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Aug 2026

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We love music notation software and related products and technology, so that’s what we cover here. You’ll find timely news, in-depth coverage about the field, and honest reviews about products you use every day. You’ll learn about the interesting people in our field and find out our opinions on ever-changing developments in the industry.

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August 1, 20261 hr 33 min

Q & A(I)

We asked for your questions, and you sent so many that one episode couldn’t hold them. This is part one of two — and part one is brought to you by two letters: A and I. That wasn’t the plan; it’s just where the mailbag pointed. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald take on the growing expectation that artificial intelligence should be able to turn a scan, recording, or generated track into finished, usable sheet music. Why is that still so difficult? And where can AI genuinely help musicians and music preparation professionals today? The discussion ranges from optical music recognition and audio transcription to proofreading, house styles, sample libraries, score following, and the potential for language models to communicate directly with notation software. Along the way, Philip proposes the “Gould test” as the music preparation equivalent of the Turing test. Underneath it all are larger questions about the value of expertise, the role of human judgment, and where responsibility lies when the technology gets it wrong. The rest of the mailbag — the questions that have nothing to do with AI — is coming next month. Products mentioned Notation software Dorico (Steinberg) Sibelius (Avid) MuseScore Studio (Muse Group) Flat (Tutteo) StaffPad Scanning and optical music recognition NoteVision (Muse Group) Soundslice sheet music scanner Newzik PlayScore 2 SmartScore 64 Pro (Musitek) Opuscan (Tutteo) Audiveris (open source) Audio transcription Klang.io and Transcription Studio Songscription Basic Pitch (Spotify) (open source) Magenta MT3 (Google) (research) Playback and vocal synthesis NotePerformer (Wallander Instruments) Cantai (Turing Opera Workshop) AI arranging and orchestration ArrangementLabs NotationAI ScoreSynth Orchidea (IRCAM / HEM / UC Berkeley) Score following and page turning Tomplay Smart Page Turn Smartleggio Piascore SampleSumo Music Following Antescofo (IRCAM) MCP bridges (community projects) mcp-musescore dorico-mcp-server (also on PyPI) Music generation Suno NYC Music Services / Notation Central PDF Batch Utilities Other tools mentioned Name Mangler / Renamer Claude (Anthropic) Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodes Directly mentioned or closely related: Half-time report: what’s new, and a call for your questions (previous episode — the call for these questions) You have questions, we have answers (2025 listener questions episode) Asked and answered, part 1 (2023, the first listener-questions episode) Scanning the current OMR landscape (Steve Morell’s six-product comparison, December 2024) A snapshot of music scanning apps — and picturing the future (companion podcast) Dorico and The Rite of Spring (Stephen Taylor, January 2021) The “rite” way to copy old scores into new software (podcast with Stephen Taylor, February 2021) NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with Klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul and the companion podcast NAMM 2026: An Avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak and the companion podcast NAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivity Marie Chupeau and the human side of Newzik’s artificial intelligence (podcast, November 2021) From zero to slice: Soundslice takes on optical music recognition with AI (podcast with Adrian Holovaty, December 2022) Dorico 6: Proof positive (review — the Proofreading panel) Dorico 6.0.22 extends proofreading capabilities (the “ignore issue type” feature) Behind “Behind Bars” with Elaine Gould (podcast, July 2023) Cantai now sings straight from Dorico (review) Richard deCosta gives your score a voice (podcast, May 2026) NotePerformer reverses course (the removal of third-party Playback Engines) NotePerformer updated to 5.1.0 Comma sense: Command Search in Sibelius NAMM 2025: Imbibing and transcribing with Oriol López Calle and the companion podcast (AI-assisted transcription inside a professional service) PDF Batch Utilities get a major rebuild — and a brand new app The rights stuff (podcast — rights and permissions) Other references Carlos Peñarrubia et al., “MuSViT: A Foundation Vision Model for Sheet Music Representation” — Pattern Recognition and Artificial Intelligence Group, University of Alicante; posted June 30, 2026, accepted at ECCV 2026. Project page Christopher W. White, The AI Music Problem: Why Machine Learning Conflicts With Musical Creativity (Routledge, 2025) Elaine Gould, Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Music) NotePerformer: Playback Engines discontinued — Arne Wallander’s own explanation “Detecting Notational Errors in Digital Music Scores” — research on automated score checking Musicians’ Union arranging, music preparation and orchestration rates (UK) Copyright and Artificial Intelligence, Part 2: Copyrightability — U.S. Copyright Office report

