appropriate for a jazz pianist or guitarist — or even supporting some basic comping on the chords. I realize there has been a greater emphasis on the visual/notation aspects, but the ability to deliver halfway realistic audio files to clients is becoming mandatory. Anything the notation software can do to make this process quicker raises the value of the software.
@Craig: Thanks for your questions. Regarding VST 2-compatible plug-ins, the plan is to whitelist known good plug-ins, i.e. those that are widely used among users of other scoring software and which are generally well-behaved and don’t contribute to the kinds of instabilities that we see inside Cubase. I would expect this certainly to include Kontakt and Kontakt Player, and most likely other widely-used players like EW Play, ARIA, and possibly a few others. These plug-ins will need to be 64-bit however; if you need to run a 32-bit plug-in, you may need to use something like Vienna Ensemble Pro to arrange it.
Regarding Play mode, we’re still in the early stages of implementing the whole playback subsystem. Eventually it’s absolutely our intention to include things like swing playback and to have somewhat humanised expression, but I suspect that some of these things will follow after the initial release. There is an enormous amount still to be done in this area. As for chord symbol playback, this is again absolutely in our plans.
Thanks Daniel. I must say I think that is a very sensible set of priorities. You cannot do everything at once and expect it to go well. I’m glad to hear these disciplines are in place.
Super excited about this, and will definitely pick up the crossgrade when it’s released. I guess beta testing is pretty much off the table, though I’d certainly be interested. Couple of questions:
-Will the included HSO be a full license? I.e., will it be possible to use in Cubase as well as Dorico?
-The specs state support for VST3 instruments. Does that mean no 2.x support? I’m thinking specifically about Kontakt. Also thinking the answer is yes (no 2.x), since the notation integration is likely to be built around VST3 specific features.
@Γyvind: Yes, the included HSO will be a full license, so as far as I know it should work fine in Cubase and anywhere else you can load HALion Sonic SE 2.
Regarding VST 2.x support, we at Steinberg are really trying to push adoption of VST 3 plug-ins, as they are both more efficient and more stable; however, we know that there are some very important plug-ins that are not yet VST 3-compatible, including e.g. Kontakt. I anticipate that we will whitelist certain well-behaved VST 2 plug-ins so that they can be used with Dorico. I would hope that any of the plug-ins that are widely-used by users of existing scoring software will be able to work in Dorico, one way or another. You can find some further discussion on this topic on the new Dorico forum here.
Thank you, that’s good to know (on both counts). Seems like a great deal – and thanks for the link.
Q4 should put it at or around the ETA of Cubase 9 (certainly not expecting confirmation of this), so it looks like I’d better get my wallet ready (I’m still on Cubase 6.0, but looking to upgrade)!
Unfortunately, registration to Doric forum in its final stage is ‘nicely’ contaminated with some GFI MailArchiver(?) collecting personal date. Alas, thank you.
My only one concern about Dorico is the horror of Steinberg eLicenser (a dongle for most of Steinberg professional products and all of current Vienna Instruments): its shell is extremely fragile. This led to my decision of staying away from Cubase since 2013 when Logic Pro X was available. I hope that Steinberg and YAMAHA will consider changing the material of the shell of their eLicenser dongle to make sure it is durable enough.
P.S.: I hadn’t been using a desktop computer in the past 4 years.
@Shiki: Dorico will use the soft-eLicenser, so no hardware USB-eLicenser is needed.
I don’t refuse dongles since it at least making licenses movable. I just want the eLicenser be more durable in portable situations. Otherwise I won’t be back on using Wavelab Pro and Cubase Pro.
Still, thanks your information regarding the availability of soft-elicenser with Dorico. I am looking forward to this great innovative app of miracle.
P.S.: Here come some of my ideas, not mean to you personally, not mean to your Dorico team, but mean to the entire marketing department of Steinberg.
[1] Is the marketing department of Steinberg still refusing to think of selling licenses on STEAM after losing their market on STEAM from Cakewalk for already two years behind? // Any annoying special offer notification of STEAM could be disabled through its preferences, coping with people’s concerns of this.
[2] Another approach: Just put the license on users’ MySteinberg Accounts; Offering the software download on both the Mac App Store and standalone download. When people want to use it, just log in with their MySteinberg Accounts and they don’t need to let the computer on the internet for the next 7 days. After the 7 days, they need to log in again for the next 7 days of offline usage.
This second approach would seem to be perfect to me – install the software wherever you like, but you can only use it when you’ve verified the account on that machine in the last week. Then my disconnected laptop can be used on the move and I can seamlessly move to desktop machines at work and home. Your marketing team may disagree, though…
It occurred to me that Finale has lack of convenient support of Roman Numerals; Meanwhile, Sibelius supports Roman Numerals but still limited to the style used in North American traditional music education without support of inversions of V9 dominant chords.
I am wondering whether Dorico would offer stronger support of Roman Numerals, including the style used in Japan (EXACTLY the one used among Yuzuru Shimaoka’s tonal harmony textbooks, e.g. ISBN: 978-4276102194 and 978-4276102330).
P.S.: Note that Yuzuru Shimaoka is the president of The Society For Music Theory Of Japan. Probably it’s him who made the Japanese style of Roman Numerals. From my perspective, it’s much more efficient when demonstrating rootless dominants.
I am sorry I left the apply to the wrong thread.
It’s too bad that software vendors need to verify licenses, but I completely understand the need. And I don’t really object strongly to hardware dongles. But I’ll echo the original complaint: the current Steinberg dongle is junk. A few months ago I accidentally dropped one on the floor from less than three feet. It split open and one half of the case broke. Luckily, it still worked after being taped back together, so ordered a new one and transferred several thousands of dollars worth of licenses. There is no reason the dongle couldn’t be half the size and much more durable.
Extremely excited to see a release announcement! Congratulations!
I’m curious; in the last little “teaser” screenshot, there’s a piano-scroll representation, and I’m wondering if this might make some basic MIDI tweaking possible? I’m assuming it won’t be anything like in Cubase (though, given the UI, I wouldn’t rule it out in future), but perhaps it would offer a place to set more detailed VST expressions?
@James: Yes, the idea is that some MIDI tweaking will indeed be possible in Play mode. We have basic piano roll editor, and simple automation controls in there. At the moment they’re not actually wired up to the audio engine, but the plan is that they will be. The idea is that you should be able to make adjustments to the onset and length (and indeed velocity/volume) of notes via the piano roll editor without affecting the notation in Write and Engrave modes.
Fantastic! I’m guessing, since this is the Cubase engine, further functionality won’t be a particularly tall order. Which will no doubt be an advantage down the road! π
Congratulation Daniel and team for this great achievement, no doubt I will order a copy.
I have to say that I am not impressed by the name “Dorico”….pretty banal and to me it doesn’t bring to mind anything related to music notation. I will have to rebaptize my copy to something else:-D)
One more thing to ask: Does Dorico support VST3 only?
If not, this may lead to problems since some virtual instruments and plugins are only having their VST versions in VST2 format. I know we could use Vienna Ensemble Pro to bypass this problem, but only Windows version of Vienna Ensemble Pro supports VST2.
@Shiki: Please see this thread on the Dorico forum for more discussion of the VST 3 vs. VST 2 issue.
Thanks for your information. The sacrifice of VST2 is worthy since the stability is of vital importance.
If I can just add a +1 to the other suggestions here re flexibility of licencing. For those of us who commute and work on more than one machine – not simultaneously – having to worry about checking out a licence or whatever will be a big disincentive to using Dorico. The way it works on other competitors, with X simultaneous installations per licence, is much more reasonable.
Fantastico!!!
The count-down has begun! I cannot wait… this is the most exciting software of the decade!
Certainly, since you’re listening to feedback in this matter, the “one” computer license is a complete deal breaker for me too. For several years now I’ve been doing 50%, or more, of my work on a tablet and only sitting down at the desktop to finish/polish work. I think this is becoming the norm and it will definitely become more and more common for people as tablets get bigger, better and lighter.
So please, please Daniel! Make the people at Steinberg see that it is a professional necessity to have the software on more than one machine in this era.
And congratulations!
Same here – only one computer with e- licenser or physical dongle is a complete deal breaker for me – I change permanently between desktop and laptop and don’t want to mess with a dongle……..
Whoa! Wait a second. As much as I’m in no way enamoured with hardware keys, they are NOT offering a single-computer license. Put your license on a key, and it will run on virtually ANY computer. Sure, the nightmarish alert that you haven’t plugged in your key is incredibly irritating (and if you’ve forgotten it, mind-bendingly infuriating), but it does remind you how flexible the key actually is (wrt computer hardware).
But yes, I agree that more than one machine is pretty essential. My point is simply that the hardware key enables that.
Two things, Daniel:
1. Are there any plans to somehow support Cubase Note Expression via some sort of import/export? Since Dorico is -player- based, it seems -obvious- to me that Cubase’s Note Expression is a perfect match for divisis which, as you know, are rubbish in almost all sequencers and sample libs.
