Music Software & Interface Design: Steinberg's Dorico

In this video, I break down the UX/UI design of Steinberg’s Dorico - an increasingly popular music notation software that competes with AVID’s Sibelius. To help me look at how the experience has been designed, I test it out on real musicians and documented my own experience trying to compose in it too. Is it seaworthy? Does it float? Well... yes it does... but there be jank in them there waters...

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SUBTITLES
The amazing subtitles (especially the 'Jank' section) were done by Pentameron:

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MUSIC

Special thanks to The Bran Flakes for allowing me to use their track ‘Oddio Overplay’ during the ‘Jank it up’ section. Check out their album ‘Bubbles’ here. I’ve loved this for years.

Visit the Bran Flakes’ website here:

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DORICO LINKS

How Dorico was made - Daniel Spreadbury’s blog

Recent Interview with Daniel Spreadbury

Tutorial for creating contemporary, freely metered music

Rockin’ Music

An example of Dorico throwing shade at Sibelius
I love the way Daniel refers to Sibelius as ‘Product A’, then mentions how rest placement improvements are their ‘third highest-voted feature request’, followed by a link directly to the Sibelius feedback community. lol.

Avids share price and revenue

Sibelius moving to the Ukraine

Igor Engraver Handbook

[lookieeight]

Meh, not a fan of Dorico. At least in Sibelius you get the option "quit sibelius". In Dorico there is no way to stop Sibelius.

[creeperarmor]

As someone who likes Coldplay and has a rudimentary understanding of music, you would not believe how uncomfortable it is to be stuck in Geostationary orbit.

[Blueturtle]

Can we just appreciate that the Steinberg team downloads a version of the E Licenser without telling you, and then proceeds to tell you that that version of the E Licenser that THEY DOWNLOADED WITHOUT ASKING is OUT OF DATE

[kravvall]

"Ah this is gonna be a nice break"
"Oh shoot, it's one hour"

[carwyn]

"Wow he doesn't sound as deranged as the other videos"
*reaches **57:00*
"Ah that's better"

[firstnamelastname]

"The tick enables the switch and the switch enables the button"
Help I am dying

[RedSkyWhisper]

Can we have the same kind of roasts for DAWs when you are done with notation softwares? Pleeeeassseee?

[fortepiano]

Calling it now, Audacity is gonna be a feature length film.

[lunaangeleclipse]

The final twist at the 11th hour that the tickbox enables the switch which enables the button was cinematic gold

[aSongScout]

My head is spinning as I watch this knowing the insane amount of hours it must've taken to research and organize you thoughts, make examples of everything you wanted to demonstrate, compile and sift through the footage of all of the test users, and animate all the shots for this video. This is basically a documentary on Dorico

[phlog_dog]

Sibelius: *Sibelius crashed*
MuseScore: *New All*
Dorico: *A d v a n c e d*

[SirLightfire]

Darnit Tantacrul, now whenever I see the "Advanced" section of chrome's settings, I whisper 𝒜𝒹𝓋𝒶𝓃𝒸𝑒𝒹 to myself, every time

[austinbryan]

*4 months later*
Tantacrul: After much talking, I am now the head designer of Dorico

Edit: oh wow my first comment to blow up! Thanks everyone!!

[Deuling]

Interestingly, despite all the asinine design here... I recognised the factory icon as a factory.

[DaveZiffer]

DORICO'S PARTING GIFT. After weeks of tearing my hair out trying to enter a couple of simple jazz lead sheets into Dorico, I finally gave up on it and installed MuseScore. I'm happy to report that MuseScore installed quickly and easily, and is probably as easy to use as any program of this complexity can be. So then I removed the myriad programs that Steinberg installs with Dorico (eLicenser, Authentication Manager, Download Assistant, whatever) during Dorico's nightmarish installation process. The un-installation seemed to go smoothly - but then I realized that my printer was gone! The only printers left on my system were all the fake Microsoft "soft" printers that come with Windows. So I re-added my network printer, which is the HP 7310 all-in-one device, which includes a scanner. Much to my relief this restored my printer. But then much to my non-relief I realized that the scanner component was still gone. When I look in my Device Manager, it is simply gone from the "Imaging Devices". So now the Windows "Scan" application can't find any scanners. Long story short, I've tried to recover this function for quite some time and can find no way to make Windows 10 repair my printer/scanner installation completely. Thanks Dorico, for leaving me with a permanent reminder of my horrible experience with you.

[MStaynor]

As a Finale user, I expect the whole Finale video to be hosted by Jankman and only Jankman

[mangoalias]

i know you're a musician and thats why you are breaking down music app UIs, but I really like your critical approach and it would be really fun/interesting to see you break down some other user experiences like this, like what Blender can do to be more accessible, DaVinci Resolve vs Premiere Pro, Clip Studio Paint vs Photoshop, etc.

[artemlyubchenko]

Tantacrul in 2025: Head of design of every music notating and UI developing software.

[james.randorff]

Sibelius: Roasted!
MuseScore: Roasted… and hired!
Dorico: Roasted… but there’s hope.

Finale: You’re next, and we can’t wait to see you get yours.

[salvatoreshiggerino]

You're doing God's work. Us software developers suffer from a sort of Cassandra curse. We can usually tell when we're shipping garbage, but the bean counters in charge refuse to believe there's ever anything wrong with the products, so no effort is allowed to be spent correcting it. Please, never ever stop shitting on shitware.