New features - Dorico Pro - 5.1

MIDI input for octave-transposing instruments

• You can now change whether Dorico Pro inputs notes for octave-transposing instruments at the played pitch or the appropriate transposed octave when inputting notes using a MIDI keyboard. See Changing the input pitch setting.

Chromatic shadow notehead

• You can now move the shadow notehead that appears when inputting notes using the mouse chromatically by pressing and holding Shift. See Inputting notes.

Open-ended page ranges

• You can now specify open-ended page ranges when printing/exporting layouts. See Specifying ranges of pages/flows.

Shadow note auditioning

• You can now choose to hear shadow notehead pitches as you move your mouse pointer and during pitch before duration input. See Playing/Muting notes during note input/selection.

Chord inversion

• The note tools popover now allows you to change the inversion of chords, by transposing either the top note down an octave or the bottom note up an octave. See Note tools popover.

Instrument change improvements

• You can now automatically show instrument change labels/warnings at the nearest barlines, rather than at the corresponding notes. See Moving instrument changes.

• You can now choose whether warnings or labels are shown for quick instrument changes. See Hiding/Showing markings for quick instrument changes.

Signpost view options

• Two new signpost view options allow you to activate/deactivate all types of signposts simultaneously. See Hiding/Showing signposts.

Double thick barline

• Dorico Pro now includes a double thick barline. See Types of barlines.

Bar number placement

• You can now change whether bar numbers positioned on barlines are placed inside or outside of dynamics. See Changing the placement of bar numbers relative to dynamics.

Note grouping in 5/4

• A new option in Notation Options allows you to change how notes are grouped in 5/4 time signatures by default. See Changing the note grouping for 5/4 time signatures.

Contextual help

• Dorico Pro now provides contextual help in the main project window and selected dialogs, which connects you directly to relevant documentation. See Contextual help overlay.

Blank staves after flows

• You can now choose to show blank staves after all flows, not only the final flow in the layout. See Hiding/Showing blank staves after flows.

Status bar width

• You can now hide/show tools in the status bar. See Hiding/Showing status bar tools.

Systemic barlines

• You can now hide systemic barlines and brackets/braces at individual system/frame breaks and codas. See Hiding/Showing systemic barlines and brackets/braces.

Coda gaps

• You can now change the gap preceding individual coda sections. You can also set different default gaps for mid-system codas and codas at the start of systems independently. See Changing the gap before codas.

Staff labels on condensed staves

• You can now show consecutive player numbers as a consolidated range, such as “1-4”. See Changing number consolidation in condensed staff labels .

Comments panel improvements

• You can now sort comments by different attributes, and change which pieces of information are shown. See Reordering comments and Hiding/Showing comment information.

Mixer values

• You can now enter exact panning and volume values in Mixer channels. See Changing the volume of channels and Panning channels.

Bowing marks

• You can now define playing techniques as bowing marks. This affects their position in the vertical stacking order. See Edit Playing Techniques dialog.

Staff label improvements

• When hiding/showing staff labels, you can now apply your changes to the first flow only, or to all flows in the layout. See Hiding/Showing staff labels.

• You can now indent the first systems of flows only when staff labels are hidden. See Changing the first system indent.

Aggregate time signatures

• It is now possible to combine aggregate time signatures with the same denominator into a single time signature, while retaining dashed barlines for meter divisions. See Combining aggregate time signatures.

Harp pedals editor

• A new Harp Pedals section in the Playing Techniques panel allows you to create harp pedal diagrams using a visual editor. See Playing Techniques panel.

Custom page sizes

• You can now edit the dimensions of page sizes and create custom page sizes. See Custom page sizes.

Colors for accidentals

• You can now show cautionary and forced accidentals in different colors, independently of each other. See Hiding/Showing colors for accidentals.

Highlights

Iconica Sketch

• Iconica Sketch sounds, and playback templates for using them, are now included with Dorico Pro. See Playback templates.

