I’ve had Dorico for almost a year now, and still haven’t written any music in it whatsoever because it lacks the promised microtonal playback. Has there been an development in that department or is it completely on hold? Even the temporary solution of MIDI note editing (which would be an extremely important feature, anyway) would help.
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I’m really sorry to say that we have not yet been able to work on this area. Our most difficult problem is prioritising all of the hundreds, if not thousands, of things that people want us to be working on. I can understand your frustration with this functionality not being available. I have been in touch with several composers writing microtonal music who are nevertheless pleased to have much smoother workflows for creating accidentals, custom key signatures, etc. available in Dorico than in the programs they were using previously, but they too have expressed their desire for playback to reflect the music they are writing. We do absolutely plan to address this, but I can’t say when we will be able to make further progress in this area.
I take it that MIDI editing is prioritized high on your list, though. When can we expect to be able to add pitchbend or CC messages to individual notes? While only a temporary solution, this at least would make it possible to have microtonal playback in Dorico.
Finale already has quite flexible microtonal implementation - any symbols can easily be used as accidentals, and they’re correctly and automatically spaced, and inserted using key commands. And there’s polyphonic playback, without pitchbends. (Sibelius has none of this.) I think most Finale users, even microtonalists, are not aware of this functionality, though, but it’s there, although I’m sure Dorico is more pleasant in use. I’ll try it some of these days - after all, I already purchased it. I just can’t make my music on it.
When can we expect to be able to add pitchbend or CC messages to individual notes?
I’m afraid I can’t say – it won’t be in the incoming update, but it may be possible for us to include it in the next one. We haven’t done any detailed planning for the release beyond the next one yet.