A “simple feature like DP’s QuickScribe”…! No problem, we’ll have it implemented by tomorrow.
Hi Daniel. It seems I’ve been very imprecise in my communication with you lately; I re-read what I wrote and understand how it came across. I didn’t mean to imply it would be simple to implement (I know very well that it wouldn’t). I probably should have used the word “basic” instead. I meant simple as in not full-featured like the existing Cubase score editor where you have all of those edit functions. I don’t need to be able to do any score editing in Cubase whatsoever, just view and export. I do realize even just implementing something like that would be a lot of work, but I would imagine less work than also including editing. I also would see that as more of an item for the Cubase team rather than the Dorico team. As a long time Cubase user (15 years), I am just providing feedback as to what I eventually would like to see, and would hope that you welcome feedback from users of both products.
The XT Rewire VST plugin will kind of make Dorico a rewire host, but not a slave. I sometimes use it to bridge in old 32bit plugins…or things that are not VST plugins at all. Currently we cannot get any sync signal from the Dorico playback engine out to other plugins, or over MIDI, etc. No ppq, no bpm, etc. Dorico will not sync his transport to anything as a slave either.
Some DAWS might be able to run as a slave from an ASIO sample count alone, but I haven’t had much luck finding anything that will sync its transport up with Dorico. I.E. I can get Reaper to slave up enough to host some instruments, but I haven’t found a way to get his transport rolling. I can lock Bidule up enough to run audio tracks in sync with Dorico, but that’s it…no transport sync support from Dorico at this time.
The closest thing to a tight sync I’ve managed to achieve is to treat Dorico as the master and have it play a SMPTE stripe from Dorico’s video player into a black-box (I have several left over from the 80s and 90s, tested with a unit like this one) that can turn that into MTC/MMC with Cubase set up to be the slave and running in the time-line mode (ignore the tempo track and lock to time code). Dorico will let you export a midi tempo track if you need that information on the DAW side at some point. I can do something similar by playing the SMPTE audio file from an instance of Bidule hosted inside Dorcio as well. The catch with this method is that Dorcio doesn’t have much of a routing matrix for audio devices (not sure if it’ll support surround sound channels on the audio card either…I.E. putting the stripe on one of the back channels), so you’d have to surrender your audio device to playing the SMPTE code and host your sounds in the DAW over MIDI, OR, do what I did and pull some reaStreaming voodoo in the effects slot of the Video fader to divert the SMPTE signal out of Dorico and into something else and mute it out of the Dorico mix.
I fully agree with this. Cubase is a monster and the wrong kind of integration would actually be counter productive. I can understand a workflow where Cubase will open Dorico files directly (and save them back so you can switch between the two programs), for example, but I would never want to have these programs try to be too connected, certainly never merged. I would much rather see Dorico improve its current VST tooling and possibly add audio tracks.
I am also on the edge of my seat waiting for some kind of integration between Dorico and Cubase. I’ve got a project right now that combines orchestral elements (mainly strings, brass and some percussion) with sound design elements that are really, really hard to put in to some kind of quantized notation format. This is one of those times where I would have the orchestral stuff in Dorico and the SD/SFX/electronic stuff in Cubase. I don’t really care which one is the master/slave as long as they are sync’ed. It’s SO MUCH easier to write orchestral cues in Dorico than Cubase. However, it’s SO MUCH easier to do MIDI editing and VST part/articulation breakouts (especially if you are using multiple libraries) in Cubase once all is done. Not to mention audio recording, clip editing, mixing, etc.
I do NOT endorse combining Cubase and Dorico in to one product. Yeah, it’s seems like they might be converging when it comes to writing musical notes and being able to play back said notes in an appropriate manner. BUT IT STOPS THERE. You wouldn’t use Dorico to record and mix the final product with all the additional audio stems for other recorded music, SFX, vocals, etc.
But I HIGHLY ENDORSE getting the the two apps to play nicely together when it comes to being able to sync. Personally, I’d like to see a kind of SMPTE/MTC method so that I can sync to not just Cubase but also to maybe a third app like Pro Tools for video playback on a separate PC.