My -dream- has always been to be able to have notation that would be playable by the DAW like REAL PLAYERS… eg. a single staff for 1st vlns that magically divides parts according to the -notation- rather than the current deal where one uses separate tracks as needed. Cubase has Note Expression. You have Players. You just need to convince a sample lib maker (or SB) to complete the puzzle.
2. Any chance you’ll be supporting or competing with StaffPad for Surface Pro? I wrote you about this last year. Surface Pro and StaffPad are -amazing-. But there is obviously a LOT of room for improvement. It’s sooooo liberating to be able to actually WRITE MUSIC on a Surface Pro. I know the marketshare is about zero, but if you haven’t tried StaffPad I urge you to do so. Dorico on Surface Pro could rule the world.
Congratulations.
@JC: We will be using HALion for playback, so it’s definitely possible that we will be able to support VST Note Expression, though at this stage I’m not certain whether or not that will be included in the first release.
Regarding StaffPad, we love David and the team at StaffPad and think it’s an amazing product. Handwriting input is a whole other R&D project in its own right. We aren’t working on this directly, but we are certainly in close contact with StaffPad and hope that we will be able to build some kind of integration between our applications when the time is right for both of us. (For us, at least, the time isn’t right just yet!)
Thanks for your thoughtul reply. As you can tell, my big beef with DAWs and notation is that they have traditionally forced one to -not- write like good ol’ pen and paper. If you can address both my issues it would (for -me-) be a game-changer. Best.
Thanks Daniel, and congratulations. I thought both the articles you linked to on twitter were excellent.
Thoughts… 1) While not an issue for me, I suspect the e-licenser one machine aspect may well dominate a lot of discussion; it’s just a suggestion but it might be good to nip this one in the bud early on. 2) I was surprised to see that chords haven’t made it into the first release. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is disappointing. I assumed it was one of the easier aspects but I suppose automatically defining chords (which personally I don’t trust and never use) adds significantly to the complexity. 3) The shot of the piano roll playback function teases more than informs, can we have a bit more info on this at some point?
Great name btw. Classical architecture not chips…
@David: I will certainly share more information about what will be possible in Play mode once a little bit more is implemented and we have a good feel for what the level of functionality will be in the first version.
My jaw (then my heart) sank to the ground when I saw this will require a hardware dongle for use on more than one machine β a fragile dongle at that, meaning the user has to buy not one but TWO dongles to ensure access to this critical piece of sw during travel.
This licensing decision will inherently be a dealbreaker for some users. But even more importantly, it will become an obvious talking point against Dorico for many more, because it places Dorico in last place for convenience after Sibelius & Finale.
It’s critical for Steinberg to re-evaluate this decision.
@June: Thanks for the feedback. We will certainly continue to think about this and I will let you know if the situation changes. We don’t want licensing to be an obstacle to people being able to choose to use Dorico.
Let me add my voice to those who are unhappy with the proposed licensing. This would certainly be a major obstacle for me. Having the program on two machines for non simultaneous use (similar to that other program) is mandatory.
Hello Daniel
Good News!
I’m using Finale for years and on the forum of MM it will be discuss, that you never show the possibility to add chord symbols. They doubt that Doprico is able to do this. This I can’t belive. Can you add a printscreen to show, how the chord symboly look like?
Cheers, Padruot
@Padruot: At the moment, chord symbols are not yet implemented in Dorico. At this stage it’s pretty unlikely that they will be included in the first release, though obviously we are well aware that this will make the software a lot less useful for some people. We will add chord symbols just as soon as we can, but our commitment is to adding things only when we can do them properly. We don’t want Dorico to include half-baked features.
Thank you, Daniel. In this case Dorico will be at the moment for me more or less useless, but I will see what you will do in the future.
I use Cubase for years for my compositions and Finale for my notations. I need the chord symbols more or less every time.
I hope that Dorico will open Cubase projects like the new Wavelab can do and inversely.
If your new product have ones playable chord symbols maybe I will swith one day to Dorico. We will see.
Cheers, Padruot
Count me as another potential customer who strongly dislikes a hardware dongle.
Other software developers offer two soft-licenses, so I hope Steinberg changes their mind on this.
Hi,
First of all, congratulations – I am looking forward to purchasing and using this new product.
But…Dorico?!?!?! Come on guys, I want your product to be successful if the quality is as good as anticipated – the market’s in great need of another strong competitor. But…Dorico?!?!? – this name will make it more difficult for you to succeed, for sure. It sounds like you’re trying to make the job difficult for your marketing and sales people.
I would HIGHLY suggest not falling into the “We’re comfortable with this name because we’ve been using it in the office for so long” mentality when naming a product you’re going to be introducing to the marketplace. “Dorico” might as well be spelled “Doom” from a communication perspective – if I saw this on a listing I would think it was some obscure Italian electronic music VST plugin, NOT notation software. And if I heard it was notation software the name would not compel me to look into it and definitely would not generate any interest in me whatsoever.
Dorico (as a name) = epic fail. Regardless of how good the product is. Unless it is an obscure Italian VST electronic music plugin. Even then, it’s not that great of a name. This could definitely turn into a lesson in the failure that occurs when you choose comfort and your personal feelings over excellence and more objective reasoning.
I don’t know what list you had going on there, but as a customer that wants to see your product succeed and enter the marketplace on a strong footing, I STRONGLY suggest you re-evaluate this name before the Q4 2016 release. Do a test group with a set of names and see how well “Dorico” scores for a music notation software.
My score: -5.
Considering how sharp the software looks, the name is a complete disappointment to a future customer who wants to see it succeed, and will only make it less likely you will find success in the market that will bring you the funding you require to continue to improve your project.
@James: Thanks for the feedback. On the whole I think people have responded pretty positively to the name. At this stage, with the name properly trademarked around the world, we’d not be able to change it at this stage even if we wanted to β which we don’t.
I for one find Dorico a WONDERFUL name!
And not only because I’m Italian.
Dorico is an old musical modus, and (as proper name) is the name of an ancient music engraver.
A WONDERFUL name, Daniel! BRAVO in this respect too!
Francesco
Total agreement! We’ll all get used to the name and love it!
“Weβll all get used to the name” … you just made my point.
“And not only because Iβm Italian.” … uhhhh, sure. This nor the naming of the product after an obscure engraver isn’t inspiring me to change my assessment. I’m glad you like it, though. It very well may sell better with Italians.
* “is inspiring” *
You are likely to get a swath of the public calling your product “Dork-O” in good time.
@Tomasso: I will try to rise above petty name-calling, and I hope that you will too.
Of course, I joke. i shall not call this magnificent, long-laboured piece of software anything such as Dork. But if someone has one too many crashes on a Tuesday, they may shout, “Ah, Dork-o!” and you may hear the reverberations all the way in your offices.
Yeah I read “Dork-o” every time I see it.
I can understand now that it’s trademarked, but I still think it’s worth it to reconsider (I understand you do not agree). Of course people respond positively to you re: the name – that doesn’t surprise me at all. I don’t think the feedback you are getting is representative of the general intended audience/market, necessarily – the whole process to determine it in the first place and the feedback you are getting seems very likely to be echo-chamber-esque to me. Most people already interested/excited in/about the product and involved with it will bend to like the name and support you, but the marketplace doesn’t bend so easily or support so kindly:
The last two times I’ve attempted to comeback to this blog by the name I couldn’t even remember it (was it “donico”…no, it had something to do with dorian mode…was it “dorica”? no…”doria”? no… (even if it were simply “Dorian” I would have remembered it)), and I’m you’re target audience (composer, producer, spender). You’re making it difficult for me to even find/remember your product, let alone buy it. So I doubt any focus group research was done on this one and am surprised marketing gave it the green light, but I’m sure it will play out moderately okay because you have a somewhat specialized audience to begin with.
It could be a sinker, though, to be honest – it really does sound like an obscure Italian VST and it may be an uphill battle to hook the greater moneys as a result. As obvious and un-inventive a name like “Stravinsky” would be, for example (this is definitely NOT a suggestion, just an example), names like this can earn you double or triple with some groups, sometimes making it worth a rights agreement in the long run (if it’s even necessary, which it may be for that one, but it’s just one example of the many non-“Dorico” names that could have been successes). You’re throwing that money out the window for a name that became comfortable in the office…imo that’s a really bad business move, but it’s your move to make.
Thanks for taking the time to read the feedback and respond. I wish you all the best with the release and look forward to using the software! If I can remember the name of it!
Yeah, and then I read this below:
” Iβm not sure anybody else here in the London team particularly liked it when I first proposed it as the codename for the project. ”
You’re getting red flags all over the place with this one, man…wake up. If you don’t pivot the next red flags you see may be coming from the marketplace and the sales department. How many years do you or Steinberg have for the market to “warm up” to the name you are pushing?
You’ll always find the odd individuals like some here who are into the obscurity of the name and validate it (and their own perceived intelligence) by showing off their understanding of it, or those who support it, but unless they each buy five hundred copies of your software…
I’m playing the tough hand on this one because I want to see a third-offering effort on notation like yours succeed. If I were your manager I would have no problem giving you the money to trademark a new name that has actual market sensibility behind it. But presumably this is the same chap that approved it in the first place?….
