Dorico 2.2 released, with live MIDI recording, repeats, jazz articulations, and much more

We are delighted to announce the release of Dorico 2.2, possibly the largest and most significant update to the software yet, bringing a mix of long-awaited new capabilities and also a few unique surprises.

If you have Dorico Pro 2 or Dorico Elements 2 and you can't wait to get your hands on the update, head over to the download page or run Steinberg Download Assistant to get the updater. Be sure to read the Version History PDF, as it contains more than 40 pages of detailed information about all of the things described in this post, and many more improvements besides. If you've already given Dorico 2 a try through its 30-day trial period, you can download Dorico 2.2 and have a fresh trial period to see all of the improvements for yourself.

As usual, my honey-voiced colleague Ant has produced a series of videos explaining in depth how all of the major new features in Dorico 2.2 fit together, so put the kettle or coffee pot on and settle in for a happy hour or so of learning. But first, check out this short video that introduces the headline features in a minute or so:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HslANWLBEOc

MIDI recording

It's fair to say that real-time MIDI recording is among the longest-awaited features to be added to Dorico. As always when tackling a new feature area, we wanted to make sure that we could provide a solid implementation, building on the existing MIDI transcription engine used by MIDI import and improving it further. We have done that, not only greatly improving the cleanliness of the result by removing overlaps and improving tuplet detection, but by implementing a super algorithm for enharmonic spelling, and adding a number of useful features that improve the MIDI recording workflow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42Gmzl7gQ7k

Eagle-eyed users will have spotted that we have included a VST plug-in called DoricoBeep since Dorico 2.0, and now the plug-in is finally used to provide the metronome click for MIDI recording. DoricoBeep can provide two tones: a pitched tone that reminds me of the old Casio VL-1 keyboard I had as a boy, and a click that is reminiscent of a vintage digital metronome. You can choose which kind of click to use on the new Click page of Playback Options, where you can also adjust the pitches and velocities to be used for the clicks on strong and weak beats, and subdivisions of beats if you choose to have them (by default, compound meters play back subdivisions, while simple meters don't). If you don't like either of the provided click sounds, you can use your own by setting the plug-in and channel to use in the Time track in Play mode, though be aware that, in common with other similar manual overrides in Play mode, overriding the click sound will prevent Dorico from automatically loading sounds for any new instruments you add to your project.

Having set up the click as you want it, it's worth spending a moment trying to determine the effective latency of your system. This latency is made up of several factors, including the actual latency in audio processing, any latency in the MIDI data arriving from your input device, and any human latency arising from your reaction time or method of playing (in our testing, we found that some players consistently anticipate the click, while others tend to play consistently a little behind it). The value for MIDI input latency compensation that we've found tends to work well is around 50ms, which you can set on the Play page of Preferences.

Once all that is set up, simply create some empty bars to record into (Dorico won't extend the flow automatically, so create enough bars before you start), select a note or rest in the staff where you want to begin recording, and click the new record button in the mini-transport, or use the key command Ctrl+R (Windows) or Command-R (Mac). You'll get one bar of count-in, and then away you go. When you select a note or rest, Dorico will overwrite all the existing music on that instrument, but if you want to be more specific about where your input should go, type Shift+N to show the caret and set the caret to the voice you want to use before you start recording. By default, Dorico will overwrite music, but you can set it to merge your input with the existing music by engaging chord input (key command Q) before you start.

During recording, you won't see any visual feedback in Write mode, other than the red playhead moving through the music. Dorico won't notate the music until you stop recording, though if you record in Play mode you will see notes appearing in the piano roll editor as you record.

It's important that you play cleanly and at a steady tempo: if you find that you can't play accurately enough at the music's actual tempo, you can use the new Fixed Tempo Mode to record at a different tempo. The mini-transport now includes a read-out of the tempo at the playhead's current position, and the note value to the left of the tempo value is a button: by default, it is illuminated and shows an arrow pointing both up and down to show that Dorico is following the tempo marks in the music; if you click it, it switches off and the arrow turns into an equals sign, representing that now a fixed tempo will be used. You can click the tempo value and drag up and down to set the tempo to be used. Any tempo changes in the music – whether they come from metronome marks, or gradual tempo changes – will then be ignored, both in playback and when recording.

If you find that the resulting music isn't as cleanly notated as you would like, you can use the new Edit > Requantize dialog to rewrite the music using new quantization values. This works both on music you have input via MIDI recording, and also on music created by importing a MIDI file. It's very powerful to be able to select just a passage of music and requantize it, and this is a non-destructive operation, so if you find that quantizing at a longer note value doesn't produce the result you expect, you can quantize again at a shorter note value without losing any of the original performance data.