If not that then MAYBE a “Dorico-light” makeover of the Cubase score editor. Because the current one is just…ugh.
Anyway, until then, I’ll have to continue to use Rewire with Sibelius. I’ll be sobbing while I do it, but I gotta do it.
I recall a video of a movie-orchestration guy who starts the project in dorico and then puts it into cubase for the rest of the process–so that is a workflow that works today. Dorico already has a nice fully functional playback engine that can use any vst instrument. I think Dorico is still working on features to enable it to meet more needs of orchestrators and dominate in that product space, and I think it would be a counter-strategic distraction to somehow try and make it a daw.
OTOH, it would be nice if cubase could open a ‘score editor’ with Dorico functionality–or a subset thereof. But if its to be meaningful, then one essentially quantizes their midi once they open in a score editor, unless one wants a complicated series of notes including 1/128 notes. I would like the ability in cubase to open the midi editor in score format in addition to piano roll. In such a case, the ability to use the keystrokes that work in Dorico would be ideal. So, personally seeing cubase getting enriched with dorico rather than the other way around.
Pluse, I’ll bet 90% of cubase users don’t think, read, or write in score format, so for them dorico type stuff is of no interest, and they have mastered the piano role way of looking at and writing music.
I believe you’re talking about Alan Silvestri, and his workflow was the other way around, taking a tempo track from Cubase (with all tempo changes, accel’s and rall’s to match the picture) and bringing it into Dorico so that all of the tempo changes were already in his sketch score.
OTOH, it would be nice if cubase could open a ‘score editor’ with Dorico functionality–or a subset thereof. But if its to be meaningful, then one essentially quantizes their midi once they open in a score editor, unless one wants a complicated series of notes including 1/128 notes. I would like the ability in cubase to open the midi editor in score format in addition to piano roll. In such a case, the ability to use the keystrokes that work in Dorico would be ideal. So, personally seeing cubase getting enriched with dorico rather than the other way around.
Cubase already has a score editor but not with Dorico functionality. The developers came up with a pretty decent system called “Display Quantize” which allows you to add quantization changes to the notated score that do not quantize the MIDI. This approach treats the MIDI as the main data, and the notated score as a secondary item that can be adjusted in most cases without adjusting the MIDI. It is actually in many ways the exact opposite of what the Dorico developers did for playback, where you enter the notes as regular notation (which is the master) and you can adjust the start and end offsets (to fine tune the MIDI playback). The fact that the approaches are the exact opposite of each other obviously potentially complicates Dorico<–>Cubase integration.
The only downside of Cubase’s Display Quantize feature is that you have to spend quite a while going through the score adding display quantize overrides wherever one should take place. This gives a lot of control. On the other hand I see people using Digital Performer with the QuickScribe feature (which gives no editing or override capability) and am impressed by how quickly they can get an exportable result with just the automated logic of the program. Cubase is advantageous in that you don’t actually have to over-quantize your actual MIDI if the program guesses the note values wrong, but that often adds additional work as you go through and tell the program what it should display quantize everything to.
Pluse, I’ll bet 90% of cubase users don’t think, read, or write in score format, so for them dorico type stuff is of no interest, and they have mastered the piano role way of looking at and writing music.
There are a few die hard Score Editor fans in the Cubase forum who don’t want to see the score editor go away. However, as a Cubase user who has used the score editor enough times to be familiar enough with it, I really don’t care if it goes away, and I agree that most users would not care if the Cubase score editor was gone and replaced by some kind of integrated Dorico-lite.
I use it quite a bit…for way too many reasons to list here. Even when printing anything out isn’t really required…it helps to spot check melodies, harmonic theory, voicing, and more. All stuff that’s pretty darn hard to ‘analyze’ looking at bars on a key-editor. It is the primary reason I went for Cubase over other DAW options.
I’d miss it big time. Especially for elaborate percussion work…trap sets…drum lines…pit percussion…anything with elaborate/complex rudiments with notes on how to ‘stick it’, etc. Anything where you need fine and constant control over key-velocity. I use Cubase first every time I’m called upon to do that sort of composing/arranging job.
