Hey Dorico/Cubase Team,
I’m auditioning Cubase because I was excited that Cubase now seems to have Dorico integration. However it just appear to kind of look like Dorico, and you can only export plain old midi files. Are there any plans to at least make the integration more robust? Thanks, Jeff
Hi @Jeff_Gauthier, and welcome to the Forum.
This is not correct. You can now (from Cubase 14) export directly a Dorico project, from Cubase that you can directly open in Dorico. It is amazing!
To be able to export from Dorico to Cubase, this functionality was already requested and the Team is considering implementing this in future updates.
Thanks. I will investigate.
Not saying to steal ideas from Avid, but I do think Dorico and Cubase should have some kind of copy and paste functionality as Sibelius introduced not long ago with Pro Tools.
The past few days I’ve been working on a hybrid project in both Cubase and Dorico and there were a few moments I wanted to use Dorico for quick counterpoint, exploding of chords, small arranging of a few measures really. For this kind of thing it would be awesome to be able to quickly sketch it out in Dorico and then tab over to Cubase into a midi region and copy/paste without having to go through a whole roundtrip procedure.
Absolutely steal any and all ideas that are good and implementable. Ideas are not protected by any copyright law: it’s the execution that matters.
Yeah, and they aren’t the only software company to invent the idea of copy/paste between their ecosystem, so you’re right, no one owns that. Adobe for example will allow you to copy and paste something directly from Illustrator to Photoshop without doing an export/import. You just copy, tab windows, and paste! Would be great Dorico & Cubase could see simple midi data across a clipboard in this way.
Of course, but there might still be need for additional integration questions to be solved before such feature is released. What’s going to e.g. happen in the following situations:
- the passage is longer than the “available space” in source material (less of an issue if going from Dorico to Cubase, but the other way around — will Dorico generate new bars to accommodate?)
- copying multiple tracks / staves at one go: how is this handled in the receiving program? What if either in Dorico or Cubase the copied tracks only look like they’re adjacent, but might really be visible (either with track filter or staff visibility) tracks dozens or hundreds (if large template) tracks/staves apart?
- how would midi data in percussion staves be handled, to and from?
- if Dorico is displaying the score as transposed, would the default be still to paste the midi data to Cubase at the sounding / concert pitch? Or the other way around?
- etc.
Copying and pasting data between applications has been the whole point of the clipboard since it was invented in the early 1970s!
And of course you can already drag and drop MIDI from Cubase into Dorico; and Drag ‘n’ Drop is a Pasteboard operation, on macOS at least. This also works from any app that supports dragging of MIDI data.
Finale had a function for copying and pasting MIDI data to the clipboard for years; though they didn’t advertise or showcase any apps with which it could be usefully paired.
That’s cool. It would be great then if you could do the inverse, too. I mostly prefer to use Dorico for writing and orchestration, and the new Dorico-ish score editor in Cubase is not quite there for me.
I am not sure, but if Sibelius and Pro Tools does this, then surely such things must have been considered or are handled one way or another. I actually have Pro Tools, and I think I have a Sibelius free version kicking around if it has this feature (not sure) - I may have to test some of those scenarios to find out how it handles it.
In short answer I would imagine that whichever app you are copying to would make available space, or a prompt would ask you: “Would you like to add additional bars?” etc. Copying multiple tracks wasn’t necessarily my personal thought or use case. I’m picturing more like - you want to copy several chords and then explode them over to a string section in Dorico. Is it not technically still just midi pitch data?
But yeah like I said, I’d have to check to see how Avid has handled this. I’m sure it’s not perfect but the idea would be for quick work, clean up a melody or explode some chords – in my view if you want to work on a full song you’d still be better off with a project file roundtrip.
Have you tried it? I don’t use Cubase, but from what I can gather, it can receive dragged MIDI data. (It would be odd if it only dragged out, but not in.)
I hadn’t, but I just tried it and nothing happens. Also trying the method from Cubase to Dorico doesn’t seem to work for me either, I just tried dragging a basic midi clip into Dorico’s play tab and nothing, sadly…
My experience from the most complex Cubase Scores to Dorico mainly via XML, sometimes via MIDI, is absolutely excellent.