I recently attended the Musikschulkongress in Dresden – the largest professional development event for music school teachers in Germany. In a course on “Pedagogical Arranging” participants were asked which notation software they use in their teaching. The responses from 100 educators (multiple answers allowed) were as follows:
MuseScore: 48
Sibelius: 33
Finale: 13
Dorico: 4
Other / no software: 22
I’ve been a passionate Dorico user from day one and currently lead a music and arts school. I’d like to share some practical insights and suggestions, especially regarding Dorico for iPad.
The Growing Role of Play-Alongs in Teaching
An increasing number of teachers use play-along tracks in lessons, often via TomPlay. These platforms offer:
A count-in before playback
Automatic page turning with a preview of the next page
Tempo adjustment without compromising audio quality
Easy at-home practice
My suggestion
A similar practice mode or an enhanced Read Mode in Dorico for iPad, featuring:
Count-in before playback
Preview of the next page before (automatic) page turn
Access to tempo control, mixer, and playback position
Option to hear full arrangements even when viewing individual parts
These features would greatly support not only teachers, but also advanced students and professional musicians preparing for rehearsals – all without relying on pre-made content.
I realize this might go beyond the current minimalist approach of Read Mode, but perhaps a dedicated “Practice Mode” could be a solution.
Thanks so much for your fantastic work on Dorico – I’d love to see these kinds of features considered for future development.
I taught a Masters-level seminar in Analysis this past semester which was fairly heavy on notation. These are all high performing students planning a career in music. I used Dorico for all class presentations, except for a couple of older Finale files I just didn’t have time to convert, so I have gotten a few students to switch over to Dorico. I just went back through their exams and of the 12 students in the course the breakdown by the end of the semester was as follows:
In my experience Undergrads are probably 90% MuseScore. As MuseScore is really dominating the educational market right now (it’s free!), adding some more useful education/performance tools does seem like it could be advantageous, certainly from a marketing perspective.
I teach music theory to undergraduates and i use Dorico to prepare all my examples. Most of my students use MuseScore, but my composition studio is mostly using Dorico. If I had one request for the iPad version that would make it more usable in the classroom right away, it’d be to be able to change the pen size in read mode. Perhaps I am missing something, but right now when I use that to annotate an example, the lines are so think that I have to write absurdly large. Given the number of students who have iPads, I think that a little change like that might help draw in more educational users right away.
As for the OP’s request, I would use many of these, but I suspect that they would take a lot of time to implement, and as we all know from recent other posts, the Dorico programming team is quite small.
Hi, I predict, that among the 22 “other/no software” users are quite a lot, who still use “Capella”. I feel, that MuseScore will end the development of “Capella” in the future, because MuseScore is a better program for free. At least among most amateur users, there is not very much reason to buy a notation program anymore, because MuseScore can fill all their needs. It’s a bit like Audacity and WaveLab. Why buying a top level program, when the free program can do everything I want?
I like your suggestions!
I know that MuseScore being free is a strong argument – no doubt about it. But Dorico also offers an impressive feature set in its free entry-level version.
One practical point worth mentioning: MuseScore currently has no version for iPad that supports editing, whereas Dorico does – and it works quite well. For many music educators and students, especially in schools where iPads are used, this is a major advantage. At least that’s what I think.
A personal example: my father (62), a guitar teacher, recently switched from MuseScore to Dorico after many years of dedicated use. His verdict: “I love Dorico – it’s so much fun!” He was especially impressed by the capo feature and the ability to manage multiple pieces in a single file, with the flexibility to reorder them anytime. He now uses Dorico to create small playbooks for his students.
I’m well aware that the education market doesn’t offer much economic incentive – especially when it comes to classroom tools rather than paid content for self-learners. It always takes a good dose of idealism and dedication from developers to support this space. That’s why I truly appreciate the effort and passion behind Dorico’s development.