I’ve yet to come across anything as flexible and easy to customize and maintain for percussion stuff. Popping back and forth between the diamond editor and the score editor is quite amazing (split the screen and work with both at the same time). I’ve also found a simple xml hack to a given drum map that makes it possible to divy up a single drum map across multiple instances of plugins…thus making it possible to easily mix and match multiple plugins from a single track/stave.
The Logical Editors save all kinds of time as well when getting the stuff to sound decent on playback (scaling velocities, doing batch changes from one kit piece to another, etc.)
Bar none (that I’ve seen thus far)…Cubase is boss when it comes to getting percussion stuff showing, and playing. In Finale, Sibelius, and Dorico all three…it’s a MAJOR PAIN to do anything at all with percussion…even if you are working with expensive plugins that come with maps and such already somewhat done for you…it’s just plain AWKWARD. I.E. In Sibelius if you want to add a new kit piece to a drum-set…get ready to open a special editor and muck about for half an hour…shut down the program…restart it…and good freaking luck if you happen to desire mixing sounds from different plugins. In Cubase…it only takes half a dozen clicks…just pop open the drum map and add it…point it to the plugin/channel/note you need, assign it to a line or space on the stave, pick the shape of the note-head you want, and presto.
It’s not so awkward with Cubase once you take a little time to grasp how it works…and how easy it is to make or manipulate the drum maps on the fly. Entering the parts is a breeze…whether you play it in, do step entry, or draw the stuff with the mouse (diamond editor rocks for that).
My three big frustrations with it are:
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When importing XML, it can’t do much with the dynamics right away. One has to go in and manually replace them with special cubase elements. I.E. A triple forte marking does NOTHING unless one goes in and removes it, and replaces it with one from the tool box. I wish it would do a better job of importing these…
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Needs some time saving improvements to the way it handles slur marks (stopping and starting legato) through expression maps. A few things could be done to make it better at ‘automatically’ handling slur marks.
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The special score events produced by the score editor can’t be accessed and manipulated via logical editors. The editor would be utterly amazing if we could use the logical editors to automate/batch process it. Search and replace…intermittent additions/subtractions…etc. If the logical editors could dig into the special score events I’d forget all about problem 1 above…as I could batch replace all of the non functioning imported dynamic markings with functional/translating ones in seconds.
Obviously it doesn’t have a ton of fancy engraver options with fine and precise user control over everything, and the print out quality isn’t super high, but it’s pretty darn good for work-flow and immediate collaboration purposes. I’ve handed the parts it spits out to many a drum line and they seem pretty pleased with the legibility of the scores and parts. Other than the playback side, I’ve had really good luck with importing XML percussion stuff produced by Cubase into other Scoring Apps and working with it there if I need better engraving options (again, getting those apps to play anything percussion back properly is a major pain…double that if trying to import an XML).
Whatever kind of closer integration or interoperability grows between Dorico and Cubase as the two programs develop, I can’t see the existing score editor in Cubase being removed, so I don’t think that’s something any of you need to worry about.
I never suggested getting removing cubase score editor. My suggestion was to ‘dorico’ the cubase score editor at least in some respects.
I would imagine Dorico-izing the Cubase score editor could be kind of tricky. The easiest thing to move over would be the Bravura font (by adding SMuFL support to the Cubase Score Editor), and this could help to improve the display in the score editor. But for other features, the two have completely different user interfaces, and most likely have completely different code bases that are architected in a completely different way. That doesn’t mean it isn’t possible, but it would be a lot of work.
Well, the only really workable way to make integration between both Dorico and Cubase, would be something like ARA2 technology,
which will transfer the data from Dorico to Cubase, and vice versa real-time.
For this purpose many things in Cubase must be changed…
- The Expression Maps (in Cubase) must be the same as in Dorico (where they are better improved, as I can see)
- The Instrument Tracks (in Cubase) must implement some conceptions from Dorico (Multiple Voices per instrument).
Score sheet - like writing in Cubase should be adopted as it is in Dorico.
Transferring files, ReWire or Studio One <-> Notion way are pointless. Just wasting of time.
