A Tiny Rant About The New Scoring Program Blog

Steinberg Lounge
#1

Like many people who need notation, I have very mixed feelings about Score. I’m probably the last guy in the western hemisphere who actually -likes- Score and simply wishes it would be given full attention as an integral part of Cubase, as opposed to having a whole new separate program.

That said, on the one hand I am very interested in the new London ‘Scoring Team’ and appreciate Daniel’s blog; his enthusiasm and all. It really sounds like he ‘gets’ what people want/need and I applaud that.

OTOH… it seems frankly weird that he’s been going on about all the cool stuff that’s going to happen 2-3-4 years down the road with no ETA and very few specifics. It’s just too vague to be useful. I’m having trouble even visualising how it can be better than what’s out there. It’s an external program, but will allow people to compose seamlessly with their DAW? Confusing.

If this were another company I would think this was just general enthusiasm… or trying to gin up ‘buzz.’ BUT this sort of thing is ----so----- completely UN-Steinberg; a company that in general doesn’t pre-announce plans on pretty much -anything- to the hoi polloi.

So… as much as I root for what Daniel’s people are doing, the fact that he talks -so- much ‘blue sky’ stuff makes me more skeptical than I would otherwise be… because it’s not how SB rolls.

I’d kinda like to see both teams meet in the middle: I’d love to see SB be a bit more forthcoming about future plans for Cubase, but ironically, I’d also kinda like Daniel dial it back a bit until there are more hard facts to talk about rather than just going on about all the things that ‘the perfect program’ would do.

I say this with ‘love’ because, frankly notation is kind of a sensitive topic. I’m rooting for our hero, but I’ve been hurt before. :smiley:

YMMV, of course.

#2

I think I’d be a bit more dubious if it wasn’t for Daniel and team’s track record. They’ve got a difficult problem in keeping people’s interest alive over a long development period. Luck is on their side as MakeMusic seem to have fumbled the ball with Finale 2014, and they’ve got a Sibelius user base not exactly wedded to Avid. I’m watching with interest, but I’d be more than happy for the Cubase Score Editor to be enhanced, rather than invest in a new (and likely to be expensive) piece of software.

The good thing is that, after being written of by many people, notation applications seem to be alive and well.

#3

Supposedly, when you die, you get answers to all questions. I -really- wanna see some marketing data on how many people (outside of college) buy notation products. I mean, if there is enough $ for Daniel to have an 11 guy team, where -are- all these users? And… why hasn’t one of the current products learned to work well with various DAWs? It just drives me nuts how much work is involved moving stuff back and forth between a DAW and a ‘notation’ program. eg. I’m always -stunned- at how many people go through all the work to learn Lilypond. It’s just a soul-destroyer having to be so computer-geeky in order to write -music-.

#4

I disagree completely. It’s great to get insight into the development process and appreciate Daniel’s blog and his podcast appearances very much.

It is in fact so exemplary what he is doing that I hope the Cubase team would follow suit. Certainly there’s a balance in terms of maintaining “trade secrets” and such, but I think Daniel is threading it perfectly. Getting this on the Cubase side would help with the feeling of disconnect that is between feature requests and bug reports and the releases that come out, because people don’t really understand how long it takes to do these things.

#5

Then I suggest you don’t disagree completely. As I wrote, I do appreciate his posts–to a certain extent. I also wrote that I wish SB could do much more of that (as they did in the good ol’ days.)

#6

Admin Luis Dongo sent me a msg in which he considers this discussion O/T and more for ‘The Lounge’, which strikes me as odd. My reply to him, where I suggest a separate Score sub-forum.

You’re the boss. I placed the topic in the General Forum because there is no ‘Score’ forum (perhaps there should be) and I would submit that the Scoring program is of interest to 100% of the people who use Cubase Score. IOW: Cubase users don’t currently think of it as a separate program, but rather something they will be migrating towards.

Most of the people I chat with here who use Score don’t seem to frequent The Lounge all that much… which really -does- seem to be for non-related stuff.

#7

Greetings,
Another Making Notes subscriber here. :smiley:
I’d just like to add my support for the suggestion to enhance the integral Score Editor. Scoring is important to me on a small scale.


This makes a lot of sense as it would give score users a place to focus their concerns, tips and tricks and such.

#8

(imo, the lounge the right location for this topic.)

The blog is directed at notation people- engravers and copyists, and composers too, not so much the sequencer crowd. For those folks this is extremely exciting, I can’t imagine a better way to publicize it, creating a slow burn over a period of years among those people. Also it should be frightening to the folks at MakeMusic and Avid that a team with this history is working for SB. It will only intensify the competition in the field, which will be good for the users.

Let’s not start rumors too. No one has said that this notation program would be inside Cubase, what has been said is that some features would, if possible, be integrated. (I did watch the recent interview)

Granted that Score Edit feels kind of separate from the rest of the program in some ways, but the Score Editor has seen improvements with every version cycle, including some very substantial ones over the past couple of years. The midi inspector is now available inside the Score editor, Chord Track chords are editable, there’s the new way to deal with layers, plus other features and many bug fixes. It is not being ignored.

On having a forum for the Score Editor, I think it would be a good idea too, It might make people feel better about putting in time for the learning curve to see there’s a place to easily ask questions.

#9

Many of my ‘rants’ about SB products have to do with integration… or lack thereof. The engraving crowd may be doing handstands. Fine.

What kills me about SB is that they continually miss the boat as to leveraging the technologies they already have. My post is a template of many I’ve done over the years wrt to Wavelab, Halion, etc. They build these great things and they remain isolated islands.

If the majority of the world rejoices in a better stand-alone scoring program? Fabulous. But I speak for those who -hate- the very idea of ‘separate’. Our lives would be MUCH improved if all these things were -tightly- integrated. I think about that with every export/import. With every Expression Map. Every time I have to create separate tracks because there’s no Note Expression. Every time I then have to re-jigger the whole thing to be readable. In short… a lot.

I think of ‘separate’ a lot the way I think of the whole ‘tape recorder’ metaphor. Maybe it’s what people are used to, but that doesn’t it make it a great way to go.

#10

You just like ranting.

#11

Not sure about the rumors. Perhaps I created some confusion. I was simply chiming in for support to update the existing integrated score editor. It’s good to know that the score editor has been improved in recent updates.

At any rate, I’m just starting to dig into this aspect of Cubase.
Cheers.

#12

You created no confusion. The point of the post was pretty clear.

“I’d kinda like to see both teams meet in the middle: I’d love to see SB be a bit more forthcoming about future plans for Cubase, but ironically, I’d also kinda like Daniel dial it back a bit until there are more hard facts to talk about rather than just going on about all the things that ‘the perfect program’ would do.”

Others disagree. They love his posts and can’t get enough… and find me and my posts too ‘negative’.

The included Score has been improved and may it continue to be so! Despite it’s shortcomings, I find it very useful… largely because the whole import/export to an external engraving program is such a prehistoric notion to me and the time I’ve wasted doing so over the years is just hateful.

Score can do a lot more than people give it credit for. I sometimes think some people just accept that sequencing and decent engraving don’t -really- belong in the same sentence. Ad astra… etc. :smiley:

—JC


#13

Obviously an external program in conjunction would use an interchange format like MusicXML.

http://www.musicxml.com/for-developers/

#14

Not to be argumentative, but that could never be as good as a well-integrated program. And there are good MusicXML implementations and… not so good MusicXML implementations. That said, I’m sure you’re right. May it be the best darned external scoring program in the world. :smiley:

—JC



#15

I guess the good part is you can edit the xml yourself and not be wedded to any particular program or platform.