Dorico Maestro

An AI composition and orchestration partner for Steinberg Dorico. Speak in natural language to write notes directly into your score, audit voice leading, analyze harmony, check instrument ranges, and manage engraving layouts, right inside your open project.

Stay in the creative flow

Composing and engraving music in a notation program requires deep focus, but constantly breaking your train of thought to navigate popovers, click through staves, and proofread voice leading can pull you out of the zone.

Dorico Maestro acts like an assistant orchestrator and copyist sitting beside you at the scoring desk:

• Keep your eyes on the score: Dorico stays open in front of you. You watch the notation appear, evaluate voicing and balance, and make the musical decisions.

• Natural scoring dialogue: Ask for chord voicings, chorale harmonizations, counterpoint audits, transpositions, or layout adjustments in plain musical language.

• Real notation, real scores: Nothing is simulated or pre-rendered. Everything is written directly into your active Dorico project through the live caret or standard MusicXML as editable Steinberg Dorico notation events.

How it feels at the scoring desk

Here is what collaborating with Maestro looks like during a scoring session:

1. Score Writing & Harmony

You: "Write a 4-part chorale phrase in D minor at the caret. Soprano starts on F4 and moves step-wise down to D4. Build a classical SATB voicing with smooth contrary motion."

Assistant: Entered a 4-bar phrase in D minor across Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass staves:

• Soprano: F4 (half note) -> E4 (quarter note) -> D4 (half note).

• Alto / Tenor: Inner voices provide full triadic harmony with step-wise motion.

• Bass: Contrary root motion resolving firmly to the final tonic cadence.

• Verification: Audited voice leading: no parallel fifths or octaves detected.

Notes are in your score and ready to play.

2. Voice Leading & Counterpoint Audit

You: "Check the active string quartet passage for voice crossing, parallel octaves, and unresolved leading tones."

Assistant:

• Audited the four parts using local music theory analysis.

• Result: Detected parallel octaves between Violin 2 and Cello on beat 3 of bar 14 (A3->B3 and A2->B2).

• Voice Leading: Unresolved leading tone in Viola (G#4 steps down to E4 instead of resolving up to A4).

• Recommendation: Resolve Viola up to A4 to complete the cadence and hold Violin 2 on E4 to eliminate the octave parallel.

3. Orchestration & Engraving

You: "Check if the Cor Anglais part is within comfortable range, transpose the French Horn in F down a minor third, and export the current layout to PDF."

Assistant:

• Verified Cor Anglais compass: all notes fall between G3 and C6 (well within comfortable orchestral range).

• Transposed the French Horn selection down a minor third using chromatic transposition with flat-enharmonic spelling.

• Exported the current layout directly to PDF into your project directory without opening a modal dialog.

What you can do

Why Maestro is reliable

Most AI music tools generate raw MIDI or static audio files without understanding the underlying notation rules.

Dorico Maestro is built on a robust, safety-first architecture:

• Lifecycle & Caret Safety: Note input commands use strict session context managers (try ... finally: NoteInput.Exit). Even if an operation fails or arguments are malformed, Dorico is never left stranded in an open note-input state.

• Destructive Command Guard: Commands that could discard musical work (Edit.Delete, File.Close, File.Quit) are automatically blocked unless explicitly authorized with confirm=True.

• Overwrite Mode Transparency: Because Dorico defaults to Overwrite mode and the Remote Control API cannot read bar contents back, Maestro monitors noteInputMode and flags displaces_existing: true in its response whenever notes land in Overwrite mode.

• Data-Driven & Verified: Built on a comprehensive catalog of 348 commands, with 190 of 348 commands verified live against Dorico 6.

• Dual Writing Paths: Offers direct live caret input for fast interactive editing, and native MusicXML generation powered by music21 for complete multi-voice orchestral scores.

Quick start

You need Steinberg Dorico 4, 5, or 6 and uv. No repository, no virtual environment, no Python knowledge.

1. Install it

uv tool install git+https://github.com/romanstark/dorico-maestro.git

2. Connect to Dorico

1. Open Steinberg Dorico and open any project. Dorico automatically listens on local WebSocket port 4560.

2. On first connection, Dorico will display a permission prompt ("Do you want to allow Dorico Maestro to connect?"). Click Authorize. A persistent session token is saved automatically to %APPDATA%\dorico-maestro\session_token.json for future sessions.

