Here’s What’s Great about Dorico

Jon Burr

8 months ago

When MakeMusic announced it was discontinuing Finale, it sent shockwaves through the engraving world. For those of us who’ve spent decades in Finale, it felt like losing a trusted instrument. I decided it was time to move on — and after diving deep into Dorico, I quickly realized it isn’t just the next step; it’s the future of professional music notation. If you’re wondering what’s great about Dorico, here’s the short version: speed, automatic engraving, and a rules-based engine that thinks like a musician

I’d first glimpsed Dorico at a NYC Music Services seminar years ago, courtesy of Philip Rothman. At the time, I was doing heavy sweetening and playback work, so the lack of audio-file support made me hesitate. Still, I was intrigued by Dorico’s DAW-like MIDI editor — a modern rethink of what Finale had long abandoned. When Finale’s sunset announcement hit, the choice was obvious. I jumped in, full speed ahead. Here’s what I learned –

What’s Great About Dorico

Grid-based musical logic: Dorico sees music entries as durations of pitches placed on a time grid — every note’s length and position can be adjusted instantly with arrow keys.
Smart, consistent engraving: Dorico controls engraving, layout, and spacing globally or at granular levels, giving your entire project a unified professional look.
Built-in DAW-like playback: Its Play mode includes a piano roll, automation lanes, and MIDI-style editing far beyond Finale’s playback tools.
Deep instrument intelligence: Dorico calculates harp pedals automatically and “knows” the fingerings and ranges of every instrument.
Instant harmony tools: It can generate notes from chords, chords from notes, and chord symbols from harmonic analysis.
Non-contiguous selections: You can select and filter dozens of element types and drop them anywhere else in the score without breaking surrounding content.
Fast correction workflow: Fixing a single entry error is as simple as adjusting durations — no re-entry needed.
Lyric handling made easy: Enter lyrics quickly, duplicate them elsewhere, and even export the lyric text as a separate file.
Command navigation via Jump Bar: Dorico’s Jump Bar makes nearly every feature searchable and callable from the keyboard.

Dorico vs Finale: A Generational Leap

Dorico isn’t just newer software — it’s a complete redesign of how notation programs think. Many of Dorico’s developers came from the original Sibelius and Finale teams, building on everything they wished they’d done differently. The result is fast, consistent, logical, and shockingly fun to use.

Users who’ve made the switch know: Dorico feels less like “fighting software” and more like making music. It’s faster, more musical, and enjoyable. Once you grasp the concept, productivity jumps through the roof. Our task time is one-third what it was in Finale.

How Dorico Thinks: Rules, Not Objects

Finale treats every note, rest, and marking as an object that you have to enter and position. Dorico treats each entry as a musical event — a duration and pitch on a timeline — then notates it automatically using intelligent rules. Extend a note’s duration or move it across a bar, and Dorico adjusts ties and spacing on its own. No more “too many beats in the bar” warnings.

For Finale users, this might feel like magic. You almost never need to enter another rest or tie manually again.

The Finale Emigrant Error

Every Finale user moving to Dorico makes the same mistake: trying to use Dorico like Finale. That way lies frustration. The mantra “Let Dorico be Dorico” is popular for a reason. Yes, Dorico offers Force Duration and Explicit Rests for manual control, but most of the time, it already knows what you want. The sooner you let go of Finale’s muscle memory, the faster you’ll fly.

The Core Difference: Object-Oriented vs Rules-Based

Finale is like engraving on paper — every mark is fixed and separate. Dorico is like sculpting time — every musical idea lives in context, shaped by global engraving rules. This single difference explains almost everything that feels “different” between the two.

In Finale

You click and drag objects. A quarter note is always a quarter note. You can move it, but you can’t change its duration. You can nudge staves and resize symbols, but everything is manual. It’s visual, not musical — and that’s why Finale projects often need constant cleanup.

In Dorico

You can change note durations, transpose on the fly, make non-contiguous selections, and even move music between voices without breaking notation rules. The engine handles the math. With Version 6, even more is accessible via the Jump Bar — including menu items that used to be buried deep in options panels.

Voices vs Layers

Finale calls them Layers; Dorico calls them Voices. The difference isn’t just terminology — Dorico’s system is flexible and fast. Voices appear automatically as you enter notes, and switching or combining them is effortless. You can even move music from one voice to another mid-score.

Why Dorico Is Fast, Fun, and a Little Addictive

Dorico’s editing feels like play. You can sculpt entire phrases in seconds. Below are a few GIFs showing features that made me grin like a kid the first time I tried them:

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