There have been a lot of improvements to the MIDI transcription engine that not only provide a clean transcription of music you input via MIDI recording, but also improves transcription for MIDI files. In particular, the enharmonic spelling of music created via MIDI recording or importing a MIDI file is much improved, even if the music has no key signature. This uses a different approach to the spelling routines used in step-time input, because step-time input can only use limited context to make decisions, while the algorithm used for MIDI can look at everything you played or imported at once to try to make optimal decisions.

There's a lot more to talk about with MIDI recording, but you can check out Anthony's video above or the Version History PDF for more details.

Jazz articulations

We've worked hard in the Dorico 2.x cycle to address the needs of jazz and other commercial music, building on the chord symbols and drum set notation we added in the Dorico 1.x cycle to add bar repeats, slashes, and swing playback. In Dorico 2.2 we add comprehensive support for jazz articulations (and support for complex repeat structures, about which more below).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_k3IKJbZbQ

The things known as jazz articulations are perhaps poorly named, since they are not articulations in the strictest sense: as such, due to their similarity to glissandos, we have put them in a new Jazz section in the Ornaments panel in Write mode. Plops, scoops, rips, doits, falls... they're all there. All of them are positioned automatically, taking into account accidentals on the left and rhythm dots on the right. Each is provided using two types: bends, which are notated using a curved line; and smooth ones, which are notated using an angled line, which may be either straight, wavy (like a glissando) or dashed. For the smooth ones, the angle and length of the line can be adjusted in Engrave mode.

We have also moved the other standard jazz articulations – bend, smear, flip, and turn – from the Brass section of the Playing Techniques panel to the new Jazz section of the Ornaments panel, so they're all found in the same place. All of them can also be created by typing into the Shift+O popover.

None of the jazz articulations play back in this release, but this is definitely something that we plan to return to in future. Some sample libraries provide recorded versions of many of these articulations, but they are tricky to trigger and the current capabilities of Dorico's expression maps do not yet make this possible. As the playback side of the program develops further, it will be possible to address this, and perhaps also to provide MIDI approximations of some of them in the event that sampled versions are not available.

Repeat structures

Another big improvement for jazz music and indeed for other commercial music is that Dorico 2.2 finally introduces support for repeat structures involving D.C., D.S., Coda, Fine, and so on. Watch Ant's tutorial on how to work with these new features below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJbX0zycNyg

As you would expect, repeats are very smoothly integrated into the application: you can create them from the (now complete) Repeats panel in Write mode, or you can use the Shift+R popover to add the markers you want. Markers for segno and coda are automatically left-aligned, while jumps such as D.C. al Coda or D.S. al Fine are automatically right-aligned. When you add a coda – for example, by entering coda into the Shift+R popover – Dorico will even automatically divide the system for you at that point. You can adjust the default mid-system gap before a coda on the new Repeat Markers page of Engraving Options, where you will also find a host of options for the graphical appearance and placement of repeat markers.

Dorico is also the only music notation software to seamlessly support repeat structures that include multiple segnos and codas. Although these kinds of structures should be used sparingly – perhaps only when avoiding page turns is absolutely, positively necessary – should you have need of complex jumps between multiple segnos and codas, this can be done by setting the new Marker index and Jump index properties in the Repeat Markers group of the Properties panel. Dorico will automatically update the appearance of each jump or marker to show that it is the second or third (or, heaven help you, fourth) jump. You can in general override the text of a repeat marker via Properties, and if you for some reason find that you cannot achieve the appearance you really need, you can even hide them altogether in order to then provide another text item instead.

Related to repeat markers, Dorico can also now automatically show instructions like Play 4 times or x4 above sections bounded by repeat barlines, and you can choose how the text should appear, and whether it should appear at the start or end of the repeated section, or even in both places.

All of these notations play back as you would expect, and there is also a new option on the Repeats page of Playback Options for whether or not Dorico should play back repeats after a D.C./D.S. jump.

The only thing we have been unable to address in this update, and which we plan to return to in future, is the correct handling of things crossing into second or third endings (such as slurs, ties, glissandos, lyrics, and so on), and the correct presentation of the state at the bar you're jumping back to, if that happens to use a different clef, key signature, or time signature. These are all complex to implement and require more work, but they remain in our plans for future versions.