July 4, 202630 min

Half-time report: what’s new, and a call for your questions

Philip Rothman and David MacDonald are back after a short break, and true to form, the conversation drifts from yard work and heat waves before landing on the actual business at hand: it’s time to open the phone lines again. For the third time — after 2023’s three-part marathon and last year’s round — Scoring Notes wants to hear directly from you, on any topic in the world of music notation software and related technology, or anywhere adjacent to it. Send your question as an email to podcast@scoringnotes.com, or record it as a voice memo and send it as an email attachment or file-sharing link, or drop it directly here. However you send it, questions are due by Wednesday, July 22, 2026, and the best of them will form the basis of the next episode. To get your wheels turning, the rest of the episode is a quick lay of the land for the first half of 2026. Dorico 6.1 and 6.2 brought a wave of guitar refinements and paragraph-level smart quotes, and picked up support for the Cantai vocal synthesis plug-in along the way. Sibelius matched that pace across three releases, capped by 2026.6‘s long-overdue fix for cross-staff accidentals, plus VST3 support and a restored dark theme. MuseScore Studio 4.7 rounded out its 4.x line with a much-improved ‘R’ for repeat, new parenthesis and bracket options, and its own Cantai support. For the full list of what shipped, plus lots more from Scoring Notes’ coverage of the first six months of the year, see our mid-year summer summary. Cantai itself has moved fast since Richard deCosta joined the podcast in May: it now runs across Dorico, Sibelius, and MuseScore Studio, and pricing has come down substantially to a unified $9.99/month or $149 lifetime license, with new “Ottetto” choir ensembles added along the way. Full details are in our Cantai 3.0.0 coverage. Finally, Philip previews news he’s especially excited about: the 2027 MOLA Conference heads to San Francisco, April 30 – May 3, with a reimagined Tech Fair that he’ll be producing and programming himself, built around a single throughline — the life cycle of a score. He’s inviting participation from anyone working in music technology, notation, publishing, or archiving, and floats the idea of adjacent meetups for groups like the W3C Music Notation Community Group, the MEI community, and the MIDI Association. Full details are in our MOLA 2027 announcement. Meanwhile, get those questions in by July 22, and enjoy the rest of your summer. Products mentioned Notation software Dorico (Steinberg) Sibelius (Avid) MuseScore Studio (Muse Group) Vocal synthesis Cantai (Turing Opera Workshop) Organizations MOLA: An Association of Performance Librarians W3C Music Notation Community Group MEI (Music Encoding Initiative) MIDI Association Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodes Directly mentioned or closely related: Asked and answered, part 1 (2023, the first listener-questions episode) Send us your questions! (plus a classic episode) (2025) Score preparation and production: a double-checklist (previous episode) Some more summer summaries (full mid-year recap of news, reviews, and tips) Sibelius 2026.6 makes cross-staff notation no accident Richard deCosta gives your score a voice (podcast, May 2026) Cantai 3.0.0 supports Sibelius; adds ensembles, Spanish language MOLA 2027 heads to San Francisco with Tech Fair 2.0 NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron (podcast) NAMM 2026: An interview with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak (podcast)

