Steinberg has announced the immediate availability of the new generation of its family of composition and music notation software for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS.
Producing beautiful and functional performance materials that can be easily understood by every musician requires both experience and attention to hundreds of tiny details. Dorico 6 augments musicians’ experience and instincts with its unique new Proofreading panel, automatically scanning users’ scores and parts as they edit, and identifying potential issues that could raise questions in rehearsal.
For example, Dorico can identify problems with the metrical structure of the music, such as bars that are shorter or longer than the prevailing time signature, or unbalanced repeats that will upset the pulse. It can flag up duplicate markings — like telling a violin to play pizzicato, and then repeating that instruction later, without an intervening change to another technique, such as arco — and suggest places where additional markings could be added — such as ensuring that each entry for an instrument following a long rest is given an appropriate dynamic.
Dorico can also offer practical advice for performance: for example, for players who switch between different instruments while playing, it can identify places where there is insufficient time to change instrument, based on the current tempo of the music. It can also identify technical issues with the playability of material for fretted and unfretted stringed instruments, including difficult stretches and double-stops.
Any issues Dorico finds are listed in the new Proofreading panel, which can be efficiently filtered to focus only on specific kinds of issues, allowing users to navigate between them.
Engraving capabilities are also greatly expanded in Dorico 6, both in page layout and with notations such as chord symbols.
The middle years of the last century were responsible for many innovations in music notation, including the technique of cutaway scores, where instead of showing empty bars for instruments that are resting, their staves are completely hidden, only reappearing when they have new music. This kind of page layout was pioneered by influential composers like Lutosławski, Berio, and Stravinsky in the 1960s, but has always been highly laborious to achieve in music notation software. Dorico 6 now makes it possible to produce perfect cutaway scores with a single click, massively reducing the time it takes to prepare this kind of score, while still allowing the production of perfect parts.
In commercial music, jazz, and music for small ensembles and bands, chord symbols are a vital ingredient to communicate the harmonic structure of the music. Dorico 6 builds on its existing comprehensive support for chord symbols with a raft of new capabilities: it is now possible to have multiple rows of chord symbols, making it easy to show alternative sets of changes for reharmonizations or repeated passages; chord symbols can display duration lines to show larger harmonic structures, helpful in educational settings; and users can now create their own custom chord symbol types, defining precisely how they sound and how they look, unlocking a world of new possibilities.
Beyond these highlights, Dorico 6 is packed with other powerful tools to inspire greater creativity. Cycle playback allows users to loop any section of their music, and hear edits in real time. New marching percussion sounds, delivered in partnership with Tapspace, makers of Virtual Drumline, are invaluable to band arrangers, adding impactful cymbal, bass, tenor, and snare drum samples. Workflow enhancements are found throughout the application, including support for advanced OpenType font features, a unique new fill view that makes maximally efficient use of users’ display real estate, improvements to condensing, MusicXML import and export, new fonts, and much more.
“We like to say that working in Dorico is like having an intelligent assistant by your side,” said Product Marketing Manager for Dorico Daniel Spreadbury.
“With Dorico 6, that assistant is even smarter, allowing you to have greater confidence that the parts you put on the stand will be played with fewer questions and mistakes, closing the gap between your musical intention and the players’ performance. Together with the expanded capabilities in engraving — from cutaways for art music to custom chord symbols for commercial music — Dorico 6 meets the needs of every working musician.”
Dorico Pro 6 is available from selected dealers and through the Steinberg Online Shop for 579 EUR and $579.99 USD. Dorico Elements 6 is 99.99 EUR/USD. 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 5 or Dorico Elements 5 or earlier versions since March 26th, 2025, are eligible for a free, downloadable grace period update to the latest version.
Dorico SE 6 is available for free download from the Steinberg website, and Dorico for iPad is available for free download from the App Store.
Fully featured, 60-day trial versions of Dorico Pro 6 and Dorico Elements 6 are also available for free download from the Steinberg website, with no obligation to buy, and no payment details necessary.
More information: Steinberg