Again, best of luck!
I think Dorico as a name will do fine. If you want a product to stand out of the mass, you need a meaningful, unique name IMO.
“Dorico” is perfect for that – it’s not just a 0815 software name like “NoteWriter” or something like that…
And it’s really not that hard to remember… At least I remembered it immediately after reading it the first time π
I think it’s a good name! It rolls off the tongue quite well. Daniel, I don’t think you need to worry!
Congratulations on being close to releasing the software. I know from Sibelius how hard it is to get the first version out. I hope it is a real success, and helps to give a secure future for composers and arrangers.
@Simon: Thank you very much! (For those who might not know, Simon was one of the original developers of the Windows version of Sibelius, working alongside Jonathan Finn, and Simon is both the inventor of the Scorch web browser plug-in and the ManuScript language in Sibelius.)
Without chord symbols, Dorico will be useless to me – my genre is jazz.
I’ll consider buying in at the beginning to take advantage of the crossgrade discount, but that might be a false economy if chord symbols don’t appear until a paid upgrade. Can you say anything about this, Daniel?
Or maybe I’m just not the in target audience.
(FWIW, i’m not particularly fond of the name Dorico, but I ultimately don’t care what an app is named.)
@Bob: It is certainly our intention to add chord symbols support during the lifecycle of Dorico 1.x, which means that anybody who buys Dorico at the beginning would get chord symbols without having to pay any more for that feature. Please be aware that software development is difficult, and things can change, but this is the plan.
Got it! Thanks for the update.
Looking forward to seeing how this unfolds….
As to the splendid name ‘Dorico’ I particularly like the fact that the Italian word translates as ‘Dorian’, and as any musicological wordsmith will confirm, the Dorian mode (equivalent, of course, to the white piano keys played sequentially from D to D) is the melodic lingua franca of a high proportion of mediΓ¦val music near one end of the musicological spectrum and jazz near the other.
(In other words, David Tee, the name’s pedigree is closely linked with classical musicology, rather than merely classical architecture.)
How serendipitous that Valerio Domenico’s family name coincides with the name of this most useful and perhaps most widely used of all the old so-called church modes! I find it impossible to imagine a better outcome.
Hi Daniel & team, congrats!
For a long while I believed that the new monster would be named Delius to keep the link both to UK and to SIbelius.
And you are right about unpleasant connotation of mark or models. I think of the car/van “Pajero” in Spanish-speaking countries…
Petrucci: funny: I think of the music library rather than on Finale’s font. Too good reasons to honour another engraver.
As for “Dorico”, in Spanish is the name of the Dorian mode (well, with diacritic, dΓ³rico), so we are in the musical world anyway.
Take note of the possible connotations in French, as steflor suggests. But if I know you, you are doing it already.
Very exciting news, Daniel. I am pleased at the “crossgrade” option for Sibelius users. This is the first time I have encountered this term (I’m a bit of a dinosaur, as you know), but I assume it means you pay a lower price because it is treated almost like an “upgrade” of the existing product – is that right?
@James: That’s right. You basically qualify for a lower price to buy a new license of Dorico if you have a professional or academic license for a full version (not one of the cut-down versions) of Sibelius or Finale, as a kind of inducement to try Dorico out and hopefully find that you prefer to use it for your future work.
My 2 o 3 cents about the “e-key licenser” discussion:
Did you consider a fingerprint-based system? It could work in several aparats without problems, as long as the fingerprints are the same.
Juan MarΓa
Hi Daniel, congrats to reach this milesstone!
I’m really looking forward to try your baby. For me as a pro musican and also a pro Software developer – it’s very cool to see your babe growing.
That’s the news we’ve all been waiting for – thank you, thank you! Pricing looks very reasonable, too. I started my music engraving career with a modified typewriter and Rotring pens (which teach you all about spacing and accuracy), followed by HB Engraver, Nightingale, a very short flirtation with Finale and then Sibelius, versions for Acorn, then PC then Mac. Now Dorico. This will be the last program I buy, and while each step along the way has been an exciting discovery, I know from all that’s been written so far this will be IT, and the future of music engraving has finally arrived. Bravo Daniel and all at Steinberg – roll on the Release.
Hi daniel
Where are you with lyrics?
I dont think this has been discussed above and none of the screenshots on philips blog include any either.
I noticed your comment that you still hadnt finalised what features will be included.
Thanks
@Fraser: We are working on lyrics right now, and they’re looking great. Once we are a bit further along with their implementation, I will share some details in a future blog post.
Looking forward to it
Thanks
Will there be a videoplayer as well. Nice to have the video there as well, when composing ?
@Helge: We will not have direct support for composing to video in the first release of Dorico, but we absolutely plan to add it in a future version.
Wonderful and much anticipated news. What a magnificent turn around from the sad news when you folks got sacked by Avid some 3 1/2 years ago.
I have a weird feeling that what they did is now going to fully backfire on them, the law of Karma π
Looking forward to the release near Christmas 2016.
Congratulations !!
Great news – and perfect timing since today was the day I was going to decide (or not) to start paying the new annual fee for Sibelius 8, in time for their June deadline.
Will Dorico have the same kind of integration with Vienna Symphonic Library instruments as Sibelius does via its sound sets and house styles?
@Mike: Dorico won’t have sound sets quite like Sibelius, but we expect it to be compatible with VST Expression Maps, which perform a similar job in Cubase. Either way, you will eventually be able to set up switches for the various playing techniques that trigger the correct cells in your VSL matrixes, and control that pretty directly within Dorico’s Play mode.
One problem with the VST expression maps is that they do not handle the number of articulations in the typical VSL Matrix. I hope Steinberg will finally correct this!
eh… eventually? Does that mean NOT in Version 1?
Not necessarily, Frank. Playback is in its earliest stages right now, so I can’t give guarantees about what will and won’t be included in the first version. But obviously the plan is that you will be able to trigger different playing techniques in VSL and other libraries right from the off.
Hi Daniel
Great news about the new software release. Will you not be supporting a Windows 7? I know this is being replaced but my main music computer is still on Windows 7 and I was not planning to update for a while. If you have a complex set-up like mine some of the necessary drivers may not be available in W10. On chord symbols could you not allow people simply to place text in appropriate places until proper chord symbols are in released for the software?
Regards
Tony
@Tony: Dorico won’t be officially supported on Windows 7, but if you’re running the 64-bit version with all of the updates applied, provided we can find a way to include the necessary Microsoft redistributables for the latest version of their C++ compiler, it ought to be possible to run on Windows 7. However, I would definitely recommend updating to a newer version of Windows if possible.
Regarding text standing in for chord symbols until we have the proper feature implemented, I would of course hope that this will be possible, but as yet we don’t really have arbitrary text-attached-to-music support β that is definitely planned before the first release, though.
Can’t wait to see more about Dorico!
How easy will it be to place text relative to page margins/centers? That’s a real pain in Sibelius, where text always is related to the musical content.
@Wim: It will be very easy to place text in page-relative positions, simply by creating text frames, which are always defined in relationship to the page on which they are found, and not to the music. I will go into the page layout features of Dorico in more detail in a future blog post.
Will it include ReWire and if not, will ReWire be included in future updates or upgrades? That is very important to me.
@Differencetone: No ReWire in the first version, I’m afraid, but it’s definitely something we’re strongly considering for future versions.
Daniel
Unless I have missed it in previous blogs, I have not picked up on reference to Garritan sounds, Sibelius Sounds and the Aria player – will these all still be compatible?
Can’t wait, otherwise.
John
p.s. quite like the “Delius” idea, or Elgar or….
@John: You certainly won’t be able to use your Sibelius Sounds libraries in Dorico, I’m afraid; they are locked to use with Sibelius. I would hope you will be able to use ARIA-based libraries in Dorico, but I can’t at the moment find out definitively whether ARIA is VST 3 or VST 2. I will chase this up with the people at Plogue to find out.
Congratulations to you and your team. I am very much looking forward to getting Dorico. As a professional Sibelius user (since version 1.3 – 16 years ago!) I understand there maybe a discount which I am really grateful for. I have alos started using Cubase so I would be very interested to see if/how the programs might work together?
Eagerly awaiting a copy.
Daniel, am I right in assuming there will be a free trial download available of the full Dorico product that will allow the user to save scores until the allotted trial time is over?
@Nome: Yes, you’re correct. The trial version will be available either at the same time or very shortly after the product is available for sale in the fourth quarter of 2016.
Bravo Daniel and Dorico! Can’t wait to get my little Windows 7/ Sibelius 6 hands on the new app! Any idea on the pricing of the Version 1?
@Nome: Pricing is shown on the main Dorico product page on the Steinberg web site, right at the bottom.
Congratulations, Daniel!
It was great to see you in Helsinki and to be on your wonderful presentation.
Cannot wait to try out Dorico on my own PC.
Daniel, can you post some screenshots with good resolution?
On the little screenshots on the Steinberg I’m not able to see a lot of details. Maybee you can insert a link on the little fotos to open a new window with good resolution screenshots.