June 6, 20261 hr 28 min

Score preparation and production double-checklist

Six years after our “Score preparation and production notes” episode — Episode No. 2 — essentially launched the podcast, 163 episodes later, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald return to the article that inspired the conversation: David’s score preparation checklist. The principles — respect for performers, readable parts, enough time for page turns — are as true as ever. But almost every specific tool reference in the original has a fuller story now. The conversation moves section by section, serving as a reminder of the timeless principles and exploring all of the meaningful changes in the technology. Dorico’s live-reference cue system has become the standard no one else has matched — and the ease of it has quietly changed how generously cues get applied. The Dorico 6 Proofreading panel represents a new category of preparation tool, while the Sibelius plugin ecosystem has its own parallel answers. The condensing and decondensing workflows now available in both Dorico and Sibelius 2025.2 have transformed what was once among the most tedious jobs in parts preparation, and Sibelius 2025.7’s Auto-Respace toggle closes a gap that used to just be accepted. Two sections are entirely new to the checklist: digital delivery — where the iPad has become as common in rehearsal as a music stand — and a pointed look at the file-organization habits that make or break a delivery package. This one’s chock-full of tips, resources and advice — with David’s updated accompanying article to come soon. Products mentioned Notation software Dorico (Steinberg) Sibelius (Avid) MuseScore Studio (Muse Group) Finale (MakeMusic) (mentioned as discontinued) Fonts MusGlyphs (available at Notation Central) NYC Music Services / Notation Central PDF Batch Utilities Desktop publishing and document tools Affinity (Canva) (now free) Apple Pages Microsoft Word LibreOffice Other tools mentioned Claude Cowork (Anthropic) (mentioned for AI-assisted file organization) Name Mangler / Renamer (mentioned briefly for file naming) forScore (mentioned as a score-reading app) Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodes Directly mentioned or closely related: Score preparation and production Notes (David’s original 2018 article) Score preparation and production checklist (Episode 2, 2020) Partying with parts, part 1 (podcast, December 2021) Partying with parts, part 2 (podcast, December 2021) Orchestra librarians want you to know about parts paper sizes (May 3, 2022) Orchestra librarians want you to know about instrument names (June 20, 2022) Behind “Behind Bars” with Elaine Gould (podcast, July 2023) Behind Bars: General Conventions edition published (June 2023) Dorico 6: Proof positive (review, April 2025 — Proofreading Panel) Dorico 6.0.22 extends proofreading capabilities (July 2025 — ignore feature) Sibelius 2025.7 brings note spacing control, UI updates (July 2025 — Auto-Respace) Sibelius 2025.2 introduces decondensing parts with staff filters (February 2025) Sibelius 2022.5 brings multi-section headers, other workflow boosts (May 2022) MusGlyphs: an advanced music text font (April 2021) PDF Batch Utilities get a major rebuild — and a brand new app (March 2026) Freshly pressed (podcast, April 2026 — PDF Batch Utilities in depth) Calculate the weight, basis weight, or grammage of paper (April 2025) Chronology of a perfect music printing job (January 2022) DJA’s Notes: Music preparation basics (Darcy James Argue, September 2023) Documenting the documenter: Lillie Harris (podcast, April 2021 — Dorico manual) David MacDonald’s updated Score Preparation and Production Notes article Other references Elaine Gould, Behind Bars: The Definitive Guide to Music Notation (Faber Music) — cues: p. 566; front matter: chapter 17, pp. 501–504 Elaine Gould, Behind Bars: General Conventions (Faber Music) — the first third of Behind Bars as a standalone paperback and e-book MOLA Guide (Major Orchestra Librarians’ Association) — free PDF download Sibelius plugins page (still active at sibelius.com) Darcy James Argue, Music Preparation Fundamentals for Jazz Composers & Arrangers — free download Darcy James Argue, Music Preparation for the Large Jazz Ensemble — free download (supplement to the above)

May 2, 202656 min

Richard deCosta gives your score a voice

What if your notation software could sing? At the top of this episode, we play a short clip, performed entirely in Dorico with NotePerformer handling the orchestra, and a plugin called Cantai rendering the baritone voice. That voice is synthesized directly from the Dorico score with minimal configuration, and it marks the arrival of something the notation world has been waiting for for a long time. Philip Rothman and David MacDonald talk with Richard deCosta, composer, software developer, and founder of Cantai and the Turing Opera Workshop, about what it took to build it. The conversation goes deep on the technology: why synthesizing the voice is fundamentally harder than synthesizing instruments, how the phonemizer works, why Cantai renders offline rather than in real time, and what it really means to build a plugin that reads a score rather than simply receiving MIDI. Richard also explains how years of frustration with the disconnect between notation and external vocal synthesis tools — from EWQL Symphonic Choirs and WordBuilder to ACE Studio and Synthesizer V — led to the central insight behind Cantai: that the lyrics were always there in the score; they just weren’t being passed to the playback engine. We also dig into the ethical and business model Richard has built around the singers whose voices power Cantai. Every vocalist is contracted, paid a competitive recording fee, and receives an ongoing share of the product’s profits in proportion to how much their voice is used. Cantai is already live for MuseScore Studio and Dorico, and arriving for Sibelius on May 30. The roadmap — more languages, less vibrato, Broadway and jazz styles, and a thought-provoking vision for the future of real-time vocal generation — gives us plenty to look forward to. Products mentioned Cantai (Turing Opera Workshop) Turing Opera Workshop Dorico (Steinberg) Sibelius (Avid) MuseScore Studio / MuseHub (Muse Group) NotePerformer (Wallander Instruments) ACE Studio Synthesizer V (Dreamtonics) EWQL Symphonic Choirs with WordBuilder (East West) Emvoice One Vocaloid (Yamaha) Wendy Carlos, Secrets of Synthesis (1987) Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodes Directly mentioned or closely related: Cantai now sings straight from Dorico (companion article) Dorico 6.2.20 released with Cantai vocal synthesis support MuseScore Studio 4.6.4 released with Cantai support Using WordBuilder with Sibelius to make vocal text come alive Sibelius sings with EWQL Symphonic Choirs Scoring a 16th century ayre with Dorico and Emvoice One Scoring the 11 o’clock number with Dorico and Emvoice One