Flow headings and tacets

Although picking a favourite feature in a big release like this is like picking a favourite child, I think these two related features are probably my favourites in this release, because they unlock a lot of the power and flexibility that we designed into Dorico from the outset, and which we are only now able to begin to more fully realise in the software that you use every day. One of the key goals we had for introducing the concept of flows was to make it easier to handle multiple independent chunks of music – be they songs, movements, numbers, acts, pieces, etc. – within the same project, and from that initial decision many other design decisions flowed, including the unique desktop publishing-style page layout engine.

From the very first release, it has been possible to do very sophisticated page layout work in Dorico, but a couple of important aspects of, in particular, part preparation still involved a lot more manual steps for you to take than we originally envisaged: that is, starting a new flow anywhere on a page, and having it titled appropriately. With the arrival of flow headings in Dorico 2.2, this is now completely automated. Take a look at Ant's video to see how it works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UklFGjDRXYQ

You can now design your own flow headings, and use text and graphics frames together to produce a standard title chunk that will automatically appear above the first system of each new flow in a layout. This practically eliminates one of the most laborious remaining steps in part preparation for larger works in Dorico. Every detail has been carefully worked out, from the way the margins are applied contextually based on the position of the flow heading in the parent music frame, to the way the default settings in a new project will produce a pleasing layout in both score and parts for a multi-movement work without you having to lift a finger. All you have to do is provide a few key bits of information in File > Project Info and everything will look great.

Related to flow headings is another feature that embodies one of the core concepts we hit upon six years ago when we started designing Dorico: that if a flow is attached to a layout, but the player or players that are attached to the layout are not attached to the flow, we should automatically show a tacet for that flow. Until now, you've been able to show multi-bar rests, divided as they customarily are at rehearsal marks, changes of key, time or tempo, and so on, but this may leave a player uncertain at a glance as to whether or not he or she is playing in this movement. With the arrival of true support for tacets in Dorico 2.2, instead of seeing a series of multi-bar rests, the player will see a single word: Tacet. As ever, Ant takes you through the details in this tutorial video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nonkTEd6gkk

The options for whether to use tacets are found on the Players page of Layout Options. You can edit the font used for the tacet text in Engrave > Paragraph Styles, by editing the Tacet paragraph style. And you will also find options for the border around the text on the new Tacets page of Engraving Options. At present you can only adjust the border padding to the left and right of the text, so for some fonts with unusual metrics (including our own Petaluma Script) the border may look uneven above and below the text, so we plan to expand this in future.

It is always our aim to make the preparation of good-looking, print-ready parts as fast as possible. Dorico's unique linked cues, peerless rhythmic spacing, intelligent vertical spacing, and comprehensive collision avoidance already come together to make parts look practically print-ready without needing to make any adjustments: now with automatic titling and tacets, many more manual steps are removed. We plan to do some work on helping you to find ideal page turns for parts in the future, and then Dorico will be able to turn out print-ready parts with almost no user intervention.

Trills

Another area where we have been able to return to something that we began implementing before the release of Dorico 1.0 in order to bring it to full fruition is in the way the application handles trills. Earlier versions of Dorico exposed a property to specify the interval for the trill, but all this did in practice was allow you to show a flat, natural or sharp accidental above the trill. But from small acorns do mighty oak trees grow, and trills in Dorico 2.2 are now all grown up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=soIN-SN0lOc

The fundamental change is that trills now have intimate knowledge of the trilled-to note, which allows all sorts of wonderful things to happen. For one thing, trills now play back, with support both for half-step (semitone) and whole step (tone) sampled trills if they are provided by your chosen sample library (the bundled HALion Symphonic Orchestra provides sampled trills for many instruments, which now play back by default), and for generated trills by triggering MIDI notes. There's amazing sophistication in the way this is done: you can choose simple things like whether to start on the upper (trilled to) or written note, but you can also adjust the trill speed over the course of the trill, and Dorico will automatically incorporate grace notes at the start and end of the trill. Perhaps the most subtle but musical touch is that Dorico even looks at the pitch of the note immediately following the trill, and determines whether the trill should end on the upper or lower note so as to best join to the following note, just as a human musician would. Check out the Trills page of Playback Options to take a look at the options.

A quick note for users of NotePerformer: NotePerformer does not use sampled trills, instead using its own sophisticated technology to produce realistic sounding trills. In order to make sure that Dorico sends the correct legato messages as well as the trill notes, make sure you set Playback approach for trills to Generated trills only in Playback Options.