Great news!!!
Can’t wait!!!
I’ve a question (sorry if you have already answered…..)….
It will be possible to manage the sound and the articulation’s changes “a la Sibelius Sound Set”?….
Thanks!
@Luigi: Check out this thread for a bit more information on this point.
Ah, some exciting hinting going on in there! Giving some decent tools to those of us who are a little more geeked about playback quality would literally be a game-changer in the field. Often times I find that it’s more a matter of trying to “fix” some really annoying note/performance issue, rather than necessarily trying to get the perfect, nuanced performance (that’s what human players do!). But the power to tame those massive distractorsβnotes that obnoxiously blurt out, or whatever the problem isβwould be brilliant.
Just a suggestion… If you can’t get them to agree to a two machine non-concurrent soft license, it might be plausible to simply offer one soft machine and a usb license. While not the ideal, it might open up some choices. Β―\_(γ)_/Β―
I am excited to see this software in a way I haven’t been since I got started with your product in 2002. So glad Steinberg has made this a reality!
I like your idea. One can have a hardware licence on the workstation together with Cubase etc., and a software licence on a laptop for elsewhere.
MacBook plus iMac here too. The idea of having to use a hardware dongle really makes my stomach sink to the floor, especially after having held out buying a competing product while dealing with MuseScore for so long waiting for this application (doesn’t help that I’m reading about these restrictions shortly after seeing what sort of price I’ll pay for that decision, uhg!).
If Adobe can trust their entire product line to an activation system that allows two activations and occasionally phones home (with a grace period in case your internet is legitimately unavailable), then it’s hard to believe the need to be any more restrictive.
What happens when Apple inevitably releases a MBP without bulky USB ports? I’m looking forward to that, but suddenly I’d be unable to use this dorky licenser on multiple machines?
Hi Daniel. What’s the GUI like to use so far? I’m scared it’s going to be another one of those Steinberg “why is every button one pixel” interfaces.
Oh, sorry to hijack, but this reminded me about the particular problem with scrolling I have in Cubase! @Daniel: Is scrolling in Dorico smooth when using gestures on the Mac? That’s the functionality that’s kind of terrible in Cubase. Scrolling with the scrollbars is smooth, but two-finger scrolling works in discrete jumps, and is way too sensitive. It probably seems minor, but it honestly drove me back to Logic from Cubase 8.5 recentlyβbeing constantly disorientated while working is just too much cognitive friction for me… Obviously, the advantages of Dorico have already lured me away from the competition, but I’m really hoping gesture-based scrolling on the Mac can be made to work smoothly/continuously.
@oggyb: You can see a few higher-resolution screenshots on Philip Rothman’s write-up at the Sibelius blog.
Congratulations!!!
I know you mentioned the system requirements already and for Mac it’s 10.11.
Is there any information about running on OSX 10.10?
@Frank: I believe some of the team here are still running OS X 10.10, and Dorico is running OK on that platform. However, we can’t give actual system requirements information until the product is ready.
Daniel –
What arrangements will Dorico have for tech support? Sibelius support was excellent under your leadership, but in my experience Steinberg support leaves a lot to be desired. For example: on 24 April I emailed about a broken eLicenser, got an autoreply that said everyone was away at a trade exhibition, and finally got a reply on 11 May. Please tell us Dorico will be different!
@Mike: We plan to add at least one additional specialist person to our support team in Hamburg to help provide support for Dorico. I will also do my best to provide timely assistance with issues of using the application at the Dorico forum. I know that our support team deal with a huge number of cases every month, many of them to do with the eLicenser. I’m sure that they are always striving to improve their responsiveness.
Great news! Q4 starts in 135 days! As a long time Sibelius user i wonder if we have to learn everything from scratch or will there be similar approaches, that keeps the learning curve moderate?
@Juerg: I hope you will find Dorico clear, logical and easy to learn, but we have not in any way consciously tried to retain patterns or idioms from Sibelius. We have designed Dorico from the ground-up to fit our vision for the ideal tool for working with music notation.
Years of blood, sweat and tears, find this scribe happy with the current score editor in Cubase. We can only hope that Dorico will play as nicely with Cubase in the future… For those of us that have embraced expression maps, percussion maps and note expression for the countless sample libraries, we hope for some continuity.
Great work Daniel.
Jeff Maus
Absolutely MUST have a first rate Manual – that aspect of it needs as much care, attention and Beta-testing as the software itself IMO. if you can’t easily and quickly get to grips with how it works, it doesn’t matter how good everything else is.
I hope too that the Manual will be sprinkled with a few dry and witty throw-away one liners – like the Manual for that other program. They make it so much more fun when struggling with an otherwise tricky problem.
Philip Jones
@Philip: Steinberg manuals are not famous for their wit and humour, but hopefully you will nevertheless find the documentation useful. You will be spared my terrible jokes and puns in the manual, but you will not be spared them here or on the forum, I’m afraid.
I have four questions, which may have already been explained but escaped my eyes.
1. How to scan to Dorico? Will the PhotoScore work with Dorico?
2. Lute tablature, in all its varieties. I realize that this is not the most important need from the commercial point of view of the first version, but what’s your policy about it. Sibelius in this respect is far from ideal, but you could do something through patience and creativity. So how is the lute tablature and its representation in the traditional notation in Dorico?
3. There are some other notational subtleties of historical music notation like clefs on different lines, incipits before the score’s first measure, basso continuo notation, ornamentation signs (a lots!), etc.
4. Guitar notation. I mean classical guitar notation! Strangely, Sibelius does not consider this one instrument as a transposing instrument and from this misunderstanding comes a series of several others while manipulating with the score. Besides, placing a dense polyphonic texture on one stave of guitar music is harder then writing it carefully by hand. I hope it’s solved in Dorico.
Best regards and I look forward to v.1. Dorico.
@Jerzy: You will be able to import music from PhotoScore or SmartScore by way of MusicXML. Lute tablature will not be included in the first version of Dorico, but we plan to include it as part of more general tablature support for guitars and other instruments. At the moment, we do not have a specific focus on medieval music, but I hope that as the application matures, if there is sufficient demand from our users for these kinds of historical notations, we may be able to add them. I would hope that you will find regular staff notation for classical guitar relatively easy to put together in Dorico. Certainly we handle multiple voices on a single stave much more elegantly than other scoring programs. We are missing things like fingerings and string indications at this stage, but I hope we will be able to add these soon.
And I thought becoming a great product developer didn’t require studying history or English… ; )
Daniel, perhaps it is already obvious to everyone but me, but are there any plans for eventually including within the interface the ability to mix in external audio files with the composition? Functionality that allows mixing and syncing of live recordings at slightly different tempos with the composed recordings seems favorable.
@Don: Certainly the audio engine from Cubase and Nuendo will eventually make it possible to play audio along with playback via virtual instruments, but at this stage I can’t give you any solid indication of when this might become a capability of Dorico.
Daniel, congratulations! I’ve been following the blog since it’s inception. I simply can’t imagine the level of excitement and anticipation there, after so much research, planning and hard work. One question: How accessible to screenreaders will Dorico be? If not initially, is this on the development team’s radar going forward?
@Chris: We have done some initial testing with Voice Over on Mac and early results are encouraging. Dorico is built on the latest version of the Qt application framework, which has much better support for accessibility technologies than older versions, though it’s probably the case that there will still be some quirks. I would hope that the program’s UI will be broadly accessible at the time of release, though I fully expect there will be some rough corners that will need to be smoothed out as the program matures.
Why such restrictive licensing? At least I can use Finale on both my desktop and laptop. Also, I’m sad to not see a Linux version, but I guess I’m not surprised.
With the name “Dorico”, all I can think is: does it come in “cool ranch” and “nacho” versions? Your notation software is making me hungry. You should have put out a public poll for naming the software. I vote for “Notey McNoteface” π
That’s probably because you are pronouncing it incorrectly. It isn’t Do-RI-co; it is DO-ri-co. The stress is on the first syllable, not on the middle one.
Does Dorico supports tab notation for guitars?
Are there plugins (i.e. fingerlings) applicable like in other products (perhaps for future versions)?
@Frank: The first version of Dorico will not, I’m afraid, support guitar tab or other kinds of tablature. As you are no doubt aware, tab is a whole universe of its own, closely related to but entirely separate from regular staff notation, and like everything we do in Dorico, we want to do it properly, so it will wait until we can devote ourselves to implementing it to a high degree of functionality. I hope this is not too disappointing to you.
The release β yay! Pricing βΒ well, not cheap.
It would be good to know what the upgrade pricing is going to be like for subsequent versions. 650 USD once looks very different from 650 USD once plus, say, 300 / year thereafter.
@Paul: In general Dorico’s pricing is intended to be broadly in line with Steinberg’s other professional-level programs, i.e. Cubase and WaveLab. Buying an update to a new major version of Cubase is normally around β¬149 inc. VAT, so although at this stage it is completely premature to be thinking about the price of a future Dorico upgrade when version 1.0 is still some months away from release, that will hopefully give you some kind of idea.
