Summer is here! At NYC Music Services, and Scoring Notes, we’ll be taking it easy the next few weeks as we recharge with that solar energy after a very busy first half of 2025. Don’t worry, things won’t go totally dark around here, but if activity seems a little lighter than usual, that’s the reason.
Fortunately, there’s lots around here to catch up on. For your summer reading, there are the many news articles, reviews, tips, and tutorials that we’ve produced, to get you all caught up for the second half of this year.
For your (re)-listening pleasure, of course, there’s the Scoring Notes podcast, with many episodes where we talk all about our favorite topics: music notation software and related technology.
And over at Notation Central, our marketplace for music notation technology, there is a summer sale going on, with price reductions across the board, to help you make the most of the music notation software you use.
So, it’s time to summer-ize! Wishing you a very happy holiday and summer season, from all of us at NYC Music Services and Scoring Notes!
Reading
Notation software
If you use music notation software, the first place to start your summer reading list would be our Product Guide, where we keep current with every major release of Dorico, MuseScore, and Sibelius, and most of the intermediate updates, too.
Headling the news is Dorico 6, released barely two months ago, and already followed with the first update to 6.0.10. This was a huge update, and if the Dorico 5 cycle could be characterized as full of audio goodies, Dorico 6 is brimming with delights in the areas of engraving and workflow. Cutaway scores and proofreading are two of the headline features, but there are robust advancements in chord symbols, text, playing techniques, and more — they’re all either new or more robust than ever.
MuseScore Studio saw a significant mid-cycle update to MuseScore 4.5, featuring improvements in the areas of percussion, engraving, text handling, and input. Several features were designed specifically to appeal to Finale users switching to MuseScore Studio, and to revamp the entire experience around percussion, and this release was followed by patches in MuseScore Studio 4.5.1 and 4.5.2.
Sibelius has seen three updates in 2025 already: The Sibelius 2025.2 update introduced a new “decondensing parts” option, where Sibelius will create two new Dynamic Parts from a single staff, rename them for you, and show only the music relevant to each player, along with Staff Filters. Sibelius 2025.3 and 2025.4 were largely maintenance releases to refine some of the parts and hidden notes features.
And while Finale has been discontinued, it’s still officially supported — but that window is dwindling, and will end on August 25 of this year. Stay tuned to Scoring Notes, because we’ll be publishing some comprehensive guides on how to manage the twilight of Finale’s sunset. In the meantime, you’ll want to download and install all the Finale fonts for safekeeping, and we showed you how to do this on both Mac and Windows, in a post from January of this year.
Related tech
Optical music recognition
Appearing at the end of 2024 was a new overview of optical music recognition (OMR) software — or “music scanning software” as it is more casually known. Like every other corner of the music notation software universe, there seem to be endless opinions about the best available options, dependent upon personal preferences and use — not to mention, endless options. We cover six of them in this overview, and follow up with Steve Morell, the article’s author, in a podcast episode, for more context.
Cubase 14
Also technically a 2024 item was our coverage of Steinberg’s release of Cubase 14. If you’re wondering why you’d be reading about a DAW in the pages of Scoring Notes, the newly-released Cubase 14 offered a Dorico-based score editor that is — for perhaps the first time in a traditional DAW — capable of producing a score that will look like it belongs on a music stand.
PDF Expert and AI
Old and new tech converged in a proof-of-concept piece about using artificial intelligence to ingest and analyze huge quantities of information. With an assist from AI, the manuals may again be the best — and quickest — source of information about how to use music notation software. I described my brief experience with PDF Expert and its Copilot AI assistant to wade through the Dorico and Sibelius references, and the encouraging results I encountered.
Music Type Foundry fonts
Closer to home, at NYC Music Services, we proudly revised and re-released five of the Music Type Foundry fonts, exclusively on our Notation Central marketplace. This marked the first time in three years that the Music Type Foundry (MTF) fonts have been made available to new customers. Each of the newly available fonts, originally designed by Abraham Lee, was updated and revised by Dan Kreider, and are now only available in the SMuFL format, for use in Dorico and any other notation application that supports the SMuFL standard. Further, each MTF music font now comes bundled with a complementary text font and an accompanying font metadata file containing recommended engraving settings.