3. Connect your AI assistant

Add Dorico Maestro to your MCP client configuration (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Antigravity IDE):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dorico-maestro": {
      "command": "dorico-maestro"
    }
  }
}

To run it without installing anything permanently, let uvx fetch it per launch:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dorico-maestro": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["--from", "git+https://github.com/romanstark/dorico-maestro.git", "dorico-maestro"]
    }
  }
}

Open a project in Dorico, connect, and start with: "What mode is Dorico currently in?"

Your music stays yours

• 100% Local: All communication between your AI assistant and Dorico takes place over a local loopback WebSocket connection (127.0.0.1:4560) on your machine.

• No Telemetry or Cloud Tracking: Dorico Maestro collects zero analytics and transmits no prompts, scores, or project files to any external server.

• Local Storage: Your music, .dorico archives, and MusicXML files remain strictly on your local disk.

What stays in your hands

Dorico's Remote Control API is powerful, but certain tasks are intentionally reserved for you in the Dorico interface:

Current Verification Status

Verified live (190 commands), grouped by category:

• NoteInput 101 of 125: Pitches, durations, accidentals, articulations, chords, tuplets, and popovers.

• Window 26 of 29: Window modes, layout views, panels, toolbar, and zoom controls.

• Play 24 of 31: Transport commands, playhead placement, and mixer controls.

• View 13 of 16: Viewport scrolling and zoom operations.

• NoteEdit 8 of 8: Diatonic, chromatic, and octave transposition, plus enharmonic respelling.

• Edit 6 of 16: Selection, copy, delete, and undo operations.

• EventEdit 4 of 57: Selection navigation commands (Navigate*).

• File 4 of 11: Project save and MusicXML import/export filters.

• UI 3 of 7: Panel focusing commands.

• Print 1 of 7: Unattended PDF export (Print.ExportCurrentLayoutAsPDF).

The remaining 12 categories are currently untested.

Testing & Environment

Empirical testing was conducted against Dorico 6.2.30 Elements on Windows 11. Dorico restricts commands depending on product tier (SE, Elements, Pro). Commands requiring Pro (such as Lua scripting) return kUnknownCommand and are classified as unavailable rather than broken.

Dorico Maestro exposes 30 tools and one resource (dorico://commands) for complete command discovery.

A note to Steinberg (and Dorico Pro users)

Dorico Maestro is an independent open-source project developed with a personal Dorico Elements license. Advanced features exclusive to Dorico Pro (such as Lua scripting via Script.*, full engraving options, and advanced dialog automation) are currently classified as unavailable or untested simply because they cannot be executed on Elements.

If anyone from Steinberg discovers this project and would like to support bringing first-class AI integration to Dorico: an NFR or developer license for Dorico Pro would be immensely appreciated to test, verify, and unlock the remaining Pro-specific commands for the entire community. Feel free to get in touch via GitHub or email at mail@romanstark.de!

Also producing in Ableton Live?

If you also produce music in a DAW, check out Ableton Maestro, an MCP server built with the same architecture for Ableton Live. Bridge your workflow between session sketching in Ableton and engraving parts in Dorico with the same AI assistant.

Development

Working on the server itself rather than composing with it:

git clone https://github.com/romanstark/dorico-maestro.git
cd dorico-maestro
python -m venv .venv

Activate the environment with .venv\Scripts\activate on Windows or source .venv/bin/activate on macOS and Linux, then install dependencies:

pip install -e ".[dev]"

Verify tests without needing Dorico:

pytest

Point your MCP client at the checkout's interpreter while you work on it:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dorico-maestro": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/dorico-maestro/.venv/Scripts/python.exe",
      "args": ["-m", "dorico_maestro.server"]
    }
  }
}

On macOS and Linux the interpreter is .venv/bin/python rather than .venv/Scripts/python.exe.

Documentation & Developer Resources

For architectural details, wire protocols, and contributor information:

• docs/architecture.md – Internal architecture and multi-layer design

• docs/protocol.md – Dorico Remote Control WebSocket protocol specification

• docs/dorico_command_catalog.md – Complete base key-command catalog (340 commands)

• CONTRIBUTING.md – Guidelines for contributing and command verification

• LICENSE – AGPL-3.0 License