Hi Daniel, congrats on the new release coming up . . . sounds great!!!
In answer to Paul:
β¬299* β Special time-limited crossgrade pricing for qualifying Sibelius and Finale users.
This is 335.31 US Dollar
What I’ve found for Sib to Finale and vice versa:
To upgrade from Sibelius to Finale is 149.
Crossgrade to Sibelius (from Finale, Notion etc.): $199
Or maybe it doesn’t answer you question Paul . . . you asked for subsequent version pricing. The above is for current crossgrade.
Daniel,
I have found my Microsoft Surface Pro a very convenient way to sneak in quick work when I am away from home. I switch to my laptop when I want to do more serious work away from home. I use my desktop when working at home. I thus have Sibelius on all three machines. It will be wonderful and convenient to be able to do the same with Dorico. I plan to buy it as soon as it is released.
I suggest that you and Steinberg give this issue of activation a serious consideration. I have seen from the comments above that others are concerned about this.
@IJ: Please know that I am not ignoring the various comments about this issue, and give me some time to discuss further with my colleagues. I will come back with more information when I have it.
Is there any available info on using Dorico for print publication and use of 3rd party fonts? My day job is as a music engraver and I would like options other than Finale and Sibelius.
@Sean: A key goal for Dorico is that you should be able to use it to typeset music for print publication. Music engravers and publishers are among the core users we are targeting with our application. The various engravers and publishers to whom we’ve shown the program so far generally seem to feel that we’re moving in the right direction and that Dorico may well become a key tool for them in the months and years to come. I hope you will come to feel the same way! At the moment, Dorico has support for SMuFL-compatible fonts, but unfortunately there aren’t many yet available: Bravura, which will be included with Dorico, of course, and Robert PiΓ©chaud’s November 2.0 are the main ones. You will be able to use other third-party fonts but it may require some laborious choosing of symbols, e.g. specifying that this symbol from this font should be used for the G clef, and that symbol from that font should be used for the minim (half note) notehead, etc.
A big Β‘bravo Dorico! to the whole team, for the work already accomplished and to come until public release!
Really looking forward.
– Robert
Daniel,
Great, great news !
Is it already possible to pre-buy Β«DoricoΒ» ?
Let me know please.
Congratulation
Alain LeBlond
Composer born in 1957
@Alain: I’m very pleased you already want to pre-order Dorico, but at the moment there’s no way to pre-order it. If you sign up for the newsletter on the main Dorico product page you will definitely receive an email notification as soon as it is available, so you can either go to your local reseller or buy from the Steinberg online shop.
Many thanks Daniel,
Eager to use Dorico…
actually I have 2 wishes, first, one graphic interface that let you do everything on layout for most contemporary composer. Especially very flexible lines, and shapes! Seconds, we can pay 20 Euro monthly to have a copy.
I seem to recall that scripting support via Lua is going to be part of Dorico. Will this make it into the first release?
@Gregory: Please see this thread on the Dorico forum for more information about the likely state of the Lua scripting API in the first release.
Hi Daniel,
Congratulations to you, the Dorito team and Sternberg! I will be very excited to get a copy of the new software once it is available.
I am concerned, though, with the very limited usability that is contemplated for VST2 plug-ins. I appreciate that Steinberg developed VST technology and has an interest in promoting the widespread adoption of the latest version. I also suspect that if Cubase was made to use VST3 only, many plug-in developers would get on-board because of Cubase’s huge position in the marketplace. However, Dorito will be a new product and I suspect the only result of limiting its use of many VST2 plug-ins will be primarily limited to reducing the potential number of Dorito purchasers.
Nevertheless, I am anxious to try out Dorito and from everything I have seen congratulate you on a job well done!
Mike Philcox
@Mike: Check out this thread on the Dorico forum for more on this issue. The bottom line is that if your VST 2.x plug-in is well-behaved it should be possible, by hook or by crook, to get it to work in Dorico, though you may have to manually add it to a whitelist in order to do so.
And the name’s Dorico, not the brand name of a corn snack…
Apologies, make that “Dorico”! My mistake was quite unintentional and I’m sure it will disappear once users including myself are more familiar with hearing the sound of its name.
Hi Daniel,
Great news ! I just hope it will work with W7
I know this will be the first release and things will go on then with improvements and new features along the way.
Whatever I’d like to share some thoughts (I’m currently working with Sibelius). I’m mostly working with video and/or non-orchestral or sound design tracks. I think it would be a huge improvement to be able to score on a notation software while being able to play an audio track meanwhile. I mean having a mutable play-back audio track on a notation software would be extremely helpful. You could i.e. have a premix of sound design and/or dialogs or other musical elements playing together with scoring. It doesn’t look a logical thing to some but I think we have to consider a notation software in an evolutive way… And this feature looks like a huge main one to me.
The turnaround should be the ability to sync Dorico & Cubase. That’s a heavier process and I don’t know about audio card sharing with both applications.
Furthermore Sibelius video feature is poor and terrible. I hope you’ll implement a brilliant one ! So, what about a video track and a separate audio track ?
One last question : will it be possible to import Cubase tempo track ?
Best,
Alain
@Alain: I suspect Dorico will work under Windows 7 64-bit just fine, but it will not be an officially supported configuration, so please bear that in mind. Thanks for your thoughts about the film/composing to picture workflow. When we do have video support integrated, you will be able to hear the video’s soundtrack and balance it in the mix via the Mixer window, as it will appear there as a dedicated track. I will look into the possibilities of importing a tempo track from Cubase; you will be able to import a MIDI file, of course, but at the moment we don’t have a way of essentially importing only the tempo events into the existing project, and that would obviously be useful.
Congratulations Daniel and team!
1) Where in the pipe line is the possibility of Dorico exporting audio files from whatever play-back capacities it has achieved (mp3, wav, exc)? For those of us working closely wtih specific groups, even a vary basic audio file is very useful for creating practice tracks and demos, and while a lot has been said about play-back, I realize this is a slightly different feature.
2) Will there be a grace period between soft-ware installation and needing to register it? This was one of the things I loved about Sibelius, and allows for short term use on an in-house computer (even if just for the purposes of printing or making a final edits) without running against the license limit. Something could potentially be jerry-rigged with two licenses, but the flexiblilty to just install and go for a limited time can be invaluable.
3) Are there plans or hopes for a Lynux version at some point in the future? I’m currently with WIn7, and am considering moving to Lynux at some point in the future. If not, will it at the vary least be WINE compatible?
Take care!
@GeezerKid: We expect the first version of Dorico to export in WAV/AIFF. We should be able to add MP3/FLAC in a later (free) update.
The software won’t run without a valid activation, but you will be able to request a 30-day trial activation from your MySteinberg account, just as you can for several of our other products. Hopefully this will allow you to complete these kinds of short-term jobs.
I’m afraid we have no plans for a Linux version, and nor do we intend to do any testing of how it works under WINE. You’re free to give it a go, but I’d be surprised if you get very far.
Congratulations to you and the team Daniel!
It looks absolutely amazing! I’m really looking forward to it being released! And what a great name.
Do you think bug fixes will be released as they are fixed?
Also do you think there will be a discounted upgrade option for users who have bought v.1 and want to upgrade to v. 2 when it is released?
Congratulations again!
@Joe: We expect to follow broadly the release strategy that other Steinberg products follow: after a major release, there are normally two or three maintenance releases that fix the most pressing issues and add small features. In Dorico’s case, we will be trying to balance fixing any bugs that are found by early users with continuing to build out the application’s features. We will not release a new build every time we fix a single bug βΒ we will collect them up into a release that we can test to try to ensure we don’t introduce any regressions βΒ but we will certainly release fixes as often as is practical and aligning with our goals to add further features as fast as we can.
We will certainly provide upgrade pricing to any Dorico 1.x user who wishes to buy the upgrade to Dorico 2.0 or any future version, just as we do for Cubase, WaveLab, and our other products.
Regarding note entry, what is the sequence of events? Pitch first, then rhythm? Or rhythm first, then pitch?
By the way, the name “Dorico” was a brilliant name choice. Follow along with Daniel’s research. One shouldn’t get hung up on the name if you remember that Valerio Dorico was Italian and not Spanish. Need I say more?
I love the parallel reference to the history of music engraving. Consider also what the Steinberg development team has endured since being surplussed from Avid in July 2012, then subsequently hired by Steinberg. You might even go a step further and by implication and interpretation, appreciate the tongue-and-cheek humor reference to the Finn brothers.
Sorry, I’m doubling down on the name being a mistake, and not brilliant at all except to those interested in some kind of pretentious esotericism. You need not say more, because the fact that encouraged individuals to follow along with Daniel’s research and once again bring up the obscure cultural reference in order to validate it says it all: almost all of the comments I have seen in support of the name also include methods by which it can be validated (the research, the obscure historical reference) – the reason it needs to be validated is because it’s invalid in the first place.
