New features

The new jump bar allows you to perform commands and go to locations using only your computer keyboard. See Jump bar.

You can assign jump bar aliases to specific commands, for example, so you can use shorter entries for your favorite commands. See Assigning jump bar aliases.

By default, players are now automatically sorted in orchestral order, regardless of the order in which you add them to the project. You can change the player sorting setting in the Players panel in Setup mode. See Players panel.

You can now designate players as soloists, such as in a concerto for solo violin and orchestra. Soloists are treated differently, such as their instruments not being numbered with other instruments of the same type and being automatically positioned in the conventional score position, that is, above the strings. See Designating players as soloists.

You can now define capos for individual fretted instruments. You can then control how capos affect notated pitches and chord symbols/diagrams independently of each other to suit a range of requirements. See Capos.

The lower zone, formerly known as the “bottom panel”, now contains multiple different panels, including Keyboard, Fretboard, and Drum Pads panels that you can use to input notes and the Mixer and Key Editor panels that you can use to adjust playback. See Lower zone (Write mode).

During MIDI recording, Dorico SE now automatically transcribes multiple simultaneous parts into separate voices, such as in contrapuntal piano music. Depending on your settings for MIDI recording and quantization, Dorico SE can also detect slurs, tremolos, trills, pedal lines, tuplets, and grace notes. See MIDI recording.

Insert mode has been given additional functionality, allowing you to change the scope of its impact. For example, you can now set Insert mode to affect all players in flows and also change the duration of the current bar. See Insert mode scopes.

You can also now set a stop position in each flow, which prevents any material beyond the stop point being affected by inserted notes. See Setting Insert mode stop positions.

Dialogs for visual items and options in the library are now accessible on a new Library menu. This also allows you to access these dialogs from all modes. See Library.

Numbered bar regions allow you to show bar counts in a region without additional notations. This can help performers keep track of how many bars have passed when playing repetitive music. See Numbered bar regions.

Changing the application language now takes effect immediately, without the need to restart Dorico SE. See Changing the application language.

The Hub has been redesigned, and now includes a Create New page where you can set up basic project information, including adding the project title, selecting a time signature, and specifying a starting number of bars. See Hub.

When adding ensembles, you can now build custom ensembles and save them for future projects. The ensemble picker has also been given a default key command. See Ensemble picker and Building and saving custom ensembles.

Some functions in the Notes toolbox now have additional options available when you click and hold their button, including allowing you to open the tuplets popover. See Notes toolbox.

You can now switch between accessing panels and popovers from the Notations toolbox in Write mode. See Notations toolbox.

A new automatic note respelling dialog has been added, allowing you to specify the notes you want to respell and apply general preferences to the selection. See Respell Notes Automatically dialog.

You can now copy note spellings to other layouts, for example, if you originally respelled notes in a part layout but want those spellings to appear in the full score layout as well. See Copying note spellings to other layouts.

Additionally, you can reset changes to note spellings in either the current layout only or in all layouts. See Resetting note spellings.

You can now calculate and create chord symbols based on the harmony of selected notes. See Calculating chord symbols based on existing music.

You can change the arrangement of polychord and altered bass note chord symbols. See Changing the arrangement of compound chord symbols.

You can now show parentheses around chord symbols, including showing only a single left or right bracket on individual parenthesized chord symbols. See Parenthesized chord symbols.

For players set to show chord diagrams, you can now show only the chord symbol or chord diagram for individual chord symbols. See Showing only chord symbols or chord diagrams.

The new Insert Music Symbol dialog makes it easier to add music symbols, such as note glyphs and accidentals, to text items and in text frames. See Insert Music Symbol dialog.

You can now input tasto solo indications and bracketed figures, including only showing a single bracket on each figure. See Figured bass popover and Showing single brackets on figured bass.

Additionally, there is now a preference for whether system/frame breaks are allowed within bars. Disallowing breaks within bars lets you select anything in the bar at the start of which you want a system/frame break. See Allowing/Disallowing breaks within bars.

You can now show fingerings in chord diagrams, either inside dots or at the ends of strings. You can change individual fingerings when editing chord diagram shapes. See Hiding/Showing fingerings in chord diagrams and Edit Chord Diagram dialog.

You can now interact with rests belonging to unpitched percussion instruments, including moving rests vertically and deleting rests. See Moving rests vertically and Deleting rests.

You can now show player names instead of instrument names for each player in each layout independently, and set both full and short player names for each player. For example, in works with multiple percussionists, showing “Percussion 1” in staff labels regardless of their current instrument is sometimes preferred. See Showing instrument/player names in staff labels and Renaming players.

Additional options have been added for the appearance and position of instrument transpositions in staff labels, including parenthesizing instrument transpositions and showing them after the instrument number. See Changing the appearance/position of instrument transpositions in staff labels.

You can now show vertical labels for player groups to the left of staff labels, as is sometimes used in large-scale works. See Player group labels.

A Reset to Factory option has been added to the Preferences dialog, allowing you to restore the factory defaults for application preferences if necessary. See Preferences dialog.

All four ways of saving, resetting, and removing defaults in options dialogs are now always shown. Previously, it was necessary to hold a modifier key to access other options if you had existing saved defaults. See Layout Options dialog.

When you save projects, Dorico now generates preview images of the layout open in the music area. PNG files are used on the Open Recent page in the Hub. See Project Info dialog.

You can now add retakes and pedal level changes to, and remove them from, multiple rhythmic positions simultaneously. See Adding retakes with the popover, Adding retakes with the panel, and Removing retakes and pedal level changes.

You can now change the voice of existing notes using the same methods as creating and switching between voices during note input. See Changing the voice of existing notes.

The templates for achieving consistent page formatting that used to be known as “master pages” have been renamed, and are now known as “page templates” throughout Dorico. See Page templates.

You can now hide numbers in subordinate bar number sequences and only show alphabetical letters, such as “a”, “b”, and “c”. See Adding subordinate bar numbers.

You can now force centered beams for beams that include notes only on one side of the middle staff line using the new Custom Centered Beam dialog. See Creating centered beams.

You can now turn existing notes into grace notes and vice versa. See Turning existing notes into grace notes and Turning grace notes into normal notes.