Cubase 15 Pro & NotePerformer

Cubase
1

Hi everyone,

I just got a new drive and installed Cubase last night at last! Everything went great and I was able to launch, etc.

However… (there’s always a but, right?) - I am getting a blocked plugin with NotePerformer that I use as a VST in Dorico.

I’m not sure if it affects Dorico, but not sure why it comes up disabled. I have several plugins for Cubase that I downloaded this morning (BBCSO and Adaptive Strings) and will be trying those out. I don’t want it to affect the playback testing in Dorico - I know Cubase supports importing Dorico scores and doing playback work, which I am super excited about, and think this may be a real huge benefit to my scores and presentation.

Not sure on the NotePerformer issue though, so I am passing it to you, the dedicated users and gurus! I have a lot to learn (I used Logic before, but never got into it deeply, but with Cubase and Dorico being able to interface, that’s become a game-changer!

Here’s a screenshot of the error (I did reauthoize and scan and it tells me that it failed each time).

Thanks for all your guidance!

image
image1263×867 85.5 KB

2

NP Only works in Dorico, Sibelius, and Finale. It blocks itself if you try to host it in anything else.

NotePerformer 5 - Realistic Playback for Sibelius, Dorico & Finale

Yes, Cubase can import Dorico scores, but it doesn’t instantly play them back, as your instrument end points don’t import into Cubase. You must set up the playback properties for the score in Cubase manually once a score is imported. If you want Cubase to ‘interpret’ your score, you’ll also need to find or make expression maps in Cubase for whatever instruments you intend to use.

Another option is to maintain a ‘visual score’ through some Cubase tracks that aren’t connected to any instruments at all, and ALSO export a MIDI file from Dorico (import both into Cubase). When you do a MIDI export from Dorico, use whatever instruments you’ll be using in Cubase during that export. Over in Cubase manually connect and load the same instruments to the MIDI tracks you were using in Dorico, as Dorico did embed any keyswitches, dynamics and such into the MIDI file (it’s exactly what Dorico sent to instruments in real time).

If you don’t really need a visual score in Cubase, you can just skip importing a Dorico socre, and instead get a base mockup in Dorico. Export as MIDI with your best instruments (other than NP) instead. Import that in Cubase where you can load up the same reference instruments, and then go from there ‘perfecting’ the playback/mix.

Sadly this won’t work with NP as it blocks itself from running in anything but the big three notation suites, but with any other library you’ll end up with something that sounds very much like what Dorico was doing.

If you import a score made/altered in Cubase into Dorico, you might need to pick a playback template and refresh it to get it to play.

3

Thank you Brian for that detailed breakdown!

I saw the block and was afraid it stopped NP from working at all, but what you say makes sense. I have a couple of VST’s I purchased during the big summer sale along with Cubase itself. I plan on launching more YouTube browsing on folks using and working with Cubase (and being Dorico leaning is a big bonus also).

Thank you once again for this great information. I am going to note this and save it as text in the repository for scores/audio I have so I will know remember this going forward. I suppose it makes sense that NP wouldn’t work, given the huge variety of VST’s available (I just got BBC Radiophonic Workshop this morning).

You’re help is very much appreciated! Thanks once again - have a fantastic day!

4

No problem. NP will be fine in the hosts it supports.

I forgot to add that while Dorico and Cubase can load each other’s expression maps to some degree, they might not be compatible.

The interpretation engine for Cubase is a good bit different. It’s powerful and built to give you more precise control over how it plays, but it’s also pretty dumb compared with Dorico, which has years of development and decades of ‘experience and research’ in score interpretation technology behind it.

With that in mind, I typically compose in Dorico first. Get a decent playback going on in Dorico with the target instruments. Export a MIDI file (I usually don’t worry about the score part in Cubase, or if I do I’ll import it from Dorico LAST and tuck the tracks into a folder strictly for visual purposes. I don’t even connect the imported staves to any instruments.). After matching up the instruments in Cubase to match those I was using in Dorico, I now have a starting reference point. The ‘performance’ at least has a ‘shape’ (dynamics, articulations, etc) to start with, and I can use all the editing, mixing, and audio processing tools from there to get a polished performance and mix, can work in surround sound, work in audio tracks, etc.

