Create Music That Moves with Steinberg Dorico 5

Steinberg announced the immediate availability of Dorico 5, the new generation of its family of composition and music notation software for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS. Dorico provides unique features for getting the best out of virtual instruments and sample libraries with its deep support for expression maps and integrated Key Editor, allowing detailed editing of the musical performance — and Dorico 5 builds on these strong foundations with new features designed to take virtual performance to the next level.

Overview

Dorico Elements 5 is intended to be suitable for all but the most demanding of professional users, and these new features greatly bolster its capabilities. “This release marks the beginning of the next stage of Dorico’s evolution,” says Product Marketing Manager Daniel Spreadbury. “Although the musicians who use Dorico, and the uses they put it to, are incredibly diverse, playback and note input are the two functional areas that every user relies upon, and Dorico 5 strengthens both.

Dorico Elements 5 sees the biggest changes, now allowing to write for ensembles of any size (previously limited to 24 players), and includes the comprehensive Playback Options dialogue from Dorico Pro, new customization options for text and music fonts, expanded Engrave mode with staff and note spacing tools, and more — all at the same attractive price as previous versions.

Key features

• Space and Stage Templates: Use a simple visual interface to move instruments on the virtual stage, and Dorico automatically translates that into pan and reverb settings. Experiment with different rooms

• Pitch Contour Emphasis: Dorico’s playback is more expressive than ever, using sophisticated algorithms to breathe life into phrases in the same way human musicians do. No longer do you need great keyboard skills to bring your notated music to life.

• Groove Agent SE: The entry-level version of Steinberg’s creative drum software is now included with Dorico 5. Not only can Groove Agent SE be used as a high-quality drum kit playback device for your Dorico projects, but it also includes more than 400 MIDI drum patterns, performed by top studio drummers, and mixed by Steinberg’s expert engineers.

• MIDI Trigger Regions: Dorico’s new MIDI trigger regions play a note or chord that doesn’t appear in the score for a period determined by you. This is especially useful for triggering MIDI patterns in plug-ins like Groove Agent SE, or other pattern-based instruments such as TGuitar.

• Scrub Playback: This makes it easy to audition the whole ensemble or a single instrument at any point and move forwards or backwards through the playback at any speed. • Instrument Editor: With Dorico Pro 5, you can modify or create instrument definitions to suit your needs, and easily reuse them in future projects.

• New music fonts: Four new handwritten-style fonts, and four engraved fonts, all available at the click of a single button, to bring greater variety to the look of your projects.

• Multiple item creation: Dorico 5 overhauls item creation from a selection: you can now create multiple items at the same time, on multiple instruments, and even at different positions on each instrument.

• Live editing: You can drag selected notes to alter their pitch, or drag them to new rhythmic positions, with a live overlay to show you where the notes will be moved to.

• MusicXML import and export: Dorico 5 brings enriched support for importing harmonics, playing techniques, ornaments, holds and pauses, and more. MusicXML export is also improved, with page layout information now included, and basic support for encoding information about the music and text fonts used in the project.

• Additional new features: many engraving improvements to chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams; extended capabilities in expression maps; improved support for Japanese lyrics; greater scripting capabilities; text improvements; and more.

Availability and pricing

Dorico Elements 5 is available from selected dealers and through the Steinberg Online Shop for 99.99 euros and 99.99 US dollars. Dorico Pro 5 is available from selected dealers and through the Steinberg Online Shop for 579 euros and 579.99 US dollars. Prices may vary according to the region.

A range of downloadable updates and upgrades, crossgrades, and education versions are exclusively available through the Steinberg Online Shop.

Customers who have activated Dorico Pro 4 or Dorico Elements 4 or earlier versions since April 1, 2023, are eligible for a free, downloadable grace period update to the latest version. Dorico SE 5 is available for free download from the Steinberg website, and Dorico for iPad is available for free download from the App Store.