Playback is only the beginning of the story, however: what really sets Dorico's handling of trills apart is that the knowledge of the trill interval makes it possible for Dorico to automatically determine which accidental should appear above the trill, including in part layouts for transposing instruments, which might require a different accidental depending on the way the notes are spelled. If a trill introduces a new accidental, then any subsequent note in the bar will show a cautionary accidental, and likewise if the trilled-to note has already been modified by an accidental earlier in the bar before the trill, then the trill will take account of that too. In other words, the notes produced by trills are completely integrated into the music, as if they were written out. Dorico's unique semantically-driven approach to music notation makes this possible, and no other scoring program comes close to this level of musical sophistication. The upshot is that you don't need to worry about players sticking their hands up in rehearsal to check what accidentals apply in and around trills, saving time and money.

Finally, as you would expect, we have provided comprehensive options for the appearance of the trill interval. You can choose between showing accidentals or using Hollywood-style text markings – H.T. for a half-step (semitone) and W.T. for a whole step (tone), with alternatives available via Engraving Options – which have the advantage of being consistent for all instrument transpositions, and are well-understood by session players. For intervals beyond a whole step, Dorico will automatically show an auxiliary note in parentheses immediately following the main note, and of course you can choose to show an auxiliary note instead of showing the interval on the trill itself in Engraving Options if you prefer.

Taken altogether, trills in Dorico 2.2 are now first-class musical citizens, with all of the semantic richness you have come to expect, and the end result that working with trills has become easier, faster, and smarter than ever. It's streets ahead of what other programs can do.

Editable instrument grouping

The last of the major new features to tell you about in detail is greater flexibility in bracketing and bracing, with new tools in Engrave mode to allow you to override the default instrument groupings produced by the bracketing approach options in Engraving Options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9Jo28BNJKg

In general, Dorico's automatic bracketing works well for all standard instrumental combinations, but you may have special requirements for instrument grouping, and the new tools in Engrave mode provide some welcome flexibility in this area. Because system layout is so dynamic in Dorico, it's possible to change bracketing at any point in the layout, with the change taking effect from that system (or, if the bracketing change occurs in the middle of a system, from the following system), so it makes sense to work carefully through the layout from the beginning towards the end, instead of working your way backwards from the end: in other words, if you want to change the bracketing from the beginning of the flow, be sure to make your changes on the first system so that they take effect from the start. It is also important to make sure that all staves are shown on the first system (or, indeed, on any system where you want to make a bracketing change), so even if you later plan to hide empty staves, use the settings on the Vertical Spacing page of Layout Options to make sure that no staves are hidden on the first system before you start editing brackets and braces.

Editing the groupings themselves is very simple: to change the staves enclosed by a bracket, brace, or sub-bracket, simply click the bracket and then drag the handle shown on the top or the bottom so that the bracket encloses the right staves. Brackets and braces can't overlap with themselves or each other, so as you drag a bracket or brace, other brackets and braces will be truncated by the enlarged bracket. Likewise, sub-brackets cannot extend beyond their parent bracket, and the new sub-sub-brackets cannot extend beyond their parent sub-bracket. You can also use Alt+up/down arrow to nudge a selected bracket handle to the staff above or below.

You can delete an existing bracket or brace simply by selecting it and hitting Delete. You can also create a new bracket or brace by making a selection in the music spanning the staves you want to be joined by the bracket or brace, then clicking the appropriate button in the panel on the left-hand side in Engrave mode. (Notice that the left-hand panel has been reorganized in Dorico 2.2, with the introduction of a toolbox so that the options for graphical editing, frame editing, staff spacing and note spacing are now presented separately; this also paves the way for further expansion of engraving features in future versions.)

It's also possible to edit barlines in a similar fashion. By default, barlines follow brackets and braces, joining the same staves enclosed by the primary bracket. You may occasionally want to break these barline joins so that the barlines do not extend between bracketed staves: to do this, simply select any barline and hit Delete. You can also make more elaborate barline joins by selecting a handle on the top or bottom of an existing barline and using Alt+up/down arrow to nudge it to the staff above or below; you cannot use the mouse to drag barlines, though you can for brackets.

Please refer to the Version History PDF for more details on how to reset brackets and barlines, and some other considerations to bear in mind when editing instrument grouping. These new features provide powerful new possibilities for bracketing, but they are subtle and should be used with care.