Scoring Express updates
To complement the release of Dorico 6, we updated the Scoring Express suites for Dorico, the collection of professional templates based on the same ones we use regularly. Some of these are specific to the Jazz or Theatre & Studio collections, but others are applicable across the Scoring Express line. These updates are created in Dorico Pro 6.0 and take advantage of some of the new features and improvements introduced in that version of Dorico. Notably, there are updates to the way Paragraph Styles, chord symbols, and system-attached items are handled, compared to earlier versions of Scoring Express for Dorico. In addition, when possible, we made efforts to align the templates more closely with their Finale and Sibelius counterparts, for users of those products.
And if you missed it, in October of last year, we created playlists of approximately a dozen short videos, one each for Scoring Express for Dorico and Scoring Express for Sibelius, that demonstrate Scoring Express features and tips for using the templates. Some of these are specific to the Theatre & Studio collection, but others are applicable across the Scoring Express line. Further, we’ve made use of the commenting feature in each program to update one of the example files that comes with the Theatre & Studio collection in Dorico and Sibelius. The “Rock band + strings landscape” example file is now annotated with comments that provide contextual tips for many of the features found in Scoring Express, along with links to the corresponding help videos from the playlist.
Special coverage and tips
We attended and covered two major events this year already: The 2025 NAMM Show, and the 2025 MOLA Conference.
NAMM 2025
Scoring Notes once again provided coverage of the NAMM Show. As expected, the show offered no shortage of opportunities to meet with the interesting individuals in the world of music notation software and related technology.
Starting from getting “on the scene“, trying to see as many people and products as possible, both familiar and unfamiliar, and continuing on to have more detailed conversations, it was a great visit. Here are the highlights, most of which was offered as web site content, video content, and podcast content:
- NAMM 2025: An interview with Avid’s Sam Butler (podcast)
- NAMM 2025: An interview with Oriol López Calle (podcast)
- NAMM 2025: An interview with Martin Keary (podcast)
- NAMM 2025: An interview with John Barron (podcast)
- NAMM 2025: Decondensing Sibelius with Avid’s Sam Butler
- NAMM 2025: Imbibing transcribing with Oriol López Calle
- NAMM 2025: Musing on software and design with Martin Keary
- NAMM 2025: On with the show with Steinberg’s John Barron
- NAMM 2025: On the scene
Our NAMM 2025 YouTube playlist offers hours of thrilling video entertainment directly from the show!
MOLA 2025
Although much smaller than NAMM, the MOLA Conference is equally important to the Scoring Notes audience, from the perspective of the issues discussed and the people involved. Scoring Notes continued its valuable partnership with MOLA, both participating in the content of the conference itself and bringing coverage to readers and listeners.
Hosted by The University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance in Ann Arbor, Michigan, the 43rd annual conference of MOLA: An Association of Performance Librarians ran from May 30 through June 2, 2025, and brought together music librarians, publishers, vendors, composers, performers, and technology enthusiasts.
David MacDonald and I recapped the conference from Ann Arbor, with a summary of the tech fair and the rest of the event: from the sessions on broadening access, copyright, professional development, IMSLP, and much more, which you can find in your podcast feed, or video form, below:
Useful stuff
Scoring Notes continues to feature content you probably won’t find in quite the same way anywhere else.
What do we mean when we refer to the “weight” of paper? We sorted out the definitions of paper weights, sizes, and the various means and methods of calculating them — pound for pound, along with a useful calculator, embedded right into the post.
Did you know that you can create blank sheet music paper from right within your browser? We looked at BlankSheetMusic, a free service that offers an array of browser-based tools to print blank sheet music paper.
Dorico has a remarkable set of features to assist with producing PDF files that are reliably organized, but we showed you how to finesse the settings to get a consistent set of results.
Of course, there’s much more where that came from on our tips and tutorials pages.
Re-listening
We know everyone reading here is already subscribed to the Scoring Notes podcast! But if you’re not doing so already, here are all the places you can follow us: Amazon | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pandora | PocketCasts | Podchaser | RSS | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn
In addition to all of the aforementioned coverage of the NAMM Show and MOLA Conference on the podcast, we revisited with Steinberg’s Daniel Spreadbury about Dorico 6, which he called their “largest release to date”.
We had a conversation with Brian McBrearty, forensic musicologist, whose job it is to apply musical knowledge to questions around copyright, explain musical facts, and put them into context so that a court can arrive at a decision with the best information available.
And we’ve expanded our partnership with Twenty Thousand Hertz, the popular podcast about the world’s most interesting sounds, offering up relevant episodes directly in the Scoring Notes podcast feed, like one about the 150-year history of audio mediums, and another one about four inventions that changed music forever.
