Drawing CC-curves

I wont miss the choir… so congrats for the great job you and your team did. What I have seen in Frankfurt was just mind blowing… :slight_smile:

There is one question that just came up while reading all the other questions here.

Will there be a feature that allows drawing CC of all kind beside the usual automatic CC-11 algorythm for, let’s say, hairpins?

You my credo that only 10% of the musical content is covered by notated music and more often one has to tweak things that do not appear on a sheet such like long notes in a lyrical passage giving space to other instruments.

Drawing all kind of CC is 70% of the job when working in Cubase to get proper results so I am just curious :wink:

Andy

The intention is that you will indeed be able to draw controller curves in the automation lanes for each instrument in Play mode, yes.

Hi Daniel and Andy,

I’m really itching to have this software. But ,oh wow! We can draw in our own cc curves! That is amazing!

Look forward to hearing more. Great question Andy. Thanks for answering Daniel!

best,

Steve :slight_smile:

That’s great. Will there be multiple CC lanes for each track/region?

And will it, at some point, be possible to record CC curves using a mod wheel or external controller? Orchestral mockup makers do that all the time, since it’s often easier to add vibrato curves and dynamic changes in real time, as you record your music, than by drawing curves afterwards.

There will be a single displayed automation lane, as things stand, but you can choose which controller you’re looking at, and the program will remember all of the values you set, even if you can only see one set at a time.

We expect to be able to record automation data in real-time from your MIDI controller, but it’s not yet clear whether this capability will be in the first version of the audio engine that our colleagues in Hamburg are working on at the moment.

This is great news and will potentially save me a lot of time in the future! :slight_smile:

When I see CC curves, I try not to leer lecherously…

:^)

Thanks for the info! I know that missing multiple CC lanes is a topic which often pops up in Logic/Cubase discussions (Cubase has that feature, Logic doesn’t), and many Logic users miss it. But who knows - maybe you’ll implement that single lane in a way which makes users feel happy about having only one lane. Thanks again.

I would just like to add my ‘plus 1’ to this thread. Graphical Scoring of CC curves is an important part of modern music writing and arranging - Daniel said in a very early post on the blog that this would be supported, so I am very glad to hear it has been followed through. I agree that the option to display more than one cc line at a time, as well as displaying in various colours would be very desirable. Also, to have the option to use graphical display for other modulations defined by the user would be good.

Truly this is turning into a thoroughly 21st century app. I am very excited and have been spreading the word appropriately :sunglasses:

Best wishes to all,

Mike

Daniel,

This is great to hear! Although I want to suggest that if the CC lanes are like Cubase, I believe that would be a grave mistake. Users have long wanted “curves”, not just CC data points. This was one of my favorite features of another DAW, so hopefully Steinberg will hear the need for this and take action.

Cheers,
Sean

Agreed, but points are simple data while curves have to be calculated during the playback although latency will not too much be an issue in Dorico but in Cubase.

But over all this would be a great step forward for CB and DO… :slight_smile:

One thing I did love about Sibelius was the simplicity of hairpins to adjust dynamics changes–the CC curve is built into hairpin making it trivial to change (unlike real CC data). And Sib does the same with tempos with the added benefit of Early/Linear/Late curve choices.

I really want the same but for other CC’s. I’d love (the equivalent of) hidden hairpins for vibrato depth or the like–especially something that moves around correctly as the music is changed (really important for composers). Bonus points if Dorico manages to allow separation of sematic attribute (e.g. “vibrato”) from actually CC# used for the current end point. (I assume the note expression stuff will help take care of that.)

Anyway, this is just an observation of where Sibelius struck a great balance–I have every confidence that the Dorico team will strike a similar balance, especially once they get past the 1.0 crunch. (Go team! :slight_smile:) But thought the observation might be useful.

Dorico will work somewhat like you suggest. You’ll get some degree of automatic playback of dynamic from hairpins and other dynamic objects, but we plan to allow you to override these or add your own control points to modify the dynamic ‘profile’. This will then be translated appropriately under the hood so that sounds that use CC1 rather than velocity will use that, and you won’t need to care. If you then change to use a different sound which uses a different controller then that’ll be dealt with automatically.

Thanks Paul – yes, this is very cool and the right way forward I believe.

Once you have set up a template with your favorite VSTs (whether they be East West, or VSL, or Spitfire or what have you - there are so many out there), and an appropriate expression map, then by default hairpins, dynamics, technique text etc. should be automatically translated, and the appropriate VST instrument would be loaded and played back.

But then, one step further, under the hood, being able to manually draw CC envelopes, or simple audio automation (volume, maybe EQ) can REALLY make a difference in terms of realistic playback … it’s the little details that matter.

If you can realize all of that in one program, you will have a total winner that will make a lot of people very happy (myself included).

Perhaps in addition to drawing cc curves from scratch, there could be an option to select pre-drawn curves (which, if necessary, could also be edited).

Yes, this is something I miss so much in Cubase… It is quite common that human players playing long notes do a tiny decresendo to make space for other instruments.

I have already tried to create some sort of automatism with the logical editor but… well, I failed so far :smiley:

In cubase I created preset events with various cc expressions. I had 7 I rotated through. Now in studio one I have a sketch pad dedicated to event presets. I find that is not only useful for tapering off the ends by default, but I’ve used this to level all my volumes and starting mic positions for spitfire and other libraries with mics. I find it much faster to work with. I’m not sure how Dorico will work. But I do plan on having 4 empty bars to set my default starting values with. It’s ugly, but works. FYI, it takes 4 bars cause too many cars at once isn’t always reliable. Some don’t get through. it also sounded like you can control how hairpin work by default in terms of the cc data they translate to. That would be brilliant. That and humanizing features are tremendously useful to me. But I will elaborate on another thread.

Feature Request: (hopefully a simple one)

If Dorico only has one CC lane viewable at a time… might I suggest tabbed viewing? The Dropdown in Cubase for selecting CC lanes is truly awful. Studio One gets it half right and half wrong. You can’t rename tabs, and sometimes that’s a pain. But the fact that you have tabs makes navigation incredibly easy to work in. At very least give us a shortcut way to change which CC data we’re editing. I move back and forth between 7 different values frequently. Volume, Modwheel, mic positions, vibrato, time-stretch (for shorter and longer notes), release samples, and sometimes a one other (harder to explain). Point is, many are needed. To anyone using Spitfire, VSL, or half the other orchestral libraries out there… easy navigation between CC lanes is a must here.

Hope some of these help!

Cheers,
Sean