Lightning round

There is so much in Dorico 2.2 that even after several thousand words, I've not talked about all of the major new features added in Dorico 2.2 (sorry, Engrave > Music Symbols, and sorry File > Import > Tempo Track, there's no room for you – but you can watch videos about them).

However, we're still not done: check out this fast-paced video from Ant rounding up some of the other workflow and productivity improvements in Dorico 2.2.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pq8NfuMx8S8

Phew, that's quite a whistle-stop tour of many of the smaller improvements. Here's a list of just ten of my own favourite smaller improvements in this update. (Try and count ten significant improvements in any of the other major scoring programs' 2018 releases and let me know how many you find.)

1. Select More

Dorico already has a pretty useful set of commands for filtering, which allows you to keep certain types of items selected while discarding the rest of the selection, but it can also be handy to grow an existing selection, rather than cutting one down. Edit > Select More allows you to do this, and unlike the similarly named command in Product A, Dorico's Select More works on all types of items, not only text. Starting with, say, a note selected, Select More first selects other noteheads on the same stem at that rhythmic position, then all notes in that voice in that bar, then (if you're in page view) across the width of the system, then finally from that bar to the end of the flow. Starting with a dynamic selected, it first selects the other dynamics in that group (if any), then other dynamics on the same side of the staff in that bar, then to the end of the system, and finally to the end of the flow. Usefully, Select More also provides a quick way to select chord symbols, for example to hide them everywhere except for in a solo passage.

2. Align Dynamics

This new command, found at Edit > Dynamics > Align Dynamics, and which you can use only in Engrave mode, will align all selected dynamics at the vertical position of the furthest dynamic from the staff. Although grouped dynamics are always aligned at the same vertical position, sometimes you might want to align dynamics without grouping them, for example because the system layout in a part layout may be different to the score. So this is a neat way of tidying up dynamics, and is especially useful when used together with Select More to quickly grow the selection across a system, though beware that it doesn't do anything for dynamics centred between the two staves of a piano.

3. View notes out of range

As Dorico's use in education continues to grow, we are happy to introduce the simple pleasure of colouring notes in red when they are outside an instrument's playable range. As in Product A, notes that are tricky but playable are shown in a dark red colour, while notes that are unplayable are shown in a brighter shade. The ranges for instruments are not editable at the moment (though we plan to add an editor for instrument types in future), but if you spot any errors in the instrument ranges we've researched, do let us know. Notes out of range are shown by default in newly-created projects, but to enable this in an existing project choose View > Note and Rest Colors > Notes Out of Range.

4. Create dynamics on multiple staves

Although it has always been possible in Dorico to add some markings, such as articulations and slurs, across multiple staves at the same time, only now does it become possible to do this for dynamics. Simply make a selection across multiple staves, then either click the dynamic you want from the right-hand panel, or type Shift+D and type the desired dynamics into the popover. By default, these dynamics will be linked to one another, but if you want to disable this – not only for creating across multiple staves, but also for copying and pasting – switch off the new Link dynamics and slurs to existing items when pasting on the Note Input and Editing page of Preferences. (Bonus item: all of the options dialogs, including Preferences, have been improved so that any subheadings for the current page are shown in the list of pages on the left, making it much quicker to navigate to particular sets of options within a page. Dorico remembers which section within a page you were looking at, and even remembers the size of the dialog if you resized it.)

5. Editing existing items with the popover

When I first conceived of the popover some six years ago in our initial design discussions about Dorico, it was always in our plans that you should be able not only to input items by typing simple instructions into a popover, but also that you should be able to edit an existing item by selecting it, hitting Return, editing the text that appears in the popover, and then hitting Return again to confirm the change. This has been possible for some types of items, notably chord symbols, lyrics and fingerings, but this capability is significantly expanded in Dorico 2.2, so you can select (among other things) time signatures, key signatures, dynamics, tempos, clefs, playing techniques, holds and pauses, and so on, and hit Return to open the popover pre-populated with the text that will create the selected item, making it very quick to change it.

6. View bar numbers on all staves

One of the areas we have tried to focus on with this update is to help keep you orientated as you work on your score, and three of these 10 improvements are targeted in this area. The existing View > Bar Numbers feature has been enhanced, so that now, in both galley view and page view, bar numbers are shown on every staff, rather than only on the top staff in the system. And in page view, when the left-hand side of the system is out of view, the staff label appears above each staff to help you keep track of which staves and bars are in view.

