Having used Dorico for about 3 months, I believe that I am now as competent as I was in Finale (having used that program for 34 years!). The climb was a bit steep but there is lots of great help on line and wow, was it worth it!.
Dorico is so cleverly thought out. The needs of every kind of composer/ arranger / musician have been catered for - right from the start (rather than bolting-on features later as Finale had to do. I still keep Finale - but I wouldn’t dream of starting any new projects with; it is just there to create xml files so I can import my old Finale projects into Dorico.
Others have mentioned all the great Dorico features that make Dorico such a delight to work with but the one I am finding most rewarding are in the playback. It takes a bit of effort to understand the linkage from a musician’s playing technique in the score to a playback technique and then to the key switches in the connected VSTs via the expression maps. However, the results can sound stunningly like recordings of real musicians and singers rather than computer generated audio.
I also got the opportunity to make proper use of flows in a transcription of a work with 5 sections. That worked brilliantly too (once I’d found out how to adjust the time between flows in playback=.
All in all this is great software which I would recommend to anyone who needs a fully featured notation package. Yes there are cheaper options but, well, Dorico they aint!
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Finally someone who speaks from my heart!!!
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