Dorico 5 and Scaler 2: How can I improve the workflow?

Dorico
1

Hi,
I am using the “Scaler 2” VST-Plugin as a Dorico instrument. I am using Scaler to find chord progressions for a given melody.

Current workflow is:

  1. Copy the melody notes from my 1st-voice instrument onto the Scaler instrument
  2. Run detect mode (record) in Scaler to identify the notes used in the melody line
  3. Select the scale and use Scaler’s parameters to find the best chords
  4. Drag an drop the found chords from the Scaler window into the piano roll view of a free instrument in Dorico: The dragged chords will show up as proper chord notes when going back to score view.

Allthough it works I find steps 1 and 4 pretty cumbersome and I was wondering if anybody experienced could give some advice to improve this workflow.

Concerning step 1 the question is if it is possible to redirect the notes of any instrument who currently has the melody (by solo-playing it of course) to the scaler instrument for detection without the need to copy the melody line. I don’t want to replace all my instruments, which currently have the melody, by Scaler.

More importantly, in step 4 I am looking for a possibility to drag (or record) the found chords directly to the right place in the score rather than the piano roll view. I am a note reading person and find the detour via piano roll confusing.

Unfortunately dragging and dropping chords directly into the score triggers a MIDI-import procedure in Dorico and you end up with a second score containg the chords only which is not what I intended.

I would e.g. be perfectly happy if I could use note-input in Dorico to drag a single found chord from Scaler into the right location in the score. But that does not work.

Anybody out there who found the philosopher’s stone ? Thanks.

3

You do indeed need to drag and drop the MIDI into the piano roll, rather than into the music. For better or worse, we have made the whole of the Dorico project window, with the exception of the piano roll in the Key Editor in the lower zone, or the track overview in Play mode, a target for dragging and dropping a file to open it as a new project. This is often very handy, particularly on Windows where you cannot drag a file into an application’s icon in the taskbar (unlike on macOS, where you can drag it onto the Dock icon).

4

Hi Daniel,

thank you very much for your comment.

  1. I think it would be a great idea to provide an option to override MIDI-Import in notation - especially if the import is obviously only a snippet. It should just simply work like piano roll import with the same result.

  2. Is there a way (maybe by using a 3rd party tool) to redirect the MIDI output of a Dorico instrument playing solo (or any other way) to the Instrument in which the Scaler VST sits ? This would allow to simplify record/chord detect the melody in Scaler to find the appropriate chords. I would not have to copy melody notes onto the Scaler instrument.

I would also like to take the opportunity to express my appreciation for what you’ve achieved with Dorico.
This software is just simply amazing. I can see all the experience that went into Sibelius PLUS the experience about its limitations you seemed to have learned from:
I absolutely love the deep integration with the Steinberg tools right from the start, which allow me to work both on notation as well as the piano roll with plenty of the features of a modern sequencer.
And - as I was the one who wrote the insert-notes-and-rest plugin for Sibelius some 10 years ago when you were product manager there: I am absolutely delighted to see that inserting notes and rests like in a word processor became standard in Dorico. Seems like a unique selling point ? Anyway you make amateurs like me happy absolutely with features like these.
After a pause of nearly 10 years I have looked at old Sibelius 7 again and can see very poor progress compared to the current cloud version. I am thankful that you guys found your way to Steinberg and made this great product!

1 Like
5

You can’t route the playback from an instrument both to a virtual instrument and a MIDI output, but I guess in theory you could use a virtual MIDI output to direct the playback from a particular instrument to the Scaler plug-in, assuming you can set Scaler to receive MIDI from a virtual MIDI device.

I’m glad that you’re enjoying using Dorico so far. We continue to work hard to push the state of the art forwards.

1 Like
6

Unfortunately I have no idea how the Scaler plugin-instrument could be enabled to receive MIDI throug a virtual MIDI-Device like loopMIDI or comparable software. I even do not see any corresponding settings in Scaler.

I’ve changed my workflow so that it is now a little easier:

  1. To make Scaler listen to the melody to identify the chords I temporarily replace the instrument that has the melody with scaler and let it play using a scaler bulit-in instrument rather than copying and pasting the melody notes into the scaler instrument. This is still somewhat cumbersome but I can live with it.

  2. Copying and pasting the found chords into the score still takes the detour via piano roll to avoid the MIDI-Import procedure. This is much more cumbersome because it is not easy to identify the exact location as there are no notes where the chord should go to, the piano roll has to be on screen and just at the right position etc.

An override-option for MIDI-Import in the score should not be a difficult thing. There could be more reasons than the Scaler plugin to simply copy an paste a MIDI snippet right into the score - maybe e.g. via the note input function or a position marked with the mouse or the same. If there is a way to get this implemented, then I would be happy to get in line.

Anyone else in the forum with ideas is welcome to share them. Thanks.