At NYC Music Services, we’re very excited to announce the immediate availability of the new Scoring Express suites for Dorico and Sibelius, the collection of professional templates based on the same ones we use regularly. New to the fold are the Choral & Vocal suites, packaged separately for Dorico and Sibelius, but made to look as similar as possible to each other, and of course to attain a high level of aesthetic beauty and functionality.
The Choral & Vocal templates
Scoring Express — Choral & Vocal includes eight professional templates for stand-alone use. In the Sibelius version corresponding Manuscript Papers and House Styles for each template are also provided; in the Dorico version, the templates are installed automatically so you can use them as templates from the Hub, and you can use any Scoring Express for Dorico file as a house style source, via the Library Manager.
Two hymnal templates are provided, both at the traditional 6″ x 9″ size as well as the “half-letter” (5.5″ x 8.5″) size, for easy home printing.
Five octavos are provided: SATB condensed octavo, SATB open octavo, SSA open octavo, SSAATTBB open octavo, and TTB open octavo, at the 6.75″ x 10.5″ size.
Rounding out the suite is a voice and piano template at 9″ x 12″ (Concert) size, for traditional sheet music publishing. Of course, these sizes can be scaled easily in Dorico and Sibelius while retaining all of the other stylistic and engraving features.
Engraving features
Speaking of engraving features, as has become customary in Scoring Express templates, there are many of them in the Choral & Vocal suite. If you hunt around, you’ll find pleasant surprises in every corner. (Or, if you don’t like surprises, you can consult the additional documentation provided specifically for the Choral & Vocal suite.)
Both the Dorico and Sibelius templates add more character and text styles tuned for use in choral and vocal contexts. Hymnal templates get particular attention for hymn numbers, hymn topics, passages, and verses, with accommodations made to suit a variety of preferences.
In Dorico, you can choose between a continuous hymnal layout or a single hymn layout, and tweak your numbering preferences accordingly.
Little things like a line for Accompanist brackets in Sibelius, or an Accompanist Line font style in Dorico — used in hymnals to show a recommended passage for an instrumental introduction — lend a hand in getting nicer-looking results more quickly:
Similar house style
A goal for the Scoring Express templates is to achieve comparable results whenever possible, regardless of the software application used. Sometimes this simply means diving deep into the settings to set the precise decimal point in an obscure dialog, or translating among the software products when terminology differs.
Other times, though, a different solution is necessary. Take the example of divisi arrows on vocal staves. When vocal staves divide to show different lines on separate staves, arrows at the end of the system can be shown to emphasize the change, and again at the end of the division to show the staves are rejoining.
Dorico does this automatically, as shown here in the Dorico Help manual:
In Sibelius, though, the only thing provided by default are some symbols that need to be manually positioned. Although we can’t make Sibelius work like Dorico, we sought to improve upon this in two ways. First, we tweaked the settings of the Choral divide arrow and created special symbols, Choral join arrow down and Choral join arrow up, specifically for use in choral divisi:
Next — thanks to a big assist from our hero, Bob Zawalich, we provided custom plug-ins to make it easy to place these automatically at the end of a system — no additional configuration required. You can even assign custom keyboard shortcuts to these if you find that you use them often.
Crimson Pro
Scoring Express welcomes another font into the fold, with the Choral & Vocal suites. Crimson Pro, a beautiful serif typeface family designed by Jacques Le Bailly, is a newer version of a design called Crimson. It’s contemporary yet classic, compact yet legible, and is the default font for all of the Choral & Vocal templates.
Moreover, it’s bundled with all Scoring Express installation as of today’s update — including the Chamber, Jazz, and Theatre & Studio templates.
For users of the mobile version of Sibelius and the iPad version of Dorico, because of current limitations with iPad fonts, Crimson Pro won’t show up there quite yet, but we’re working with both Avid and Steinberg to try get it included in future releases on those platforms, so that Scoring Express Choral & Vocal scores look exactly the same as they do on the desktop.
All templates updated, and new bundle options
In addition to today’s release of the brand-new Choral & Vocal suites, we’ve updated all of the suites for both Dorico and Sibelius. All version numbers as of today are at version 1.9.
Updates
If you already have any of these other suites, you’ll find them available for a free update in the Downloads section of your Notation Central account.
Here’s a complete list of the suites, and prices, for Dorico and Sibelius:
Dorico:
- Scoring Express for Dorico – Chamber: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Dorico – Choral & Vocal: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Dorico – Jazz: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Dorico – Theatre & Studio: $79.99
Sibelius:
- Scoring Express for Sibelius – Chamber: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Sibelius – Choral & Vocal: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Sibelius – Jazz: $69.99
- Scoring Express for Sibelius – Theatre & Studio: $79.99
In addition to the addition of the Crimson Pro font, there are some updates mostly to the Theatre & Studio templates so that the Dorico and Sibelius versions are more consistent. On the Sibelius side, we’ve updated all of the bundled plug-ins to their latest version.
Bundle discount
Until today we offered a “bundle” product for the Chamber, Jazz, and Theatre & Studio suites. That bundle is going away as a stand-alone item, but in its place we’re offering a “make-your-own” bundle option:
- For Sibelius, use the coupon code SESIB25 to get 25% off when you purchase 3 or more Scoring Express for Sibelius suites in a single purchase.
- For Dorico, use the coupon code SEDOR25 to get 25% off when you purchase 3 or more Scoring Express for Dorico suites in a single purchase.
Compatibility
Scoring Express is compatible with these file formats of the software:
- Sibelius Ultimate 2023.11 and later
- Dorico Pro 6.0 and later
Dorico 6 files can be opened in previous versions of Dorico, so if you’re not running the latest Dorico version, the Scoring Express templates will open, although you may find that some features don’t work as intended.
Sibelius files and house styles cannot be opened in certain previous versions when the file format changes.
If you’re running Sibelius Ultimate 2023.8 or earlier, we’ve included what is now the “legacy” version of Scoring Express (v. 1.6) in your purchase of the Chamber, Jazz, or Theatre & Studio suites, which will open in Sibelius Ultimate as far back as 2020.3; however, those files have not been updated with the latest changes and will not be updated further in the future.
Credits
Powering these new and updated templates are, once again, Leo Nicholson on the Dorico side and Joseph Trefler on the Sibelius side. In addition to being expert users in their respective software platforms, Leo and Joseph are top music preparers with a keen sense for detail, and that’s been reflected in the meticulous work they’ve put into these templates over many months.
Dan Kreider provided some early prototypes for the Scoring Express Choral & Vocal Dorico templates, and Bob Zawalich’s Sibelius plug-ins take Scoring Express to the next level; not to mention many other collaborators whose collective expertise has made its way into the templates or their constituent elements.
We hope you enjoy Scoring Express!
Justin Tokke
This is nifty! Nice job guys.
Philip Rothman
Thanks, Justin!
Robert Sterling
A great deal of my work is with choral music. I’ve owned the other Scoring Express templates (which are hugely useful!) and had already adapted them to my choral needs. But I grabbed the new Choral & Vocal templates the moment the announcement appeared online a week or so ago. I’m confident they will be a help in my work. As a self-publishing composer/arranger, the Scoring Express templates make the editing/engraving process easier for someone who would rather be writing.