July 2025
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Context, my run with Dorico. I started on Finale in 1991 (similar so many others I see from that era) and never got past being frustrated with how cumbersome it was as a writing tool beyond just an engraving tool. Obviously it was the industry standard for many decades for a reason. But I always wanted something I could compose and create in, not just notate and engrave. Finale was just too clunky for that. I was always writing elsewhere (DAW or paper) and putting in the notes after the fact. A few years ago I decided to get serious about finding another program that I could actually use to create and compose. Even better, the true holy grail would be notation software that really worked like a DAW. (I've been hard core Pro Tools user for 25 years running a studio, REALLY good at that, but I’ve also gotten proficient enough at Cubase and Logic Pro). While there are many options out there, with MuseScore being really impressive, Sibelius and Dorico seem to be the only main stream, widely used, professional grade options. So, the dabbling into both began.
My first stab at Dorico was Dorico 4, February 2022 (over three years ago) and the result was pretty much deer in the headlights. Every next step felt like a brick wall. 99.5% Googling, 0.5% creating, if that. My first stab at Sibelius wasn’t a whole lot better. But, for me at least, the Sibelius learning curve isn’t quite as brutal. Once it started to click, I fell absolutely in love with it. Yes, it is quirky. But, once you get the hang of it, it is fluid, fun, functional, powerful, and even intuitive. It was (and is) a joy to use, something I look forward to. To this day I remain a huge fan of Sibelius and as I get deeper in deeper into Dorico, I still find myself missing some aspects of Sibelius. (Lots more on that here.) As of a year ago (summer of 2024) I was fully committed to Sibelius with no intent of trying to make a serious attempt at learning Dorico. When Finale died in August 2024, it was shock waves. Wow! But, even then, I was long gone past Finale, super happy with Sibelius, so I didn't feel any real disruption and certainly no real urge to go jump on Dorico.
But, for all those months after the Finale demise, I saw everyone heading to Dorico and very few to Sibelius. I saw lots of frustration with the Dorico learning curve, but I also saw massive positive commentary about how amazing Dorico is. I very much knew the origin story of Dorico coming out of a Sibelius/Avid flame out and could easily see Dorico as the innovator, the way of the future with Sibelius more inclined to be stuck in the past (in some ways a potential victim of what brough the demise of Finale). So, I finally dug in. The learning curve promptly kicked me back on my keister again. But, this time, I was grateful and fortunate to find Ernesto Aguirre’s online course www.LearnDorico.com. That made all the difference. Ernesto’s clear and logical sequence of putting the strange Dorico concepts together made it all click and gel for the first time. From there I found John Barron, David Larsen, Will Edwards (Music Chef), CJ Rhen, Hoyamoon TV, and Anthony Hughes, of course, (see details on those guys and others here) and tons of really cool people on Facebook and the blogs helped me figure all that other weird (but really cool) Dorico stuff like End Points, percussion mapping, expression mapping, time signatures, and on and on. I still have a long way to go. But, now I’ve had many good runs of 80-90% creating and only minimal Googling. Dorico still isn’t really that holy grail of DAW and notation in one spot. But, it is much farther along toward that than anything else. It has the potential. That Cubase update that swapped a Dorico-ish module out for the score view got be really tempted to go deep on Cubase. Combined with NotePerformer (another brilliant game changer app!), Dorico has become a thing of joy to me.
So, to all the generous people out there who have given so much time to make the Dorico learning curve accessible, thank you!
List Compiled by Jason Barney
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