I don’t think anyone is being Daniel’s friend by supporting him on this one – the market does not have – nor want – the insight into obscure references and Daniel’s personal research to carry the meaning that you are reading into it – you’re just another example of the type of support one can get “in the bubble”. The larger audience won’t feel compelled to research the name in order to convince themselves that it speaks to them – it will live or die on it’s own merit on first hearing, and “Dorico” on first hearing sounds either pretentious or dorky, is easily misinterperatable, is easily forgotten, is obviously obscure, is entirely uninteresting and generic, and is in no way apparently associated with music composition or even engraving whatsoever to anyone not intimately familiar with Daniel’s research or the details of engraving history and the players involved. To them it might as well be called “Larissa”, or “Reynaldo”.
You softies are sweet with your support and your analysis, and I appreciate the fact that you’re getting behind him – but in the end the name is a fail, period.
All other perceptions are rationalizations for what is a blatant failure to the un-initiated and un-Italian. This is a product presumably intended for a market larger than the hardcore engraving history dorks, no? If so, it would thus would be served best by a name that would naturally attract that larger audience.
“Dorico” will not help this product succeed in the market, at best it *may* not hurt it – and only because it’s a specialized market to begin with. Anyone who supports the name is supporting an uphill battle in the fight for peoples attention and memory. Of all the possible names in the universe for notation software… of ALL the possible names… introducing… “Dorico” …
are you kidding me?
I just developed a new and improved word processor software I’m selling, it’s called… “Sholes”.
c’mon.
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
Ok, Max. Grow some roses and bring them to market, put a big sign on your rose stand that says “Rotting, Dying Bad-Smelling Roses” and put it across the way from someone selling the same strain of roses but who instead calls them “Romance Roses”,
Count your dollars at the end of the day and then tell me whether the name matters. Sure, you may sell them to some “specialists” who can tell they’re the same strain, but almost everyone else will buy the Romance Roses and you will be poor.
@Dave: Note input is more like Simple Entry in Finale and Sibelius’s standard note input method than Finale’s Speedy Entry method, so it’s everything else first (duration, accidentals, articulations, etc.), followed by pitch.
This is wonderful news! I’ve been disheartened with Sib’s recent treatment at Avid and was hoping your (the Original Sibelius) team would make this kind of comeback.
Features that were important to my deciding to get Sibelius that I wonder if you plan to implement:
The Sibelius Manuscript Language – making it possible to integrate manual and algorithmic composition.
The built-in “Publish” command along with the user publication site for scores and the Scorch viewer/player/printer web plugin.
Meshing nicely with Neuratron’s software so I can do OCR and audio parsing to input score info.
Sib features I’ve always wished were a lot better:
The ability to run the sound of different musical voices through different VST or AU audio processing plugins.
The ability to write unmetered / unbarred music or to manually place bar lines regardless of meter / not being locked into a metric scheme.
Any plans for any of these?
And an iPad version or the ability to somehow edit on iPad would be great, because my mind continues to whir away on whatever I’m creating when I’m no longer at any of my computers.
I regularly use 3 Macs so will be frustrated with even 2 licenses. Some creative out of the box thinking about less restrictive ways to prevent piracy is sorely needed.
And a question: Will it run under Snow Leopard? I still use that in my studio due to other software there’s no replacement for.
Very much looking forward to finding out more. I will definitely cross grade regardless of answers to all the above questions.
@Laurie: This kind of long and detailed set of questions might, in future, be better suited to the new Dorico forum, but I’ll do my best to help here.
1. Sibelius’s ManuScript language is of course specific to Sibelius. Dorico will include its own scripting API built on the Lua language, though its API will not be as comprehensive as ManuScript has become in Sibelius in the first version of Dorico.
2. Dorico does not have any web viewer of its own. We are hoping to integrate with one or more third-party service providers for this kind of functionality, but there’s nothing specific I can say about this at the moment.
3. You can import MusicXML files from OMR software such as PhotoScore or SmartScore, but Dorico cannot open their native binary file formats.
4. You will be able to route different voices of the same instrument through different “endpoints”, which is the term we’re using to describe a combination of virtual instrument, channel, program, patch, and switch within a patch, so it should be somewhat flexible in this regard.
5. Dorico is the first GUI-based scoring program to natively support open metered music.
6. There will be no iOS version of Dorico of any kind at the time of the initial release of Dorico for Windows and OS X. We hope to develop some complementary mobile applications in future, but it’s hard to put a timetable on this at the moment.
7. I very much doubt Dorico will run under Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. We are still testing it on versions as far back as 10.9, but we will officially only be supporting 10.11 or whatever is the current version of OS X at the time of Dorico’s release.
Small correction: Open metered music has been natively supported by PriMus since its first release 2007.
Congratulations anyway for reaching this milestone.
Congratulations!
I’m a teacher at a music school. We paused the upgrades of Sibelius a couple of years ago, when we started following the Making Notes blog. One of the reasons were your plans of making a notation program, that would run on several platforms (including iOs and (more important) Android).
Is that totally dropped or just postponed?
Any plans of pricing for music schools? (I think we have about 20 full Sibelius licences controlled by a single server.)
Any plans for a “lite” version for the children?
A technical question: is there a good real-time note entry in Dorico? In Sibelius it’s not working well – in the long dead Musicator it worked perfectly, as it could use an external time code from a drum machine.
@Kenneth: Thanks for getting in touch. We do still have plans to produce e.g. a viewer app for mobile devices like iPads, but at the moment our focus is fully on building the Windows and OS X versions of Dorico. We will certainly have special pricing for music schools, and more details will be available closer to the time of launch. We hope to have special crossgrade pricing for schools that already have a site license for a competing product like Finale or Sibelius. We do plan to produce a cut-down version of Dorico suitable for use by students or other users who have no need for all of Dorico’s professional features, but I wouldn’t expect that to arrive within the lifetime of the first major version of Dorico; perhaps it will come around the time of Dorico 2.0. As yet we do not have real-time MIDI input in Dorico (it has been impossible for us to work on while we have had no MIDI input or output, which is provided by the Steinberg audio engine, which is not yet fully integrated), and I do not expect this to be included in version 1.0, but you will be able to import MIDI files.
I’m guessing that also means no step-time MIDI input as well?
@Dave: We hope we will have step-time MIDI input in v1.0.
@Daniel, just wanted to thank you for answering each of my points + the link to the forum for future use.
I’ve written enough music software and been involved in enough development projects to understand all too well how much effort and time it takes and that you can’t do everything at once or right away. While you’re all feeling the time racing by with your release date approaching, for us out here waiting it feels like you’re crawling at a snail’s pace. We have to be patient and see what you’ll have achieved after you first couple of years.
Meanwhile, what you’ve written here re: my questions is all quite encouraging. Wishing you a great launch when the time comes!
@Daniel,
I’m very much looking forward to seeing you and getting a demo this week in New York if my reg for the session got through while before registration was filled..
BTW, re: #5 here, I believe Donald Byrd’s Mac notation program “Nightingale” from the mid-1980s (1983?) was the first to natively support open meter.
– Laurie
Congratulations fom Spain Daniel!!!!
When you support Linux I’ll be interested. In the mean time I’ll stick with Musescore
Congratulations from Italy too!! Looking forward to put my hands on it!
Giovanni
I realise this will sound ‘tacky’ to some potential users here but I like idea of the Sibelius ‘ideas hub’ – do you plan to have a similar feature?
@Neil: In the fullness of time, I’m sure we will have something like this, but I’m afraid not in the first version.
Really looking forward to Dorico!
One question: is it possible to use different staff sizes on different pages within one document? This is so important for example for Wagner and Strauss, where you have sometimes up to 50 systems on one page. Sibelius’ solution for that problem is impracticable.
@Felix: Yes, you can easily change the staff size at any system break in the music.
It sounds like Dorito… a certain well known kind of potato chip.
Why not call it ‘Quazer’ after Quavers potato chips. This would apply the same principle of removing the ‘s’ and changing a letter, but at least it would involve a musically relevant potato chip.
Honestly guys, I actually thing Dorico is not a good name, in part because it sounds like ‘Doritos’, and also because there are so many better names you could choose.
@Anthony: Not that we’re going to change Dorico’s name now, but out of interest, care to list (say) three much better names we could have chosen?
Well, I for one am genuinely tired of reading complaints about the name. I think it’s a perfectly good name, and I can see that it fits nicely with Cubase and Nuendo (i.e., the three together sound like a product line), which I’m sure was a significant consideration on Steinberg’s part. It also has that nice, Italianate flareβlike an obscure musical term. It’s good. It’s staying. Get over it.
I’d like to add my voice to those of us who think the name is excellent, and will serve it well. But I can’t speak for everyone, and we have one person in our midst who is fixated on this aspect to a quite impressive degree. If I disliked the name I would still buy the software.
“If I disliked the name I would still buy the software.”
Exactly! This is a field populated almost exclusively by people who know pretty precisely what they want and need, and who will no doubt recognize why Dorico is a huge leap ahead of the competition. It could be called Lumps and I’d still buy it! Rest easy, Daniel et al.!