If you find that you enjoy working with the Score Editor in Cubase it might take you some time to train the Score Interpretation for your libraries. Or you can opt to ignore that and simply build your dynamics, articulations, etc, by hand, using the direct events and methods your plugins/instruments require. MIDI Logical Editors can make quick work of many things, but it takes some practice and studying to figure out how powerful those are, and how to implement your ideas with them (I.E. Creating grooves, accenting specific beats of every bar in a given range of bars, generating dynamics, batch altering note lengths, etc).

5

Wow… thanks again, Brian!!

This is great information to know. I just was playing with the notation/score editor and I must say… yeah, I think I’ll stick with Dorico for that haha! Mostly I wanted to make a more realistic sounding mix for my channel and help it sound a bit less “MIDI” by tweaking velocity, ambience and other settings to make it sound a bit more ‘real’ in the mockup.

This is fantastic information. I am reading and digesting what you wrote and it definitely applies to what I am looking to do, namely score in Dorico and then “wash the vehicle|” in Cubase and refine it. I have lots of scores I can import from Dorico to try on - simple piano pieces probably at first, and then expand into adding more orchestral elements as time goes on. Getting the hang of it is foremost in my mind right now, learning, watching and thinking about “how does this work for me” and “how could this be a useful tool for my scores” kind of thing.

As if I don’t spend enough time on YouTube looking at Cubase tutorials and videos haha!

Thanks again, this is terrific and valued information. I truly appreciate the time you took to write back and clue me in. I am looking forward to getting deeper into the woods of Cubase, the integration with Dorico was a real deal-breaker for me to drop Logic and go with Cubase!

Thanks again for all your excellent advice and help!

-Gary-

6

One thing that can save you countless hours is to master the Logical Editors.

You get three types of Logical Editors. One at the project level for doing track level edits. I.E. Rename all the selected tracks to have a prefix of (in-use), clone a copy of all tracks with the string (in-use), disable and hide the new tracks and add (backup) as a suffix in the track name, mute all enabled tracks that do not have the string (in-use) in their name, change the colors/orders, set the loop range, move cursors, make markers, rename MIDI Parts and Audio Events, copy ranges in various automation lanes from one track to another, etc.

You get another Logical Editor at the MIDI Editor level. With that tool you can batch process things that’d take hours to go through doing one bit at a time.

I.E. In multiple passes:

  1. Select all CC1 events between bars 24 and 34.
  2. Subtract 10 from all selected CC1 events.
  3. Select all notes falling within a range of 20 ticks before, on, or after beat 1.
  4. Increase the velocity of selected notes to a random value between 82 and 97.

So you’ve effectively lowered the volume a bit, and accented beat one with a stronger attack for that select range of the piece.

Another example that could take a while to fix without a batch process…
Say you were using one library that used key switches for articulation changes. You’ve decided to go with a different library that has different key switches and no easy way customize or change them internally. You could use logical editors in Cubase to quickly extract the key switch notes to a different track and resort them with just a few passes.

You also get a type of Logical Editor at the live input stage, and up to 4 more as a possible track insert. These act more like a real time transformer for your MIDI Controller(s). I.E. My pedal is wired backwards and my keyboard’s firmware can’t fix it. I don’t have another one handy to replace it; so, Cubase can invert (mirror) CC64 with one of these conditional ‘logical editors’ before it goes into a track for recording or monitoring.

If you do scores that need very expressive performances, read up on Note Expression. If your instrument libraries support NE, it’ll come in handy for violin solos and such…where you can indeed have more than one note sounding at once on the same instrument, yet all needing to react independently in terms of micro-pitch, dynamics, attack, sustain, and more. If your instrument libraries don’t do NE, then you can still get the same results, but you’ll need to spread things out over multiple channels/instances/tracks. One of the coolest things about NE to me is that once you bind some events to a note as NE, it sticks to the notes if copied or pasted, it’ll scale with it should you change note lengths and such as that. Contrast this with the traditional ‘channel lane data’, which takes extra steps to move and scale that sort of information with notes. You do get tools to convert between NE and traditional CC lane data as needed too.

Most of the hand tools are pretty intuitive. You click, draw, and drag things around; but, your biggest ‘time saver’ will be in mastering those conditional Logical Editors, combined with macros (here you can bind a sequence of Logical Editor presets together, and even assign key commands to them…also possible to bind them to incoming MIDI events from remote controllers).