Is Dorico capable of creating polyrythms and polymeters? I would love to be able to score stuff where different tempi and time signatures exist simultaneously.
I now use Sibelius and with some workflow killing workarounds I can do multiple time signatures, but creating two parts with each a different tempo is almost impossible.
We have designed the underlying architecture and the way that Dorico thinks about music to make this possible to implement, but polytempo where the bar and beat lengths do not align will not be possible in the very first version; it is possible that you may be able to write music where the beat lengths do not align but the bar lengths do (e.g. 2/4 vs. 6/8 and similar), but we’re not yet sure.
Over time we intend to support polymetric and polytempo music, but these are not small challenges to meet.
WOW-I was really hoping it would have these capabilities–GREAT news, and well worth waiting for!
Thanks Bob
On my wish-list, that’s for sure.
First of all, I’m so excited to see that somebody has taken the bull by the horns and is actually building an alternative to the duopoly on score production software, thank you Dan and your team for all your hard work. I appreciate the following is a fairly niche wish list, but I’m finding more and more composers wanting this sort of complex functionality from their software, and Dorico actually looks like the first program where developers listen to composers enough to integrate it!
I’d love to see an option to create two completely independent layers of music, similar to the three orchestras in Stockhausen’s “Gruppen”, able to operate in separate tempos simultaneously. Coupling this with integration for “irrational” time signatures such as 2/6, 7/10, etc. would be just fantastic. These have been available in OpenMusic and Lilypond for some time, and have more recently been made possible in Agostini and Ghisi’s Bach and Cage Libraries for Max/MSP (admittedly written in a totally different language to Sibelius and Dorico, perhaps you could draw on their expertise…?)
Combine that with proper microtones, and I’d give up Finale in a heartbeat. Still, i imagine you have more pressing matters before grappling with specifics like this!
I second Steve’s comments here on polytempo capabilities. Would be amazing. Also—speaking as a long-time Sibelius user currently undergoing the arduous-yet-fulfilling migration to Dorico—because I really don’t want to learn Lilypond. 
(Also, hi Steve!)
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Hey Mark, Sascha here! What a nice coincidence to find you on this forum!
You can achieve easily polymeter in Dorico where the fundamental beat is the same (1 quarter = 1 quarter).
If you want to have different fundamental beats, one needs to hack a little with timesignatures, pickup bars and tuplets. Bur surely that would all be possible.
Here’s a well cited tutorial on very basic examples: https://www.scoringnotes.com/tutorials/masking-meters-creating-polymeters-metric-modulations-dorico/
Hi Sascha. I think you’ve misunderstood polytempo, which is not polymeter. The goal here is to have different tempi for different players (Gruppen is for three different orchestras playing atcthe same time in the same room but at different tempi).
I don’t think I did.
If you want some group to play half as slow while still being represented with quarter notes, one can fake a pickup bar, then create for example 2:4q tuplets and hide them, right?
It just gets very complicated with more complicated polymeter-ratios 
The way I see this tutorial, it’s not a matter of polymeter, but of polytempo, as the eights in the 12/8 part and the eights in the 4/4 part of the score are played at different tempi, with a relation of 3:2 to each other.
The basso continuo is playing at the same time, in the same room, but with a different tempo than the choir, 1.5x faster to be precise 
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Yes, you’re right. As Gruppen was referenced here, I assumed there was no link between the tempi in the polymeter wanted by the OP (as in Gruppen — there are few instances on which the three directors are in sync)
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