…oh, or even Notey McNoteface! π
I’m sorry, but people towing the “specialist” line are acting foolish – to ONLY expect specialists to buy it ANYWAY, IN SPITE of the name are just supporting shutting the software off from the larger market, decreasing revenue, and decreasing the amount of resources which will be available to improve the product you wish to use.
If the product is named in a way that both specialists and laymen/general notation public are thirsting for it, there will be more money, which can buy more time to make more improvements.
Comments like this just prove the bubble specialists live in to their own detriment – why shut down a product from the eyes of the larger market by giving it an obscure and uninteresting name when you could name it something to draw and foster general attention, bring in more revenue, and have more resources to improve the product you love?
I’m over it, frankly, and Daniel has made his will known and it is his product. I was initially fixated on it to the extent it shocked me into responding – again, I would love to see a third party notation software compete in the market. A competitive name would help it, not hurt it, and no manner of specialist explanations about why it works will put more money in Daniel’s coffer with which he can improve it. End of story.
I respect his decision to stand by the name, but I still feel it is a personal attachment and not a market strategy. This is fine for as long as it remains in-house, but when you introduce it to the market and don’t align the name with that intention, you are working against yourself.
There would be no discussion about the name if it wasn’t shockingly unmemorable, unremarkable, and only geared to people with very specialized knowledge. These people are not the ENTIRE market, only part of it.
I’ve already said what I intended to say in the first place, and Daniel is sticking with the name, so sure, let’s move on. But don’t be surprised if Dorico is not flying off the shelf as fast as the same exact product with a more engaging, appropriate name that conjures associative recognition in the consumers mind.
Sorry, you’re all wrong – the name works against the product, and all of your rationalizations for it simple prove that point over and over.
A fantastic name would need no rationalization, and would require no response. It’s not even that I don’t like it or that I couldn’t come to like it, it’s that it’s hard to remember, it doesn’t directly refer to it’s function, it’s easily confused with other possible names, etc. I’m saying it all again so I’ll stop here and let it fly as it flies.
Under the same argument, the word “Sibelius” is meaningful only to “specialists”, since the big public have no idea who that is (i.e., he’s no Beethoven or Mozart). Likewise, “it doesn’t directly refer to its function”… Same with Finale, Encore, Notion…
Also, to even know what to do with this software is to be a “specialist”, in that you have to be music literate. Steinberg’s willingness to pursue development of it suggests that they are fully aware that this is not, in fact, a tiny, niche market. Rather, they understand that it’s a market pre-populated by a considerable number of discerning people who genuinely need something better. (In entrepreneur-speak, they recognize the significant “pain points” associated with competing products, and believe that Daniel et al. can solve the related problems.)
Aside from that, I disagree with your insistence that this discussion has arisen because the name “Dorico” is unremarkable or unmemorable. I think the discussion suggests precisely the opposite. Broadly speaking, the things you say about names are true. I simply don’t think your complaints apply here. To me, it has musical connotationsβnot because of the history of it, but because (as I said) of the Italianate sound… It’s an intriguing name, that sounds musical, and makes one want to know more. Also, it aligns with the (similarly unusual) names Cubase and Nuendo. So, though I understand your points about naming (with the exception of the idea that a name must indicate the function), I don’t agree that “Dorico” violates those points…
Is support for aleatoric notation planned? Playback would be amazing, but I imagine that’d be a pain to implement, and it’s not really the focus of the program.
I’ve been looking for a program like this for years, and it’s been great to follow the development, so thank you for that!
Oh, and I really like the design of the logo, but (to me) it also looks like it could be a ‘P’ instead of a ‘D’.
@Peter: We don’t have any specific aleatoric support in the first version, but we certainly intend to include things like this as the application matures.
Understood, James. I don’t think Sibelius is necessarily the best name for a notation software, either – but from my perspective this simply leaves ample room for a software with a better name to come out and whoop it. I think “Finale” “Encore” etc. are sufficiently recognizable musically to be a self-evidently acceptable name, they certainly evoke classical music which provides the core of notated music currently. I didn’t mean to say the name would need to be descriptive to be more successful, but evocative of the endeavor it is used for at least. Dorico evokes ennui and confusion, imo, and will not attract people of the non pre-populated sort and the pre-pops will use it “in spite of it’s name”, certainly not because of it (except in some rare cases, MAYBE).
I don’t think the fact that there is a discussion proves that it is memorable, because the discussion (from my pov, and I perhaps started it) was initiated precisely because of how bland, unmemorable, and unrelated the name seemed to anything related to what it’s used for (on first glance, without the obligatory background info), and I certainly don’t think Italy owns music, so just the fact that the word is Italian doesn’t to me mean anything in terms of communicability or relates it necessarily to music whatsoever.
And also, I would like to make it clear that this isn’t a complaint but a responsive observation based on an initial “Really?!…..Really?!”. I personally don’t really care what the label on the box says if it works well. But I will continue to maintain that anything which would generate more revenue (simply with a better name) would make it more likely there would be more resources to improve the product in the future, and anyone who cares about their product would want it to succeed in the market and would name it in order to position it for success, not name it in a manner that doesn’t support success or which may even obstruct it in some ways.
Just because the market is mostly (at this time) pre-populated doesn’t mean you can get away with anything. Like I said somewhere above, if I created a word processor and named it “Sholes” how well would it sell vs. “Word” or “Word Perfect”? I can guarantee you if I announced that name on a blog like this – probably ONLY populated with specialists – they would be waxing delightfully and nerding-out at the obscure reference and how to some people it sounds fine. Sure, but it would still likely be a loser in the market. It’s a bad business move, and I see no arguments here that have proven otherwise, only sentiments, rationalizations and endearing (if misguided) support.
I think the most obvious and unarguable point is this – of all the words in the entire world, who could possibly agree that Dorico is the BEST NAME for a product of this type? You may like it, sure, and it may not be the WORST name…but the best possible name for a music notation software to put on the market? I don’t think so. In fact, if you were to go around to people who use notation software and ask “What do you think would be the best name for a music notation software?” Dorico would come up exactly 0 times.
I certainly think my observations apply here. I have no doubt specialists will buy it regardless, but this isn’t a world built purely out of specialists. Again, I don’t think anyone is helping Daniel or this product by supporting such an obscure name in the market. With so many words and so few notation softwares “Dorico” is an epic fail.
It might be worth looking at this from the other direction. Daniel has been very clear in this blog that the product is targeted first and foremost at a professional market. This implies that there’s no interest in courting the wider audience you are so sure wouldn’t be attracted to it. Those who Steinberg wants to sell to are going to be looking past the name and concentrating on features and utility. The type of potential user who’s going to be affected by the name will also, in all likelihood, be far more upset to find they’ve purchased something expensive that is far more complex and sophisticated than they need. In this case, an obscure name serves as a market signal that this is not intended be a commodity product, unlike many of your examples.
Consider that Steinberg’s other (flagship) products have somewhat challenging names, but that hasn’t stopped them from becoming the de facto industry standards….
That is by far the best reply I’ve received in regards to this, Jacob, thank you. If they are specifically and intentionally looking to narrow their market, they will succeed with a name like this. Still not the best name, imo, even for that purpose, but to those ends it doesn’t really matter what you’d call it as long as it’s not offensive or foolish – just choose something obscure.
I’m still not convinced in this age of tinkering that there are not enough enthusiastic hobbiests to make it worthwhile naming it in a way that has broader appeal and would generate “fringe” income, though. I haven’t used the product yet, so I have no idea if the learning curve is as steep or sophisticated as you imply.
Thanks again.
And just as a side note, I think the price point is $700 or something. I don’t think anyone will buy this product BECAUSE of the name, but if a change in name would eventually lead 10 individuals to purchase it (there are some people who will choose what resonates with them if all other things are approximately equal) before they purchase Finale or Sibelius, that’s $7,000.
In other words, if a change in name only draws a handful of individuals who would otherwise go elsewhere, it would have a net positive impact and still lead to more available resources.
“[…] if all other things are approximately equal […]”
From what I’ve seen/read so far, all things are far from equal. Dorico defines a new standard, and I can’t wait to get my hands on it! π
Right, I meant for like trad. choral composers, who may just want a software that notates common time bars of half, quarter, and eighth notes and are not really interested in any expanded capabilities as long as it provides those basic functions.
Sorry if this has been discussed, a quick search of the page did not show it.
I have been a long time music engraver and enthusiast (I have worked in Finale and Sibelius for over 20 years). I have a new career now, but still dabble in music notation from time to time. I am super excited about the release of Dorico, and as Daniel has noted, the name is sticking with me and I am finding that I do like it (initially I did not).
3 questions:
1.) You have now demonstrated the software a few times to groups of people. Is it possible for you to create Youtube videos now, that are broken down into certain topics, and have you demonstrate in the video what you did in front of your audiences? You know, a quick 3 minute video here, and 2 minute video there. Maybe even release them as you release more blog updates? I am very curious to see some of the software in use, even if it is a guided use.
