Steinberg Dorico Pro 5

General

Writing score for an entire orchestra will always be a complex and time-consuming job, and when it comes to modern composition, it can take some time to get all of the MIDI data and stacked virtual instruments on paper so that, when it's played by real musicians, the score reflects the sound that's in your head. While there are plenty of programmes designed to make the whole process quicker and more streamlined, Steinberg Dorico still remains one of the biggest and most trusted.

What's New with Dorico 5?

The fifth edition of Dorico includes a sound editor, where the sections of your virtual orchestra can be placed on a virtual stage to immediately adjust both the panning and reverb to match their position. Groove Agent AE is another new addition, meaning that drums can now be added to your orchestration. Another useful tweak is the MIDI trigger regions, meaning that not every note in the composition has to translate into a note in the score. Take that to the drum section, and you can tell your percussionist: "this is a sketch of the beat, so I want something like this. Start drumming!" Basically, while your MIDI mock-up might be packed with ghost-notes and other nuances to enhance the realism, there's no need to add them in the score, because the drummer will fill all of that in naturally. Cleaning up details and errors is also made much easier using the new Scrub function, and for anyone using MusicXML, importing and exporting is now also possible. There are, of course, plenty of other extras and bug-fixes that come with this edition, but these are definitely the highlights.

Engraving

Just like every other version of Dorico that came before it, this software bears outstanding visual quality. So, while it might be a matter of taste, it's fair to say that the way Dorico is able to create the feel of a hand-scribed manuscript on a computer screen is still impressive. So, rather than creating a score that computer programmers would be proud of, you're able to create score that really displays the craft of classical notation. And that's another point: the clear legibility of the notation, which is in the small details like the width of a crotchet, the note placement, the thickness of a legato curve and even the font selection, all of which will only make a piece easier to play. Essentially, if you're seeking the very best of the best, Steinberg Dorico is still it.