Dorico - Compose Music

Best app for writing any music you need!

It does work, and you can get by with the free version. But: I’m crossing over from Finale. I bought the desktop version of Dorico 5 using the cross grade price. But in order to use the full version of Dorico for iPad I have to pay again? Or pay a subscription? Seems wrong to me. Why can’t I pay once and have full access across my devices so the 2 apps can function seamlessly? And there is no support for handwriting. Come on, guys. This is a very “almost” product.

Dorico is everything for which I had been looking in music notation software ever since my original program, Encore, went out of business. Unlike Sibelius, which I always found to be user unfriendly, and clumsy, when it came to intuitively inputting data, Dorico’s inputs are so intuitive, and based on common sense, that use of the software is not only easy–it’s inviting. This is powerful music software that doesn’t get in the way of the creative process, but rather enhances it.

Not intuitive or simple to use at all. Obvious things like “undo” or adding dynamics, articulations, enharmonic spelling, double bars, etc., all in nonsensical places. Dynamics auto-place above notes instead of below, can’t move them. Finished inputting a chart and the program shifted the first 32 bars by an 8th note, no way to undo it, have to re-input all those bars. Terrible.

Dorico for iPad is over engineered and in doing so they’ve made life quite complicated. It should assume that what you’ve entered is what you want. But no, and you have to mess around with a ton of settings to try to “fix” it. For example, if you enter syncopated eighths and quarters, instead of defaulting to what you put in it changes them to tied notes. Then you have to mess about with all kind of properties to get what you entered. I would suggest that you don’t use it, but if you’re looking for a finale iPad app, it’s pretty much the only thing available.

As a former Finale user over 25 years, moving over to Dorico was a shock but as I’ve been getting more into Dorico. I see it was necessary. One thing I noticed that maybe should be addressed is, if you’re on the iPad and you click up to the Learn Button to open a project page. The learn options should address only the iPad versions being that there is some differences. Or give you 2 options, the computer version help or the iPad version help. I spent 2 hours trying to find Repeat wings for my iPad to discover after finally going to the forum that you don’t have that access on the iPad version. I understand there’s a lot of similarities but…. There’s a lot of things that are different also. Please keep up the great work & looking forward to making charts in Dorico. Gene

Everything so far about Dorico is great, but the app continuously crashes for iPadOS Version 18.0.1. Once fixed, I will rate the app 5 stars of course!

Dorico for iPad is an excellent app. It helped me learn a lot about writing music and notation without a lot of education. I can write on the go..I dont have to be sat on a desk to write music, which is quite revolutionary I think. This allows me find opportunities to transcribe my recordings. For however far my music transcription and development will go, I owe a lot to the flexibility of Dorico for iPad. I also find that the tutorials for the desktop version also help with the mobile version because they are so alike. I only use iPad version and I anticipate smooth transition once I get on the desktop version. Now just one pending issue I hope to return to edit out, is that I face file corruption almost everyday as of October 2024 with the iPad version. I hope the team finds a way to recreate this problem and trace it, because so far the fixes haven’t worked.

I have to use Dorico for school, and we have it on our school Mac lab, but I got the iPad version to use at home so I can work on my projects when I’m not at the university. When the app works, it’s great! It’s similar to the desktop version and is easy to use. I paid for the lifetime version because I thought it would be an amazing deal. However, half the time, the app crashes every 2-3 minutes and does not save my progress (after the most recent update on Oct. 9 it’s crashing within seconds of opening the app). I worked on the same 3 bar passage for 2 hours the other night because it kept crashing and reverting my file back to where it was before it crashed. My iPad is up to date, the app is up to date, and I even restarted my iPad and deleted/redownloaded the app. It’s frustrating when I’ve spent $120 to be able to do my homework at home. 2 stars because the app is great when it works.

I cannot recommend this software to anyone until the developers don’t fix this issue, which looking at the forums has happened to many people. I was working on a file for many days and suddenly I just couldn’t open it anymore. Please FIX this issue, it is essential to be able to use this for anything meaningful.