Greetings,
Thurisaz
ARA2 proper doesn’t support MIDI I don’t think - it is really only for audio, so it would have to be “something like” ARA2. Also, with Melodyne, both Melodyne and Cubase use the audio as a basis for everything, and so there the idea of the integration is simple and most of the work is just in the implementation.
Even if expression maps were the same in both and MIDI/instrument tracks were the same, the challenge that I can see is that again Dorico uses printed notation as a master while allowing you to tweak the entered notes for playback purposes. Cubase on the other hand is all about MIDI and uses the MIDI notes as the “reference” but you can tweak the entered notes for display purposes.
Suppose you record MIDI in Cubase on a MIDI or instrument track - how is Dorico supposed to know how to display this? I would imagine you would have to go into the Cubase score editor and add display quantize stuff so that it appears correctly in the Cubase score editor and then maybe it would appear correctly in Dorico. This would not be an ideal workflow because you would use Cubase score editor as an intermediate step between Cubase MIDI and Dorico. Then what if you make edits in Dorico like moving notes around to different beats or changing things to triplets, what should that do in Cubase? Should that change the playback? What if you delete things? etc. Or should this type of data be read only in Dorico, using Dorico only to display it and requiring all edits be done in the Cubase score editor? Even just that is not a simple solution because it requires a close connection between the Cubase score editor and Dorico, and then maybe you can’t add Dorico markings that the score editor doesn’t have built-in support for.
Or do they just forbid people from recording MIDI in Cubase to use the integration and make them record in Dorico (by implementing a new track type in Cubase called a Dorico Track), allowing maybe only editing of controllers in Cubase and adjustments to note start and end (like in Dorico “Play” mode) without being able to delete notes? I can see that being potentially easier to accomplish but it might not really sit right with people who just want to start by playing things into Cubase freely like normal and then cleaning it up to make the notation (which is the way I usually work).
There are likely other options I have not thought of, but I do not think this is an easy problem to solve by any means (or they would have done it already).
mducharme,
With all my respect but seems you didn’t pay enough attention on my post (about ARA2) I wrote “Something like”… and probably you have no idea about MIDI, nor Dorico (it has Play mode, which actually has Instrument Tracks where you can write MIDI mock-ups, just like in Cubase).
If you have both Cubase and Dorico you won’t need to use the Score Editor… Both apps just need to be well synchronized.
The recording of MIDI in Cubase must be there… Since there are people who don’t use Dorico…
Everything I mentioned is possible to be achieved. 
Greetings
I did pay attention to your post and you said exactly the words “something like ARA2” and that is why I put something like in quotes. I was agreeing with you that it would have to be something like ARA2 but clarifying that it probably could not be ARA2 itself.
and probably you have no idea about MIDI, nor Dorico (it has Play mode, which actually has Instrument Tracks where you can write MIDI mock-ups, just like in Cubase).
I do understand both. I’ve been working with MIDI and notation since the mid 90’s, and in Cubase since around 2005, and I am also a programmer. In Dorico you can write MIDI mockups. But essentially in Dorico you record to notation, not to piano roll (that’s why there is automatic quantization). If you recorded directly to piano roll in Dorico you would get all kinds of crazy notation like strings of tied note values with many beams to represent slight timing errors where you didn’t hit a note exactly on the beat and didn’t release exactly on the next etc. Instead it is quantized to remove that issue. In Cubase you record to piano roll, not notation, and so Cubase does not have to force quantization in this same way and I’m not sure people would want it to.
It is not simply a matter of making them “well synchronized”. In Cubase you record to notes on a piano roll (not quantized) and in Dorico you record to notes displayed as notation (quantized). Whenever you are dealing with music playback you always deal with not only the representation of the note on the page (the instruction to the performer of what to do), but also with the piano roll (the way it is actually performed by the computer). The two are linked in that the piano roll note is somehow a reflection of the notation (or vice versa), but are otherwise two distinct things. As a result, in any given program you have to make a choice of which of those two things (the representation or the playback) should be the master object and which should be the attribute of the master (or a child object). In Cubase the master object is the actual MIDI note as performed, and the notated representation is an attribute of that; in Dorico it is the other way around. To you it may seem simple, but from a programming perspective, the underlying “thing” being represented in the data structures is not the same. I don’t believe this is anywhere near as easy a problem to solve as you suggest. It would require either additional information to make a suitable mapping of playback<–>notated representation (ex. using display quantize), or would need additional intelligence to tell the difference (based on context) between timing errors and actual different intended note values. It is easier for human beings to tell the difference between something that is a timing error and something that is not based on contextual clues than it is for a computer.
