Any advantages of using Dorico with Cubase?

[kcnarf007]

I composed by the past music combining audio samples and for sure cubase is the perfect tool for such type of work. But I use to use Cubase for composing orchestral music and then switched to Dorico : my life became much easier. This for several reasons :

1. there are many music writing functionalities (invert, merge, repeat, diatonic transpose, etc.) the piano roll do not offer
2. automatic dynamics marks are so easy there is no need to adjust manually basic CC change (only manual fine adjustment for playback realism)
3. score are much more readable (articulations used, tremolo, music played by various instrument at a glance, tonality, etc.)
4. many others

So it is easy to write, playback at first is very acceptable (I use Spitfire libraries + UACC expression maps) - The only area of improvement to make Dorico almost perfect would be :

1. fine dynamic playback (fp, <>, etc.)
2. more convenient way to fine adjust CC for playback realism (possible but really painfull - click click click ! )
3. velocity editing

[Knopf]

@Bollen

@Knopf

But I guess that means too that I need to set up all HSO instruments again in Cubase to play the individual MIDI tracks (and maybe just to render these later to wav).

If you use Vienna Ensemble Pro for everything VST, you can just close Dorico, open Cubase, load your MIDI file and direct all the instruments (SHIFT+Click) to the already Opened Vienna Ensemble and it’ll sound identical. This takes one click if you’re using 16 instruments or less, but even using vastly large orchestras you can still do the whole thing in less than two minutes!

Saludos de Londres!

Thanks for the tip, Bollen. I have been looking at Vienna. If I understand good, it comes with a starting edition of Epic Orchestra, where the sounds are and, seeing in the instruments list, it seems to be a group without solo instruments. Is it so?

knarf007: or, like others have said, if the dream of integration Cubase-Dorico becomes real…

[Bollen]

Hi Knopf, to be honest I have never downloaded the Epic Orchestra since I have limited hard drive space and I prefer to save it for full feature libraries. Epic Orchestra seems gimmicky and my workflow requires instruments that can’t do everything.

On the other hand Vienna Ensemble is the best investment I’ve ever done and have never regretted it! It makes life so much easier, you can have all your templates in there so they’re compatible across all programs, you can move projects from one software to the other without having to reload everything, etc, etc, etc! It’s priceless!

I bought it about ten years ago and built a “film orchestra” template in it (full symphony orchestra with many synths, drums, electric guitars, saxophones, etc) and have never had to make a new template! Because whatever it is I need for a project, I just open the film orchestra and simply remove anything I won’t need/use…

[Knopf]

I understand, thank you. I must first learn to work with Dorico and later I will find if I really need something special to make things easier. Maybe keeping for now similar templates in both D and C can satisfy my needs. For now I guess I have enough work.

[David_Tee]

@PaulWalmsley

You can also drag and drop midi parts from Cubase into play mode in Dorico.

Hi Paul - I’ve just discovered I can also drag and drop midi files from Kontakt drum libraries as well. I had to assign them to an instrument (and then rename the instrument and turn a blind eye to the notation) to get the midi note data playing back - I couldn’t find a way to do that with a Drum Set as dragging the midi file onto the Drum Set line (above the individual kit pieces) assigns all the notes to the first kit piece.

There’s also an issue with the volume levels of the different instruments in the kit - irrespective of whether the file is dragged in from Cubase or Kontakt. If I drag midi files from Kontakt into Cubase they play back as intended. Not so with Dorico, all the subtlety in the groove is lost. However, other aspects of midi - timing and dynamics, can still be influenced from within Dorico.

I appreciate this area is on the back of the backburner …

[PaulWalmsley]

There’s a couple of things you can do that may give you better results. In the Preferences > Note Input, ensure that you have the Percussion input mode set to ‘Use percussion map’. Also in Preferences > Play > Recording, check ‘Preserve note velocities’ and ‘Preserve note positions’.

[Bollen]

This is a complete game changer!!! I can finally have a big band arrangement where the drummer actually swings!

You are an incredible lot!

[David_Tee]

@PaulWalmsley

There’s a couple of things you can do that may give you better results. In the Preferences > Note Input, ensure that you have the Percussion input mode set to ‘Use percussion map’. Also in Preferences > Play > Recording, check ‘Preserve note velocities’ and ‘Preserve note positions’.

Thanks Paul - that makes a huge difference.

[Fujibass]

@PaulWalmsley

I did some experiments with it, but it required some changes to our selection model which we haven’t had time to do. We hope to revisit this in a future version.

I tried this. I exported midi files from Dorico and imported them into Cubase. In Cubase I am using instances of Kontakt Player with Spitfire Albion One samples. When I move the Dorico-created midi regions to the tracks that have Kontak Player/Albion One they playback with conflicting articulation keyswitches. I have made all the necessary expression maps but things happen such as the spiccato keyswitch stays stuck while the “long” switch goes on. They work sometimes, or not. NOTE: I did delete all articulations form the Dorico score to avoid embedding conflicting data in the midi regions.

[SOLVED] more or less.
Going back to the Dorico-created midi regions (already imported into Cubase) I open each region in a key editor and select all the notes (the colored bars) and copy them. I then go to the Kontakt/Albion One track and draw in a new empty midi region and paste in those notes. The articulation keyswitches work fine as per my expression map directions.

I later read Daniel’s comment about how Dorico will export midi regions with all the keyswitches and controller information, which I believe is what may be confusing Kontakt. I’d be very interested in how to exclude this information when exporting midi regions. Would anyone know how to do this? Remove the VST instances from Play mode perhaps?

[Fujibass]

Update: I did remove the VST’s from Dorico in Play Mode before exporting the midi files. I can now simply import them into Cubase, drag them to the Kontakt/Albion One tracks, set the expression maps and they play correctly.