April 4, 20261 hr 18 min

Freshly pressed

After a stretch away from the mic with NAMM coverage and a few product launches in the interim, Philip Rothman and David MacDonald return for an episode that, as David puts it, is “delightfully very nerdy.” To kick things off, David turns the tables and puts Philip in the interview seat, asking him about two significant sets of releases from Notation Central and NYC Music Services. On the Notation Express side, the big news is two-way communication between Dorico and the Stream Deck: buttons now light up to reflect what Dorico is actually doing in real time — active note durations, engaged accidentals and articulations, current mode, playback state, and more. Philip also walks through the new Note Tools folder, which lets users chain up to four buttons together to build a complete transposition or interval command before executing it in one shot, and touches on the Notation Express Keypad and the Virtual Stream Deck. The PDF Batch Utilities get equal time: native Apple Silicon builds that launch ten times faster, codesigning and notarization, source PDF info shown right in the file list, bookmarks in stitched output, smarter handling of one- and two-page files, and a brand-new fifth app — PDF-Counter — that drops a page-count CSV into any folder you throw at it. For the second half, Philip asks David about the utility apps that have quietly become indispensable in his day-to-day work. David talks through Dropzone, a Mac menu-bar app that makes dragging files to frequently-needed folders — or AirDrop, or a terminal window — almost frictionless, and Alfred, the customizable launcher he’s built out with custom searches (including a dedicated IMSLP search), file navigation shortcuts, and a direct line to his task manager. From there, the conversation turns back to the notation software itself, with a look at two features that deserve more attention than they get: Dorico’s Jump Bar and Sibelius’s Command Search, both of which let you find and fire any command just by typing for it. Where might those tools go next, and what it would mean for notation software to understand what you’re asking for, not just what you typed? Products mentioned Notation Central / NYC Music Services Notation Express PDF Batch Utilities Stream Deck Elgato Stream Deck Virtual Stream Deck Stream Deck Mobile Mac utilities discussed by David Dropzone (Aptonic Software) Alfred Raycast (mentioned as alternative to Alfred) LaunchBar (mentioned as alternative to Alfred) Hazel (mentioned in context of Dropzone) Things (mentioned as David’s to-do app, integrated with Alfred) Other references IMSLP (Petrucci Music Library) (David’s custom Alfred search) Previous Scoring Notes posts and podcast episodes Directly mentioned or closely related: Notation Express for Dorico 6: Your Stream Deck just got smarter PDF Batch Utilities get a major rebuild — and a brand new app Notation Express: Stream Deck profile for Sibelius (the original 2019 launch) Boost your workflow: a Stream Deck review (Dan Kreider’s 2018 review of the Stream Deck, pre-Notation Express) Quickly scale many PDFs with PDF-BatchScale (the original launch) PDF-MusicBinder and PDF-BatchStitch utilities for music printing Chronology of a perfect music printing job How to tape and fold pages for parts: a video tutorial (accordion-style printing) Calibrating printers and workflows NAMM 2026: On the scene (and related NAMM 2026 coverage, including the happy hour) Forthcoming (mentioned in the episode): Virtual Stream Deck article

February 28, 202637 min

NAMM 2026: An interview with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak

At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this interview, we talk with Sam Butler, Avid’s vice president of product management, and Joe Plazak, Sibelius product owner and senior principal software developer at Avid, to reflect on the philosophy behind Sibelius’s recent development approach, how user feedback shapes prioritization, and where they believe users should most clearly feel progress compared to a year ago. We also talk about automation and AI in notation, the realities of cross-platform and mobile workflows, and what Avid wants musicians to understand about its long-term commitment to Sibelius. Be sure to check out our other conversations from the NAMM Show from earlier this month. And as always, if you like this podcast episode, there’s plenty more for you from Scoring Notes — be sure to follow us right in your podcast player. More about the 2026 NAMM Show from Scoring Notes: NAMM 2026: On the scene NAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivity NAMM 2026: John Barron opens the door to Dorico’s future NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul NAMM 2026: Getting into a Fender-bender with Chris Swaffer NAMM 2026: An avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron NAMM 2026: An interview with Sebastian Murgul NAMM 2026: An interview with Chris Swaffer

