Dear Dorico Devs,
The forum is full of people asking “when will CC happen”. I’ve decided to take a different approach and give input on how I think CC SHOULD happen.
It is important to view this input with a certain lens. I prefer Dorico to get it as right as it can on its own, then for me to make as minimal tweaks to my liking as necessary. The more intelligent Dorico is, the better. The more flat it is, where I have to dictate every behavior as if I were sitting next to each musician in an orchestra and teaching each one how to play their instrument… the worse off I am as a user. Some users love that much control. I despise it. I live to compose and ideally for a real orchestra, not program MIDI performances.
Exhibit A:
This is a very typical look at my CC lanes and what I’ve seen in other user’s CC setup. Not everyone does it the exact same way of course. This is just a common enough 4-bar example to make my point. CC1 for xfade. CC7 for volume. Some argue xfades should be dynamic accurate for all musical contexts. Personally I see that as unreaslistic idealism and nonsense. Either way, I and many use both together. It may or may not be worth noting. I leave that to those developing Dorico’s default playback to figure out what’s best to give all users as automatically right of an experience as possible.
I believe the best way to do that is to have Dynamic markings POPULATE the CC lanes with curves I can edit post hoc. It’s automatic and hopefully sounds good… but I can easily tweak it as needed.
CC CURVES
I call attention to the first arrow (left to right) to call out Steinberg on this. For years, Cubase users have wanted curves. It’s a big deal. Prior to Cubase 9.5, you could technically draw a dot-to-dot curve. But editing that curve required more effort. True curves make for easy input AND fine-tuning. Point is… curves are needed. In a video we’ve seen where you guys show that Dorico has CC editing, I didn’t see curves. Please understand that if you add CC lanes, people will be nagging you for curves for years. You may as well get it right to begin with.
MULTI-INSTRUMENT BEHAVIOR
Notice that bump leading into the 4th bar. The 4th bar is a crecendo on it’s own. But the instrument gets a little louder just before it. The reason why is because this is my cello section and on the 4th bar, several other instruments come in on that crecendo. It’s dramatic… because the cellists KNOW and ANTICIPATE the crecendo differently than they do in the middle of a phrase that only they will play. This deals specifically with player behaviors in real life. But I bring this up to illustrate a point…
Sibelius had remarkable playback. Arne Wallander alone has contributed a lot to researching this field and studying scores, recordings, and creating score-reading conditions that were truly great out of box. As a user, I want to work in notation and have a great mock-up. I don’t believe this is the type of thing left best to a 3rd-party developer. I would rather it be native to Dorico AND would prefer to have an element of control. If there were a library of conditions, I’d like to be able to tweak and edit a couple that never seemed right to me… but usually not have to of course. I believe that is in line with Dorico’s philosophy overall actually. That said, I don’t believe it should have to take 10 years to get there either.
That’s my ideal, but at very least I would like Dorico to be smart in how it plays the music. What I don’t want is a robot that serves me raw eggs for breakfast cause all it’s been programmed for is “eggs are healthy”. Hopefully this translates. It needs to be higher level. I realize I’m speaking to features that won’t be around for years. But having coded myself, I know that having a larger picture from the start is very helpful. Thus why I mention what I personally consider ideal.
All that said… the idea of drawn CC presets that average out start and end points relative to the context they are placed in wouldn’t be that hard to code… depending on how you’re developing CC lanes anyway. So please, don’t make us wait 10 years. I waited a few decades for Sibelius to get CC editing and never got it. I want great software notation playback in my lifetime.
2-DIMENSIONAL AVERAGING
Notice the last curve before the sudden dynamic drop at the end of bar 4. That curve is shorter than the curve before the first bar. That’s because the first curve is more casual to smooth out an articulation and dynamic change that happen simultaneously. I timed it to what sounded right with the timing of the notes. For example: tenuto to legato. It had to be smoother to sound right. The last curve in bar 4 is quick and sudden because it’s going from a crecendo held slightly over the 4th beat. Point is… the timing of the notes affects how pre-designed curves would be placed by Dorico’s dynamic markings. It needs to average out to the musical context… a crecendo that starts at pianissimo if that’s where the dynamics currently are… and it needs to average relative to the timing of the notes that are played, as to create a smooth performance.
All in all, I hope this doesn’t come across as nonsense. It’s simply the only way I can think to thoroughly detail the far more simple thought process I have when I place my curves in manually. Make it sound like a natural smooth transition… sometimes quickly… and place it in the right context.
Cheers,
Sean
P.S. Hopefully I’m not spamming you guys too much lately. It’s only January 2nd and the more I use the notation software I have with rewire… and the more I wish I was doing all MIDI editing in the same program… the more these thoughts are flooding in.