2.) I am a percussionist, and percussion notation always seems to be a “tricky” thing. How is Dorico going to handle percussion notation? Will it be customizable? Will I be forced into using “percussion maps” set up by the system? Will I be able to create my own percussion maps? For years I arranged drumline music, and had to listen to the playback on a piano staff (percussion staves limited my notation abilities, and couldn’t do what I needed them to do). It was horrible, but the music looked good. Is something like this possible on Dorico?
2a or 3.) I have used Virtual Drumline for sometime to help with my arranging, and more recently my overall composition of things. I understand the issue right now with VST2 and VST3 still being worked on, but is Dorico reaching out to companies like Tapspace to work at incorporating their ideas into the software? I want to continue to use Tapspace’s Virtual Drumline. I’d also like the almost seamless integration it has with Sibelius. It would make life a lot easier for many of us. Not a deal breaker for me, but certainly requested if not considered or thought about.
Bravo!!! I am excited to see the software in action.
Robby
@Robby: Sorry to have taken a while to approve and reply to this comment. I always try to give a proper response so I tend to leave the long ones dangling until I have a chance to fully read and respond.
Regarding some more video content about Dorico, we definitely plan to do some of this over the summer months. I anticipate that we will do some kind of live stream demo on Facebook Live or Twitch or another similar platform. We also plan to do a series of short but sweet focused videos that show how to achieve particular things in Dorico once the application is available. I expect some other tutorial-style or informational content may well make its way onto YouTube as well. However, putting all of this stuff together is time-consuming, and we still have a lot of work to do on the application itself, so we’ll have to be parsimonious about how much time we spend on that versus making the product as good as it can be by the release date.
We have big plans for percussion notation, though the actual implementation is currently in an embryonic state. The basic idea is that unpitched percussion instruments will be defined as individual instruments each effectively using a single-line staff, and you can assign multiple instruments to a single player. Those instruments can then be shown either as one or more single-line staves, or a more closely-spaced grid (but still with each instrument’s notes being shown on their own dedicated line), or indeed as a five-line stave, with control over which instrument’s notes should appear in which staff position.
We certainly hope to support Virtual Drumline in Dorico in due course, and we’ll definitely be working with Jim and the team at Tapspace to figure out how to make that happen once all the necessary pieces are in place.
The name doesn’t bother me nor does it really grab me. But once the product is out, if it works well, I doubt many will care what it’s called. I know I won’t. Reminds me of one of the more famous Dorian mode compositions – “So What” !
Just wondering if putting the accent mark over the o might be helpful to keep people from thinking the accent goes on second syllable?
Congratulations!!! Long time coming!!
As a long time Cubase user (since the 90’s) and an owner of Halion Symphonic (bought separately) I find it somewhat annoying that Sibelius owners may get a discount and we don’t. I have to pay full price for something that includes software that I already have paid for.
Rewire support would be super. As would be custom rules for managing the libraries.
Well done, anyway and good luck.
YES. Now I know what I want for Chrismas…
Sometimes, a great name can sell an underwhelming product, while a great product can sell an (initially) underwhelming name. Perhaps I can only speak for myself, but since every new blog post has had me saying “yes! that is exactly how it should be done!,” I can see “Dorico” turning into a standard name. The original release version seems like it will fit my needs perfectly, though I understand the concerns others have.
At least it seems the original Dorico won’t be turning in his grave.
P.S. I read somewhere in the comments about lyrics. Any possible details on how they would work?
@Christian: I will probably post something about lyrics in the next instalment of the development diary, which will be coming soon.
Ah, cool, thanks!
@Daniel I know it was some way earlier in the thread you mentioned this but I love the idea that there will be some sort of cross-app thought/co-operation between Dorico and Staffpad. It bodes very well for the future, especially as regards composers getting ideas from their head out into the real world as quickly as possible, which for me as a composer is THE most important thing and I am sure many others would say the same. Staffpad would make an excellent ‘front end’ for Dorico. Combine that with (I know, not immediately) the prospect of inserting Dorico into the workflow path of Nuendo/Cubase and this app will be light years ahead of anything currently available. Exciting times !!!
If only they would make it available on iPad…combined with the new Pro version with Apple Pencil, it would be unstoppable (and make me more inclined to upgrade to the Pro).
It will be available on the Surface Pro. The better iPad Pro. π
Will be a discount out there for cubase users? I can’t find any reference about it π
Given that dorico will use cubase engine, and cubase users already have part of (or all) the plugins offered, it would be great that steinberg could offer us a discount to purchase Dorico. It is a valuable tool we have been looking forward so long.
Thanks for your hard work!
Cheers!
I’m interested to know if there are improvements in the Dorico user interface over other notation programs. For example–not to name any names–but some programs do the following:
1. Place an accent on a note with an incoming tie–for example, after pasting a note across a barline (this is explicitly invalid notation, and entirely inconsistent with the semantics of the copied note).
2. Delete special barlines when the immediately preceding bar is deleted.
3. Sometimes move a dragged object in the opposite direction of mouse motion, or in seemingly random directions (e.g., when the sophisticated stretching algorithm gets disoriented).
4. Perform extremely rare, specialty operations like stretching text when the user is trying to move an object by simply clicking and dragging.
5. Eagerly select rarely edited notation elements such as stems, making it very difficult for speedy users to select frequently edited elements such as THE NOTE HEAD.
6. Neglect to put the piano pedal down when starting playback in the middle of a long pedal line. This is a major disaster for piano composers–words cannot begin to convey the pain!
7. Play the same note at wildly different volumes depending on where playback started.
8. Render the selected elements of the primary voice part using a color that is nearly indistinguishable from black on any standard monitor (my vision is 20/20, and has been for all 15 years of using this particular notation program).
9. etc…
Of course this kind of gripe list could go on and on, and I’m not expecting the Dorico user interface to work exactly as I personally prefer–but it would be nice to know that issues of this kind are being considered carefully and thoughtfully, so that problems of an obvious and universal nature (as listed above!) are consistently avoided or quickly resolved.
I’m very, very excited for this release! I do want to add my voice to those who have requested a Linux version, though. There’s a big market of younger composers who would happily jump ship not just from Sibelius/Finale, but from Windows/Mac, if given a professional notation/engraving option on that platform. It’s really the only remaining music computing thing that can’t be done at a serious, high-end level on Linux. Just like Cycling74 could tap a big market there with a Linux version of Max, Steinberg could be the first, and for a good long time the only, company putting out serious engraving software for Linux users. Maybe market research knows something I don’t, but it seems to me to be an obvious economic decision to make, especially when you’re starting from the ground up and not having to build in all kinds of back-compatibility cruft!
The second Dorico newsletter is out. Nice touch guys! http://news.steinberg.net/ov?mailing=1NC8M74H-18LHK3Q
Have been really put out with Sibelius these last few years. Lack of customer support and such. I admit I miss Walter and the gang from the old help center there in San Fran. Trying to get hold of a real person to talk to at Sibelius is like giving blood and pulling teeth.
I’d love to try this new program. However, if it doesn’t open Sibelius files what’s the point? I’ve got too much invested in what I’ve done already. And why doesn’t it, btw? Will it eventually?
@Andy: It’s not possible to open Sibelius files directly for two main reasons: most significantly, it’s not practical to open either the Sibelius or Finale file formats, because to do so would require reverse-engineering a huge proportion of both applications’ internal workings, which would be a massive engineering effort that would take away from developing other functionality in Dorico; and secondly, although I am not a lawyer, this kind of reverse engineering is illegal in many countries.
You will be able to open existing projects via MusicXML, which is a lot better than nothing, but it does mean that you should not expect to be able to bring finished projects into Dorico for revision β you would have some fixing up of layout and other details to do (though Dorico’s default layout and engraving are sufficiently superior to its competitors that hopefully the amount of time needed to get things laid out properly will be much lower than it would be in other applications).
For an excellent example of easy and effective copy protection, have a look at Plugin Alliance. They do a call-and-response license system that works like a charm, internationally, with no dongles, no devices, no crazy-long serial numbers and no added expense.
+1 Please, find a way to release this software without a dongle!
I think you can tell by the outpouring on this blog page that there are MANY of us waiting to be freed from the deficiencies of our current notation software! Please don’t solve one set of problems only to create new problems with a dongle. Make Dorico my CLEAR CHOICE, not something I have to weigh pros-and-cons over.
The name is fine. (Do I need to quote Shakespeare?)
+1 Chord symbols!
The Play Mode looks very nice. It looks like the cubase key editor, so I hope Dorico will develop compatibility between Cubase Key editor and Dorico’s Play Mode. Copying notes from the key editor into Dorico’s Play mode would be soooo nice. Thank you.
@Nuno: Thanks for your comment. Initially there will be no direct integration between Dorico and Cubase, but as Dorico matures I hope we will be able to start building these kinds of features.
As a published classical composer, computer scientist, and an early and longtime (over 20 years) Sibelius user from version 1 to my present version 5, I have found the floating input note and symbol keypad indispensable – will the new Dorico product at least have an option for utilizing floating sub-Windows screens for inputting notation ? I very much look forward to such an option, as I have always found the Sibelius interface comfortable. Also, Congratulations on the completion of your project – as a programmer I appreciate the effort involved in such creative endeavors.