Seeking your questions
Do you want a chance to shape the content of a future Scoring Notes episode?
Just record your question as a voice memo and drop it directly here, or send it as an email attachment or as a file-sharing link to podcast@scoringnotes.com. We’d love it if you provide your name (first name only is OK), where in the world you’re calling from, and what music notation software you use — or if you don’t use it at all (yes, we have quite a few listeners in that camp).
If you’re shy, you can alternatively write your question in an email and send it to us. But, where’s the fun in that? (Well, there might be some fun in hearing David read your question in his booming baritone on the air, I’ll admit.)
Send us your question no later than Monday, July 14, 2025.
Reduction (in prices)
At Notation Central, you can chill out this summer with some cool deals.
This is the first general sale all year, with 20% off nearly everything in the store, through Monday, July 15, 2025.
This includes items like:
- 20% off all Scoring Express templates for Sibelius, Dorico, and Finale — including the bundles!
- 20% off all Notation Express profiles for Sibelius and Dorico, including the 15-key/XL bundles and the new Keypad versions for Dorico and Sibelius
- 20% off all music and text fonts
- 20% off ebooks and video tutorials like Using Sibelius Effectively, SWA Masterclass Sibelius Ultimate, and Dorico Basics
- 20% off the Sibelius plug-ins Graphical MIDI Tools and UltraMix…
- …and more!
Just use the code SUMMER at checkout to see the discounts applied.
There are some extra savings to be had, too: Use the code SMUFLME to get 25% off when you purchase two or more SMuFL fonts from NorFonts together. This includes BlueNotes, BopMusic, CapoScore, Concerto, Da Capo, Graphira, Groove, Mezza, Mezzo, RealScore, Rhapsody, Scherzo, Scordatura, Soli, The Copyist, Tutti, Vintage BH, and Vintage Plate, for use in Dorico and Finale 27. Stack the code SMUFLME with the SUMMER discount for super savings of 40% off.
Joining the party this year are the MTF fonts, and a similar offer applies: Use the code MTF25 to get 25% off when you purchase two or more MTF SMuFL fonts together. This includes MTF-Arnold, MTF-Beethoven, MTF-Cadence, MTF-Haydn, and MTF-Scorlatti, for use in Dorico and Finale 27. Stack the code MTF25 with the SUMMER discount for super savings of 40% off.
Of course there’s, Notation Express and Notation Express XL for Sibelius and Notation Express and Notation Express XL for Dorico, where you can enjoy cross-platform support multi-language support and a direct connection to the software.
And, if you have multiple Stream Decks, well, more power to you:
Don’t forget that you can run two profiles side-by-side, on an iPad, with Stream Deck Mobile — even one with the Sibelius profile and one with the Dorico profile:
New as of October 2024 is a version of Notation Express to emulate the keypad experience right on the phone — and not just in Sibelius, but in Dorico, as well: Notation Express Keypad for Dorico and Sibelius!
Notation Express Keypad uses familiar numeric keypad layouts on your phone to make using Dorico or Sibelius quick and fun. Because there is no concept of the keypad in Dorico, Notation Express Keypad closely follows the arrangement and order of the Sibelius Keypad in both applications — perfect for when you’re working on a laptop, on a computer without a numeric keypad, or just want to add more power and speed to your existing setup. Whether or not you already know how to use the Sibelius Keypad, you will be right at home in Notation Express Keypad.
And while you’re “expressing” yourself, check out Scoring Express, collections of professional templates for Sibelius, Dorico, and Finale, based on the same templates we use at NYC Music Services, an industry-leading music preparer. Each collection includes many professional templates for stand-alone use, plus corresponding manuscript papers, document styles, and libraries, so you can use Scoring Express to start a new score from scratch or beautify an existing score.
The Scoring Express bundles are ordinarily $60 off compared to buying each genre separately, so this is a great opportunity to pick up the bundle of all the Finale collections, the bundle of all the Sibelius collections or the bundle of all the Dorico collections and stack your savings by using the SUMMER code for an incredible combined value of more than $90 off.
Future updates to Notation Express and Scoring Express remain on the road map. Now is a great time to lock in your savings, thanks to the Notation Central summer sale, which will run through July 15, 2025.
Don’t forget to use the code SUMMER at checkout to see the 20% discounts applied.