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
Ireland