Getting on the same page

Opening someone else’s notation file can take a little detective work. So can opening your own file from a year ago. After two 90-minute Q&A episodes, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald return for a (slightly) shorter conversation about figuring out what’s going on in a score before you start changing it.

David brings questions from helping his students; Philip brings his experience exchanging files with composers, clients, and colleagues. We start with the messages that appear when a file opens. There may be something useful in that dialog you just dismissed! Missing fonts, in particular, deserve a look before “OK fatigue” takes over.

Once the file is open, what are you actually looking at? A concert-pitch score or a transposed one? Where did that instrument go? We talk about making hidden information visible in Sibelius and Dorico, and checking whether a setting applies to one item, one part, or much more than you intended. Text styles, wildcards, and tokens get some attention, as do the various ways of showing the same music in different scores, parts, and layouts.

David describes a “fragile file”: change one thing, and something elsewhere breaks. That prompts a discussion of when to use the software’s more sophisticated features and when a simpler setup might be easier for a collaborator to manage. We also look at what to include when sending a file, from comments explaining an unusual choice to a reference PDF showing how it’s supposed to look, and the proofreading checks that can help before it goes out the door.

There’s plenty here for students — but we’re all students here.

Have you solved a notation problem whose cause surprised you? Tell us in the comments, or at podcast@scoringnotes.com. It may make it up the pneumatic tubes from the mailroom to the C-suite.

Notation software

• Sibelius (Avid)
• Dorico (Steinberg)

Plug-ins for Sibelius

• Check Redundancies (Roman Molino Dunn), included with Sibelius in Review > Plug-ins > Proof-reading
• Find Irregular and Misfilled Bars (Bob Zawalich)
• Relink Score Info In Dynamic Parts (Bob Zawalich)

Fonts, templates, and tools from NYC Music Services and Notation Central

• Scoring Express templates for Dorico and Sibelius
• Notation Express for Dorico
• Norfolk and Pori and Lelandia fonts for Sibelius
• Commercial music and text fonts at Notation Central

Other software

• Microsoft Word and Google Docs
• Affinity (Canva)
• Avid Link and Steinberg Activation Manager
• Time Machine (Apple)

Key signatures

• All keyed up: Going keyless in your score — when to use an open key signature instead of C major
• All keyed up: Keyless instruments in a keyed score

Styles, defaults, and overrides

• The elements of (house) style — podcast, 2020
• Importing only certain elements of house styles in Sibelius
• Properties management in Dorico — why a score and its parts can look different
• Score preparation and production notes — David’s checklist, including making front matter in a program like Affinity

Fonts

• The point of point sizes — why 12-point type isn’t the same size in every font
• Use the Tinos font as a metrically equivalent replacement for Times New Roman
• Leaving Finale behind — tracking down missing fonts, and making sure you have the rights to use them
• Dorico 6 review: Proof positive — includes Dorico 6’s change in how it handles font styles across platforms
• Music fonts and open standards with Daniel Spreadbury — podcast, 2020

Wildcards, tokens, and exporting

• Restore the link in File Info fields between score and parts in Sibelius — the title that stops updating in one part
• Go wild with text wildcards

Finding missing staves and music

• The focus is on staves with the Sibelius 2020.9 update and the podcast episode
• Sibelius 2022.12 is “part”way to more layout independence with score subsets
• Sibelius 2023.2 advances score subsets and dynamic guitar staves
• Sibelius 2023.5: New hiding options make individually voiced parts possible from a condensed score
• Sibelius 2025.2 introduces decondensing parts with staff filters
• Condensing scores in Dorico
• Using Dorico’s flows and condensing features to prepare Handel’s Messiah

Handing it off: setup, versions, and licensing

• Don’t extract parts — the case for dynamic parts, for contrast with this episode’s case for separate files in some collaborations
• The lowdown on updates — podcast, 2025
• Sibelius updated to 2025.12; simplified upgrade path for perpetual licensees
• Dorico 4, planned for early 2022, will be first Steinberg product to use new licensing system

Comments and proofreading

• Take note: Comments in Sibelius
• Note to self: post about Comments — from 2010, when Sibelius 6 introduced comments
• Dorico 3 changes the score — where comments and replies arrived in Dorico
• Sibelius plug-ins to help with proof-reading — Find Irregular and Misfilled Bars, Check Redundancies, and more
• Dorico 6.0.22 extends proofreading capabilities
• Score preparation and production double-checklist — podcast, June 2026
• Score preparation and production checklist — podcast, 2020

• SIL Open Font License