7. Editorial slurs

This one is really subtle, but it tickles me. When you specify that a slur should be drawn with a vertical stroke bisecting its middle to signify that it is an editorial addition, the editorial stroke is now rotated along with the slur, instead of remaining vertical. This is a subtle improvement, but a hugely important one for anybody who uses this kind of marking. (There are some other subtle engraving improvements related to clefs in ossia and divisi staves, and some tweaks to the handwritten Petaluma font, but there's no space to cover them here.)

8. More key commands

Wherever possible we have tried to expand the repertoire of key commands that you can specify for editing commands: this includes filtering notes by position in chord, filtering notes by voice, and changing the voice of selected notes. It also includes assigning shortcuts to specific paragraph styles, so you can start inputting text in a paragraph style other than Default text (and these also appear in new submenus in the Write menu too, to help you find them.)

9. Status bar read-out

In the status bar at the lower left-hand corner of the project window, you will now find an information read-out that shows different information based on what you have selected. Even when there is no selection, Dorico shows you a constant reminder of whether the layout you are looking at is in concert or transposed pitch; when you select one or more items, a read-out showing the bar number or numbers of the range of the selection is shown, together with some information about the nature of the selected items. Usefully this includes the sounding pitch of any selected note; and if you select the notes of a chord in a single voice, Dorico will even tell you the implied chord symbol for that combination of notes. This is the second of the three improvements designed to help you orientate yourself as you work on your project.

10. Zoom improvements

The third and final of these improvements is in the area of zooming and moving the score around. We have spent a lot of time finding and fixing bugs in the way Dorico moves the score around during input and editing, and in particular we've improved how the score moves when you zoom in and out. The result is that when you zoom, you are no longer unexpectedly sometimes taken to a much earlier page in the layout. Everything feels more stable and more solid, and the result will hopefully be that you will find it much easier to keep your place when editing your music at any zoom level.

It's worth spending some time reading the Version History in detail to be sure you pick up on all of these smaller improvements. There are plenty more to find!

Appreciation

I want to take a moment to express my appreciation for the incredible hard work of the team who have been working on Dorico 2.2 for the past several months. Dorico is truly a team effort, including: the developers – András, Andrew, Bill, Graham, James, Michael, Paul, and Stefan – who have built all these new features; our testing team – Richard, Akiko, and Toshi – who have given us timely and accurate feedback on the status of each one of them; the audio engine team – Ulf, Bernd, Yvan, and Stefan – who have been fixing gnarly problems with various audio hardware; the installer team – Fiete, Oliver and Paul – who have kept our packages building and integrated throughout; Anthony, who has not only lent his time and talents to producing videos to explain the new features but has also worked tirelessly on making the user interface look beautiful; Lillie, who is working diligently to update the online documentation in response to the hectic pace of development; Anja, who provides incredible technical support to our customers; Ben, who keeps everything and everyone running smoothly; John, who provides expert training and assistance to Dorico users both in person and online... and I have still not mentioned the web team who maintain our beautiful site, the digital services team who make the software available online, our dedicated crew of beta testers, and of course the management of Steinberg who continue to support our efforts at every turn. I am privileged to be part of this team and you as a user of Dorico could not wish for a more dedicated, expert group of people who collectively want nothing more than to deliver the best possible product to you. To everybody who helped make Dorico 2.2 a reality: thank you.

If you would like to express your own appreciation for our work, the best way to do this is to tell everybody you know about Dorico, and to encourage them to give it a try. Word of mouth recommendation continues to be a powerful way to bring new users to Dorico, and if you share our feelings about the software, you will want everybody to have the chance to experience the pleasure of working with Dorico for themselves. So please do spread the word, and help swell the ranks of Dorico users.

We are seeing a growing number of works typeset in Dorico being published by major publishers (including Schott, Chester Music, and Fennica Gehrman), and professionals are using it for film/TV composition and part preparation (including an upcoming series for Netflix and a major movie from Disney), while more and more schools and universities are choosing to replace their existing software with Dorico. We often say that in the future, nobody will use anything else: that future gets closer every day.

What's next?

Dorico 2.2 is the final planned release in the Dorico 2.x series. Some work has already begun on the features that will form part of the next major release, and as usual we have ambitious plans for what comes next. We plan to tackle one of the last remaining areas where Dorico falls well short of its competitors, in the area of notation for guitar and other fretted instruments, and to bring you some truly unique features as well. I hope to be able to share some more details about what we're working on in the early part of next year.

In the meantime, on behalf of the whole team, we hope you enjoy working with all of the new features of Dorico 2.2. Please show us what you create with it!