February 21, 202629 min

NAMM 2026: An interview with Chris Swaffer

At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this interview, we talk with Chris Swaffer, senior product manager of software at Fender, about how he thinks about Notion’s current phase in its lifecycle, what the Fender name signals to users today, and how decisions around refinement, continuity, and cross-platform consistency get made in practice. We also dig into under-the-radar improvements, accessibility as a core product principle, direct transfer between Notion and Fender Studio Pro, and how intelligent assistance can support — rather than replace — human musical judgment. Come back next week for more conversations from the NAMM Show. And as always, if you like this podcast episode, there’s plenty more for you from Scoring Notes — be sure to follow us right in your podcast player. More about the 2026 NAMM Show from Scoring Notes: NAMM 2026: On the scene NAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivity NAMM 2026: John Barron opens the door to Dorico’s future NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul NAMM 2026: Getting into a Fender-bender with Chris Swaffer NAMM 2026: An avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron NAMM 2026: An interview with Sebastian Murgul

February 14, 202633 min

NAMM 2026: An interview with Sebastian Murgul

At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this conversation, we speak with Sebastian Murgul, co-founder and CEO of klang.io, to talk about a category that sits just adjacent to music notation — and yet increasingly intersects with it in practical, unavoidable ways: music transcription. Sebastian explains what klang.io’s tools are designed to do — and just as importantly, what they are not. We talk about why AI-based transcription has reached a point of practical usefulness now, where the hardest musical problems still lie, and how klang.io thinks about accuracy as something musicians can trust and build on, rather than a promise of perfection. We also discuss interoperability with notation software via formats like MIDI and MusicXML, real-world use cases that have surprised him, and the broader anxieties musicians understandably have around automation and AI. Come back the next few weeks for more conversations from the NAMM Show. And as always, if you like this podcast episode, there’s plenty more for you from Scoring Notes — be sure to follow us right in your podcast player. More about the 2026 NAMM Show from Scoring Notes: NAMM 2026: On the scene NAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivity NAMM 2026: John Barron opens the door to Dorico’s future NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul NAMM 2026: Getting into a Fender-bender with Chris Swaffer NAMM 2026: An avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron

February 7, 202642 min

NAMM 2026: An interview with John Barron

At the 2026 NAMM Show, we interviewed representatives from the businesses in our field of music notation software and related technology. In this conversation with John Barron, international product specialist at Steinberg, John reflects on Dorico’s current development phase, how its underlying design principles continue to guide day-to-day decisions, and where users should most clearly feel progress compared to a year ago. We also talk about under-the-radar features, user feedback, interoperability with broader music-production workflows, playback and realism, and how automation can support — rather than supplant — notational intent. Come back the next few weeks for more conversations from the NAMM Show. And as always, if you like this podcast episode, there’s plenty more for you from Scoring Notes — be sure to follow us right in your podcast player. More about the 2026 NAMM Show from Scoring Notes: NAMM 2026: On the scene NAMM 2026: Piascore’s bet on interactivity NAMM 2026: John Barron opens the door to Dorico’s future NAMM 2026: Sounding out the inputs with klang.io’s Sebastian Murgul NAMM 2026: Getting into a Fender-bender with Chris Swaffer NAMM 2026: An avid Sibelius discussion with Sam Butler and Joe Plazak NAMM 2026: An interview with Sebastian Murgul

December 6, 202532 min

Perfect Pitch: Unlocking Jacob Collier’s musical brilliance

We’re very pleased to bring you this episode, and more to come in the future, thanks to our friends at Twenty Thousand Hertz, a podcast that tells the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds. People with perfect or “absolute” pitch hear every single sound as precise musical notes. Is this extraordinary talent a blessing or a curse? In this episode, our friends at Twenty Thousand Hertz dive into the neuroscience, pluses, and pitfalls of absolute pitch. Featuring neuroscientist Daniel Levitin and Grammy-winning musician Jacob Collier. Art by Mafalda Maia. Music featured in this episode: Hide and Seek by Jacob Collier Light It Up On Me by Jacob Collier Down the Line by Jacob Collier To Sleep by Jacob Collier All I Need by Jacob Collier Bakumbe by Jacob Collier Hideaway by Jacob Collier Colrain by Marble Run Sky Above by Jacob Collier Moon River by Jacob Collier A Noite by Jacob Collier Connect by Steven Gutheinz Count the People by Jacob Collier Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the studios of Defacto Sound, and hosted by Dallas Taylor.