Compose your own music for free with Dorico. Create beautiful music notation for up to eight instruments quickly and easily with the on-screen keyboard, drum pads and fretboard. Play back instantly with the included sounds and shape the performance with powerful MIDI editing tools. When your piece is finished, share it as PDF, audio or MusicXML, or print directly to your AirPrint-enabled printer. Perform using the built-in read mode, and annotate with your Apple Pencil.
Dorico is the award-winning music notation and composition software from Steinberg for macOS, Windows, and iPadOS. It’s easy enough to learn and use that it is used by students in schools, and deep enough that it satisfies the needs of the most demanding professionals in the worlds of concert music, music for film and TV, and music publishing. Dorico for iPad is fully compatible with Dorico for macOS and Windows, so you can work on your projects on the move on your iPad and in your studio on your desktop or laptop computer, or share projects with musicians using Dorico on any platform.
Dorico’s interface is split into four modes. In Setup mode, you can add and change instruments, create and reorder sections of music (called “flows”), and choose how your music will be formatted for your musicians into layouts. In Write mode, you can input and edit music and other notations using simple, well-organized toolboxes and panels. In Engrave mode (included if you buy a paid subscription to Dorico’s advanced features), you can make graphical tweaks to every item in your project. Finally, in Play mode, you have access to powerful sequencer-style MIDI editing tools, including piano roll and velocity editors.
Dorico includes built-in virtual instruments and effects to allow you to play back your compositions, and you can also easily use any compatible Audio Unit plug-in or external MIDI device (with optional subscription or Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase), and tweak playback using the on-screen Mixer.
Input music using an on-screen piano keyboard, or by connecting a MIDI keyboard to your iPad directly via USB or using a compatible USB-to-Lightning adaptor. If you have a Magic Keyboard or other external keyboard, you can make use of extensive keyboard shortcuts to work quickly and efficiently.
Dorico is free to use, allowing you to write for ensembles of up to four players. Register with your free Steinberg ID to increase the player limit to eight, allowing you to write for ensembles like string or wind quartet, or SATB choir. If you want to take your composition and arranging to the next level, you can buy an optional subscription or Lifetime Unlock in-app purchase to access more features and power: write for ensembles of any number of players, and gain access to Engrave mode, allowing you to make graphical tweaks to individual items anywhere in your project.
HIGHLIGHTS
• Best automatic engraving of any software
• Easy note input using on-screen keyboard, MIDI keyboard, or external keyboard
• Intelligently adjusts notation as you write
• Any number of movements or pieces in a single project
• Automatic layout of instrumental parts
• Expressive playback using included sounds and effects
• Supports Audio Unit virtual instruments and effects processors
• Sequencer-style piano roll MIDI editor
• Sophisticated chord symbols, unpitched percussion and drum set notation
• Unbarred music, tuplets across barlines, etc. all handled correctly — no workarounds
• Transfer to and from other apps via MusicXML, MIDI, PDF, etc.
For support, please visit www.dorico.com/forum
If you like Dorico, please support us by rating this app in the App Store. Thank you!
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In-Apps
Dorico Lifetime Unlock
$149.99
Dorico Annual Subscription
$69.99
Dorico Monthly Subscription
$6.99
Screenshots
User Rating
4.53 out of 5
112 ratings
in Canada
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Ratings History
Reviews
Musescore does better
Unless you have some over standard work to edit, you will have to use so many workarounds that MuseScore will get the job done in a third of the time. Dorico’s support team will be impressively fast to reply to any question about how to do something. You’ll be told that what you are doing is a stupid idea and that a function to put that in a music score shouldn’t be implemented… even when it’s a standard notation for Mendelssohn and Schubert or even when it’s advised in Elaine Gould’s reference. They know better, but I’ll get back to Musescore.
Good but there are some problems
This is in most ways, the best music-composing app I've tried, but there is an annoying problem, so I write some music, but when I listen to it, the dynamics I wrote are not played, the volume of notes is the same no matter what dynamic I put, please fix this. And also, when I try to create an account, when I enter the code that was emailed to me, it said invalid code even though I entered the exact code that I was emailed.
Freezes! Don’t buy
Great idea. Serves wonderfully musicians needs. However the app crashes from time to time.. And not in predictable pattern. Requires to exit to file page to force a manual save to keep your work. Never happened in Cubasis 3. Ps running on iPad Pro 12.9 5th generation with 1 Tb
Powerful program, lots of crashes on iPad
I’ve been using this application on an M1 iPad for the last 8 months. While it has a huge number of useful features, I find it seizes a lot, so much so that I have to close the program and reopen it.
I have tried reloading the software from the App Store, but that did not eliminate the problem. And to add to my frustration, that process deleted the score I was working on, which annoyed me no end as I didn’t have a backup file.
I restarted the scoring, but the program crashed and eliminated what little I had created.
So I started again, and the same thing just happened. I was in the process of setting up a number of full scores with different instrument groups. Fortunately, I was not long into the process of composing, so I didn’t lose much music this time.
I shall continue to use the program, but I am NOT happy with this bug.
An outstanding accomplishment!
Dorico for iPad is an impressive achievement. It is the first app for iOS that has allowed me to do serious work and complete projects from start to finish. Although it is designed to function without any external peripherals, I personally prefer to use an Apple keyboard to type in my shortcuts; but it works surprisingly efficiently without it. With an active subscription, it could be called Dorico Elements+ for iPad. Although it has a simplified engrave mode and a limit of 12 players with a subscription, the full richness of Doroco’s features (gorgeous automatic engraving, playback controls, flows, and so much more) is available to users through a splendid UI, thoughtfully ported from the desktop application. I have completed two fairly significant test scores with it, and I am presently using it when I have some free time during a short mountain trip because I still don’t know how to take a real vacation! On top of it, the subscription cost (unavoidable in the iOS world to support real development) is very reasonable. I really must congratulate the Dorico team for such a tremendous accomplishment. I was sceptical at first, but I am now a true believer: it’s an iPad miracle!
Dorico for iPad is amazing!
Dorico is a game-changer for writing music notation on the iPad. I have tried virtually all earlier notation apps but none are as good as Dorico and the iPad app closely mirrors desktop Dorico so that learning either makes using the other very much easier. I would give more stars if I could…
