Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH Blog Dorico 4.3 released with refined Key Editor and much, much more

We're pleased to announce the release of Dorico 4.3, our eighth (and very probably final) release of 2022, and it's a big one. This release is headlined by a brand new feature that automatically generates voicings for chord symbols, which should be a boon for arrangers, and significant improvements to the Key Editor, bringing it to a comparable level of power and comfort as its very mature counterpart in Cubase. But that's not all: there are improvements throughout the application, with engraving improvements to beams, barlines, chord symbols, chord diagrams, lyrics, rehearsal marks, single-line percussion, system dividers and text; condensing improvements; new note input and editing features; easier tremolos for percussion; and a good helping of dozens of bug fixes.This update is free to all existing Dorico 4 users, whether you're using Dorico SE, Dorico Elements or Dorico Pro - and if you're not yet using Dorico, or you're still using an earlier version, it's a great time to get on board because Dorico 4 new licenses, crossgrades, updates and upgrades are all on sale for a huge 50% off as part of Steinberg's Cyber Weeks promotion (ending 30 November 2022).Let's dive in!To get an overview of what's new, you can listen to the dulcet tones of the voice of Dorico, Anthony Hughes, as he gives you a whistle-stop tour of the dozens of new features and improvements in Dorico 4.3.https://youtu.be/xtMXABSRm6AAs usual, you can read comprehensive information about all of the new features and improvements - and the dozens of fixes - included in Dorico 4.3 in the full Dorico 4 Version History PDF, which now weighs in at a whopping 200 pages, nearly 50 of which are devoted to Dorico 4.3 alone.Generate Notes from Chord SymbolsIn the initial Dorico 4.0 release in January this year, we introduced a feature to generate chord symbols from notes, and now we are pleased to introduce something potentially even more useful: a feature to generate notes from chord symbols, producing well-voiced chords with sensible voice leading, avoiding as far as possible parallel fifths and octaves (unless you want them!), and able to do some remarkably clever things, such as use a rhythm from one instrument as a pattern for the generated notes, and even take hints from notes you have added to guide the resulting voicings.Take a look at Anthony's dedicated video to get a better idea of what this feature is capable of:https://youtu.be/GU_OljxlTsYThe amount of work that has gone into this feature is pretty astonishing, and hopefully it shows in the results you will get. We've taken the knowledge of an experienced human arranger and tried to distill it down to a sophisticated set of rules and algorithms that can handle chords of arbitrary complexity and in any sequence. All manner of factors that an experienced arranger would consider are taken into account: not only balancing voice leading with parallel and contrary motion, but also the distance you need to hear between particular chord degrees to avoid a voicing sounding muddy balanced against the overal span of a voicing, which chord degrees can be omitted when voicing for instruments that can only play a limited number of notes (such as mallet percussion, or fretted instruments), and so on, and so on.Key EditorDorico 4.3 is the culmination of nearly two years' work in reworking the Mixer, Play mode, and its MIDI editors. We started working on this in January 2021, with the adoption of an entirely new UI technology. Users first got to see the fruits of this labour with the release of Dorico for iPad in July 2021, with the arrival of the first version of the Key Editor and the Mixer in the lower zone, and the reworked track overview in Play mode. Desktop users got their first taste of the new Key Editor with the release of Dorico 4.0 in January of this year, and since then, each update has restored and extended functionality.Since the release of Dorico 4.2 in July, work has focused primarily on refining the user experience, and we hope you will be pleasantly surprised at how mature and fully-featured the Key Editor has become. Allow Anthony to walk you through the main changes we've been working on:https://youtu.be/Q7WV74YcKhERight away you should be able to tell the difference. The floating zoom control from Dorico for iPad is gone (though it's still there on the iPad, where it's very useful), replaced by Cubase-style horizontal and vertical scroll bars with integrated zoom controls. You can open as many velocity, dynamics, pitch bend or MIDI CC editors as you like, and freely resize them. You can save and recall Key Editor configurations so that it only takes a moment to restore your favourite combinations, such as velocity plus MIDI CC 1 and MIDI CC 11. The transform tool now works not only on velocities, but also on MIDI CC, and the unique histogram tool also operates on MIDI CC data. Editing is more refined, with Dorico smartly