Easier than in, say, Cubase? Could I just drop the switches in Cubase?
p.s. Happy Anniversary.
Are you familiar with Cubase?
Matt, cutting to the chase, just ask this question of yourself: what do you intend to be the final form of your music? A score and parts for real players? Or an audio recording that you render? If the latter, a DAW - any DAW - is going to give you a much wider range of production tools than Dorico could. But if the former, Dorico knocks any DAW into a cocked hat. Horses for courses.
As I said earlier in this conversation. I do like a nice printed score, but if it comes at the cost of a bad piece of rendered audio then Iâll have to forgo it. It does sound from what people are saying that a DAW would be better than Dorico.
I do like printed music but if I canât have it, then I canât have it. Sometimes I print it out so I can go and play piano pieces elsewhere.
So printed music not important. Wonât ever be seen by musicians other than yourself. Advantage: DAW.
No human musicians. Advantage: Tie (or at least doesnât eliminate Dorico)
Iâm unaware of all gazillion styles, but you seem to have a wider grasp of genre than me. I could probably only name about twenty. I like to write with orchestral instruments. Recently Iâve been using the Spitfire Symphony Orchestra.
Traditional Western orchestral style. Not an electronic or modern style difficult to achieve in Dorico alone. (Or any of the other gazillion styles.) Advantage: Tie (or at least doesnât eliminate Dorico)
Mostly I notate with a PC keyboard, but but sometimes I use a MIDI keyboard (but for note entry, not live playing.)
Real time MIDI input not needed. No live recording. Advantage: Dorico
I really donât understand what advantage youâll gain by using Cubase over Dorico here. Honestly, Dorico seems more suited to your workflow IMO, as DAWs really are set up for live input and/or recording. If you already own Spitfire Symphony Orchestra, have you tried the NP Playback Engine for it? As @dko22 mentioned, it can be used with almost no programming required, and all the articulations will basically be automatic. (This is an entirely different thing than NP4 as it uses your Spitfire sounds.)
Iâm also confused by what you mean here and in your image. You want to switch between âlongâ and staccato? Or between arco and pizz? These are different things. You donât really switch between âlongâ and pizzicato.
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I want to switch between different articulations and Spitfire Audio says this will be easier with a DAW than with Dorico. I did look at expression maps for things like the Cinematic : Stradivari Cello | Komplete ages ago (and some kind person sent some) but as for creating expression maps for things that donât exist. Nope.
How many times do you need to say this?
If you do not want to create Spitfire Maps, use a DAW or port them through NPPE. There is no magic-wand solution for this other than these.
Derrek - I was replying to FredGUnn who said he was confused by something I said, so I was attempting a clarification. Sorry if you thought I was addressing you.
In the example you gave, âlongâ can apply to any instrument and means holding the note the full value, or longer. Pizzicato only applies to string instruments and means to pluck the string with your finger, not bowed. I was unclear what the point of that example was, or if you were expecting the staccato notes to sound like pizz, which they wonât unless you also add a pizz playing technique. Itâs not clear what you were expecting to happen there.
Youâre not going to find an easier solution than the NPPE Spitfire SO map, so I would certainly try that first. A DAW will give you more ability, but likely will involve more complexity, not less. (I use Pro Tools as a DAW, so canât really speak about Cubase.)
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My personal view is that Noteperformer 4.4 with NPPE and Spitfire BBCSO is very good at playback, though with some weaknesses in brass instruments.
I no longer feel the need to do mockups in Cubase. The amount of time I save is phenomenal.
Noteperformer 4.4 doesnât support Spitfire Symphony Orchestra (2024), just 2017.
In the end - should anyone wish to know - I bought a copy of Ableton, so weâll see how that goes. It seems to say that expression maps are much easier in that, than in Dorico. Time will tell.
I hope this situation works well for you. I am all in favor of using the best software (or combination of software) for oneâs individual workflow.
Very much so. Thank you.
Interesting choice! I donât use it, but have several friends that do. I thought that was geared more towards beat making, loops, and other electronic music, instead of orchestral. I was also under the impression that it had no notation capabilities at all, but perhaps Iâm wrong about that. Iâm curious how it works out for you as it seems like a completely different workflow than Dorico!
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give it a chance - the 2024 version has only just been released. You can be sure NP will fairly soon update their plug-in to support. But I guess it doesnât matter as youâve gone for Abelton anyway.
I think the idea is to pair it with MaxScore 2. But perhaps @matt.whitby isnât very interested in notation.
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I guess I donât really know much about it. You have to use a separate program to get notation with it? I have several good friends using it. One is a beta tester and big Abelton promoter, but I think they all still use Sibelius and Finale for printed parts, and just use Abelton for beats, tracking, etc.
Yep, Iâll give them time. I was just pointing out that NP has yet to finish building it for Spitfire Symphony (2024) since someone mentioned I should try it.
OT âan interesting coincidence, incidentally, that both Steinberg and MaxScore are Hamburg based. The city even has a half-decent concert hall these days as wellâŚ
I was in Hamburg for a short trip. Itâs a nice city.
A primary reason to use Dorico instead of tetris-blocks-in-a-DAW for writing music is that you can read, comprehend, and thus edit the music later, by reading the score. The staff was invented for tonal music as the best way of reading and writing music. DAWs because of older generation computational limitations flipped this backwards into a notational regression and only used chromatic blocks for notes, which is not good to read. DAWs may attempt to convert their blocks to notation, but not well, and will not have proper notation to read the music, to understand it later.
Spitfire makes a lot of money selling VST product to DAW users who canât, and donât want to learn to, read music thus have no initiative to use notation. So Spitfireâs opinion is biased. Primary members of Spitfireâs own team do not know how to read music. End music illiteracy: use a notation program.
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