Text export

• It is now possible to export all text in the project to a CSV file. See Exporting text.

Project statistics

• Dorico Pro can now generate statistics for the whole project or only an individual flow. Being able to know how many bars there are in a piece of music, and to differentiate between filled and empty bars, can be necessary when calculating engraving fees. See Project Statistics dialog.

History dialog

• You can now view your edits and selections in a dialog, and undo/redo all actions up to the selected one. See History dialog.

Custom instruments

• Expanding on the instrument customization introduced in Dorico Pro 5.0, there are new dialogs that allow you to create and edit instrument families and instrument score orders. See Edit Instrument Families dialog and Edit Instrument Score Orders dialog.

Polyphonic voice balancing

• Dorico Pro can now identify melodies and bass notes in polyphonic music, and emphasize them relative to accompanying notes. See Enabling/Disabling polyphonic voice balancing.

• There are further voice balancing options for themes in contrapuntal music specifically. See Enabling/Disabling dynamic rules for contrapuntal music.

Hold and pause playback

• Holds and pauses now affect playback, using a combination of changing note durations and inserting gaps. See Holds and pauses in playback.

More New Features

Project Info dialog

• You can now use italic, bold, and bold italic Markdown formatting for specific characters within fields in the Project Info dialog. See Project Info dialog.

Instrument change improvements

• You can now delay instrument changes until before the first note in the new instrument, and change where instrument change labels appear relative to cues. See Moving instrument changes.

• You can now hide instrument change warnings in each layout independently. See Hiding/Showing instrument change warnings.

• Dorico Pro now provides two paragraph styles for instrument change labels, allowing you to customize the appearance of instrument change warnings independently of the labels shown at new instruments’ entries. See Instrument change label paragraph styles.

Hidden notations

• You can now input hidden tempo marks and playing techniques by enclosing your popover entry in parentheses. See Inputting tempo marks with the popover and Inputting playing techniques with the popover.

Mouse editing

• It is now possible to transpose notes by octave division when clicking and dragging with the mouse. See Changing the pitch of individual notes.

Exporting flows

• You can now export flows as separate PDF files. See Exporting layouts as graphics files.

Lock Played Durations

• This new function allows you to retain the played durations of notes, regardless of edits you make to their notated positions/durations in the piano roll editor. See Key Editor panel toolbar.

Used chord diagrams grids

• It is now possible to exclude individual chord diagram shapes from used chord diagrams grids. See Including/Excluding chord diagrams from used chord diagrams grids.

Cue improvements

• The default position of cue clef changes relative to barlines has been updated, and a new option allows you to change it. See Clef changes in cues.

• Noteheads in rhythmic cues can now be shown as rhythm slashes instead of normal noteheads. See Hiding/Showing rhythm slashes in rhythmic cues.

• You can now use negative values to position rhythmic cues inside or below the staff. See Changing the staff position of rhythmic cues.

Dynamics improvements

• There are new options for the appearance and position of syllables in hyphenated gradual dynamics. See Changing the appearance of gradual dynamics and Abbreviating gradual dynamics.

Cautionary key/time signatures

• It is now possible to hide cautionary key signatures and time signatures at the ends of systems. See Hiding/Showing cautionary key signatures and Hiding/Showing cautionary time signatures.

Glissando playback

• Dorico Pro now supports continuous glissando playback using MIDI pitch bend. See Changing the glissando playback type.

Divisi improvements

• Transitions between divisi and unison passages have been significantly improved, including the handling of slurs and time signatures. See Unison ranges.

• You can now horizontally offset and erase the backgrounds of divisi change labels. See Divisi change labels.

• You can now automatically show unison labels at the first note after unison restorations that coincide with rests. See Allowing/Disallowing unison labels at rests.

Mixer panel

• Channel strips are now shown in the Mixer panel when it is sufficiently tall. See Mixer panel.

