During the livestream the Groove Agent drag-drop pattern to Dorico really jumped out at me. I think it triggered thoughts of a hugely useful feature other apps have which is a Asset Library. Take Blender for example, you can tag 3D models and other items as a Library asset, which shows up in one of the docked windows. Then you can simply drag them to your 3D viewport - for example a nose or an ear. Fiddly thing noses, I kind of hate making them so drop a premade model in and modify to taste.
Anyhow I was thinking about what such a thing might mean in Dorico. Imagine a Library tab in the lower region which is an ‘Asset Browser’. Assets can be any blobs of musical data - a rhythmic pattern, pitch pattern, rhythmic/pitch pattern, dynamic pattern or whatever. You create an asset by selecting various items in Dorico then “Create Asset …” which puts it down there. Then later, you want to use that again you can drag a copy from the Asset browser onto your score. Here you can imagine all sorts of things like dragging a rhythmic pattern onto a list of pitches, or a dynamic pattern onto the same, or just drag a common theme onto some rests, and so forth.
Would this be useful? We talked on these forums about having a paste history like Windows has, but this seems like a different whack at the same problem, but a more powerful one.
Use case that comes to mind is when composing I start with a collection of ideas I sketch out. This would be cool in that I’d create local project only Assets for those ideas, then start Lego-like blocking out the piece with them. As I go along I’d make more useful assets like rhythmic patterns and such.
Long ago we implemented a feature like this in Sibelius called “ideas”, which provided a way to save snippets of music and then recall them later on. Certainly I think there are use cases for organising chunks of music and being able to easily combine them that we would like to address, but it’s not something we’re likely to work on imminently.
Finale has a little known feature in which you can save the contents of the Clipboard to disk, and then paste the file back in. I always thought it was useful.
Having that capability as a managed list in a window would be super-duper, and very similar to those sort of Asset Libraries in other apps.
Not exactly the same as Dan’s idea, which is great, but this is why I’m happy that playhead scrolling can now be enabled window by window. I can have one window, non scrolling, with an “ideas” flow containing snippets of music, chords, tone rows, etc., while I compose in another window, one that is set to scroll.
Oh that’s a good workaround … I’ve got a dual screen laptop I’ve been trying to figure out what the best use for the second small screen is. Yeah just make a temp flow and put snips in there.
Cubase has a very nifty feature called “Pool”, where any kind of media (video, audio) can be collected for potential use in the given project, including files recorded within the project or imported into this pool. These files can be organized into folders, duplicated, renamed, auditioned and have effects applied offline. Each pool can be exported as a single file. And they can be converted into Libraries (like the Idea folders) that can be logically organized and shared between projects.
I have no idea if this is a module that can be shared with Dorico like Note Expression or similar and/or if MIDI can be dropped into it, but perhaps Pool can be considered as one possible way to approach this.
It just occurred to me that there is one other tool in Cubase that might be useful as a potential centralized and shareable “Ideas” repository - the Media Bay. Any user-created folder anywhere on the PC can be added to Media Bay, files can be auditioned directly within it and drag-dropped onto tracks. I think the core of Media Bay is already incorporated into Dorico. Just a thought.
Media Bay also includes track presets for every type of track and could possibly “Endpoint Configurations”?