constraining mouse drags so that you can't accidentally change the pitch of a note while changing its duration, or vice versa. The Key Editor now features full support for copy and paste, so you can duplicate notes, MIDI CC data, dynamics and tempos - you can even paste MIDI CC data from one controller to another, making it easy to transform, say, CC7 data into CC11 data. And you can hold Alt when dragging notes in the piano roll or percussion editor to quickly make a copy. There's better keyboard suppoAll of this - plus you can now quickly and easily show and edit the music for multiple instruments at the same time in the Key Editor. The track selector in the top left corner of the Key Editor is now a menu, allowing you to choose which instrument you are working on, or lock the selection and then choose multiple instruments. The various editors then show data from all of the selected tracks, clearly overlaid. In the piano roll and velocity editors, you can edit all of the music as if it belongs to a single instrument. In the MIDI CC and dynamics editors, you can draw in new data, and it is automatically applied to all tracks in the selection. Even the grandaddy of them all, Cubase, can't do this. Furthermore, you can also push MIDI CC or dynamics data from the nominated primary track to all of the secondary tracks in the selection, either region-by-region, or with a single click to sync the data across the whole track. This sync tool is a first for this kind of MIDI editor in any software.We let several experienced users who do MIDI programming and mock-up work in Dorico and their DAW of choice get an early look at this update, and asked them for their feedback on the new and improved workflow. All of them were delighted, and told us that in many cases these tools are now so mature and easy to use that the point at which they would find themselves needing to move their project into their sequencer has been pushed much, much later in the production process.We're thrilled with how the Key Editor has evolved over the course of this year's releases, and we hope you will be too. It now provides a powerful, solid foundation upon which we can build further features for tweaking the virtual performance of your projects in future versions.Note input and editing improvementsMoving beyond these two headline improvements, there are plenty of other useful changes throughout the rest of the application. Here are some of the workflow improvements for note input and editing:If you select a range of music before you create a clef, Dorico will now automatically create a restorative clef at the end of the selection.Similarly, if you select a range of music before you create a start repeat barline, Dorico will now automatically create an end repeat barline at the end of the selection.A new key command, Alt+U, has been introduced, which splits the selected notes into shorter notes, using the current rhythmic grid value to determine the length of the produced notes; you can also use Alt+U when the caret is visible, in which case the note will be split into shorter notes at multiples of the position of the caret relative to the start of the note (it's easier to understand when you see it than it is to explain it!).If you want to, you can now specify that Force Duration should remain active when you restart note input, instead of its state being reset when you stop note input.Similarly, you can now specify that the Set local properties control in the Properties panel toolbar should be set to Globally by default when starting a new project, so that changes to properties (where possible) apply to all layouts by default.When you create a glissando line by typing gliss into the Shift+O popover, the Glissando style property is no longer overridden by default.A new Toggle Hide Stem command has been added that makes it quicker to hide or unhide the stems of selected notes; you can either assign a key command or invoke this via the jump bar.As always, full details for all of these improvements can be found in the Version History PDF.Engraving improvementsWe've also made a number of modest but nonetheless significant improvements to the appearance of the music produced by Dorico, including:Bar number changes to subordinate bar numbers can now also change the primary bar number at the same barline, so you can now create sequences like 11, 12a, 12b, 12c, 13. Previously, you could only change the subordinate bar number after changing the primary bar number (i.e. the former sequence would have to be 11, 12, 12a, 12b, 13).New options for tick barlines that will be useful for producing editions of various kinds of early vocal music.Dorico now avoids showing stemless partial beams on rests at the start or end of beam groups by default, has a change to default engraving options that avoids beam corners when secondary beam groups appear on both sides of the primary beam, and has improved vertical positioning for centered beams when drawn within the staff.The appearance of capo chord symbols has been improved,