Tie chains

• Edits to tie chains in Write mode, including changing the stem direction of notes, now affect all notes and ties in the chain.

Highlights

Groove Agent SE

• Dorico Pro now comes with Groove Agent SE, allowing you to drag and drop patterns onto drum set tracks and trigger patterns using MIDI trigger regions. See Importing drum set patterns from Groove Agent SE.

• If you have installed Groove Agent SE, you can use new playback templates to load Groove Agent SE automatically when you add drum sets. See Playback templates.

Mouse editing

• It is now possible to transpose, move, and copy notes by clicking and dragging with the mouse. See Enabling/Disabling mouse editing.

Multiple item creation

• You can now input notations onto multiple staves simultaneously outside of note input. By default, Dorico Pro inputs notations at the first note on each staff. See Changing the item input position setting.

Scrubbing

• It is now possible to use scrub playback in Dorico Pro. See Scrubbing.

MIDI trigger regions

• This new feature allows you to play back notes without showing them in the music, such as when using patterns in Groove Agent for playback. See MIDI trigger regions.

Space and Stage templates

• These new features work together to make it much easier to produce realistic playback performances of your music. Stage templates allow you to position instruments as if they were on a real stage. Space templates emulate different rooms and concert halls by applying panning and reverb settings to instruments’ stage positions. The end result is playback that uses the stereo field more realistically, with deeper and more natural reverberation. See Space templates and Stage templates.

Custom instruments

• The new Edit Instruments dialog allows you to edit all existing instruments and create new ones. The default settings you can edit for each instrument include its transpositions, number of staves, names, and playable ranges. See Custom instruments.

Pitch contour emphasis

• This new algorithm allows melodies to play back even more expressively. See Enabling/Disabling pitch contour emphasis.

More New Features

User interface improvements

• The status bar has been given additional options, allowing you to switch the current layout between concert/transposed pitch and galley/page view more easily. See Status bar.

• You can now enable/disable playhead following during playback in each project window independently. See Enabling/Disabling playhead following.

Middle C numbering convention

• You can now change the numbering convention used for middle C (MIDI note 60) throughout Dorico Pro. See Changing the middle C numbering convention.

Instrument numbering

• It is now possible to renumber instruments so that their numbering matches their default player order. See Renumbering instruments.

Staff label improvements

• In simple cases, horizontal alignment and leading set for individual instrument names is now used in staff labels, overriding the settings from the corresponding paragraph style. See Edit Instrument Names dialog.

• You can now show player names in staff labels only on the first system in each flow, with instrument names shown in staff labels on all other systems. See Showing instrument/player names in staff labels.

Rhythm dots

• To select dotted note durations, you can now double-press note duration key commands. See Inputting notes with rhythm dots.

Text improvements

• You can now enter Unicode characters into both text items and text frames more easily. See Inputting text items and Entering text in text frames.

• You can now adjust leading in individual text items and text frames, independently of the paragraph style. See Text editor options in Write mode and Text editor options in Engrave mode.

• You can now change the background and border colors of individual text frames. See Changing the background color of text frames and Changing the color of text frame borders.

• You can now change the paragraph style applied to multiple selected text items simultaneously. See Changing the paragraph style of text items.

Playback improvements

• Notes and items can now be muted in specific playthroughs, allowing you to hear selected notes only the second time around, for example. See Muting notes/items individually.

• Dorico Pro now supports microtonal playback using MIDI pitch bend. See Expression Maps dialog.

Mixer improvements

• It is now possible to add multiple FX channels to the Mixer. See Adding FX channels.

• You can now rename channels in the Mixer. See Renaming channels.

Music fonts

• A variety of new music font families are now available by default. See Music fonts.

Hiding items

• You can now hide clefs in layouts of any transposition, independently of other layouts. See Hiding/Showing clefs.

• You can now hide octave lines in individual layouts. See Hiding/Showing octave lines.