Thurisaz, It’s a bit rich to tell somebody they “don’t understand Dorico” when you don’t even use it yourself. (ref Keyswitch Assignable Lyrics - #3 by Thurisaz - Dorico - Steinberg Forums)
Mducharme has been posting here for the past 3 years…
As far as upgrading cubase score editor, I had in mind a minimal amount of functionality added–maybe just the same keystrokes and process for entering and changing notes. Not anything along the lines of creating a typeset score–just an alternative to piano roll. I wonder if it would be difficult to allow copy and paste between dorico and midi in cubase.
You can already drag and drop MIDI from Cubase to Dorico.
It seems there might be two different definitions of “synchronization” going on in this thread. Let me see if I can get this straight…
Definition #1: Events and structure are duplicated across platforms. If you enter a note in Cubase, it shows up in Dorico and vice versa.
Definition #2: Only playback is synchronized.
Def #1 looks like it would be a LOT of heavy lifting. This is where the Cubase Score Editor has its relevance, IMHO. But that’s NOT what I’m asking for.
I’m advocating for Def #2. I can do this today between Cubase and Sibelius via ReWire. I can import tempo maps, markers and and any MIDI events I might have sketched out in to the initial Sibelius project and then start the composition/orchestration process from there. Then ReWire makes sure the two apps stay sync’ed up during playback. I point the staves in Sibelius to VePro instances with score-optimized VSTs but everything else stays in Cubase.
THAT’S what I’m hoping for with Dorico. Synchronized playback. Everything beyond that would be gravy on the taters. Sure, it would be cool to have some kind of dynamic link (Adobe!) between the two apps but to me, that’s a down-the-road development.
Playback sync alone would eliminate my need for Sibelius. Because I really hate the way Sibelius handles instruments and I love how Dorico does it.
My $0.02
I expect that playback sync is probably going to come sooner rather than later, whether they implement it through Rewire or some other means, and I agree that that is necessary and more straightforward to accomplish.
However, a lot of people have interest in Dorico because they assume that it has some special integration with Cubase, of the #1 variety. Commercial composers especially have had to work in two different programs if they need both a mockup and a notated score that will be performed. Either they write the mockup in their DAW and it is translated to notation after, or they write the score in notation and it gets extra shaping added etc in the DAW. Either way you end up with duplication of effort because the DAW can’t do notation like notation software can, and notation software can’t do DAW stuff like DAW’s can.
The first orchestral piece that I had performed (back in 2012) I first wrote in Cubase and then I added all of the articulations via expression maps so that those would all be there, and then I went through the score and did display quantize on the entire thing so that I could get a score that I could export to MusicXML to bring into Sibelius. Importing that into Sibelius didn’t work as well I hoped and certain things were lost, so I had to dig into the XML file and do “find and replace” in a text editor to replace the XML elements that the Cubase score editor was exporting incorrectly, or at least exporting in a different way than Sibelius was expecting. Eventually I got it transferred over with everything I needed, but I would say the process was more complicated than it was worth (a few days of work just to get it looking in Sibelius somewhat like the appearance in Cubase score editor), and so the next orchestral piece I just wrote in Sibelius directly. It really shouldn’t have to be that difficult.
Currently yes you can drag and drop MIDI events from Cubase into Dorico - I’ve tried this and it works. But realistically that doesn’t get you results that are any better than if you simply simply exported to MIDI from Cubase and imported that MIDI into Dorico. Many people were (and still are) expecting that because both programs are made by Steinberg that there would be more of a connection between them already, and are frequently surprised by how un-integrated they still are. It is incredibly difficult to do well of course, but I think it is what a lot of people are hoping for.