Please bring back the old Score editor (in addition to the new one)

Cubase
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1

Hi, still on C13 here.

I’m not updating to C14 because I don’t like how the new Score editor has replaced the old one. I liked the old one, and reading the replies from Steinberg staff to users complaining about the missing features of the new version, I have the feeling that we won’t get back all that’s now missing.

Main reason being the existance of Dorico: I guess Steinberg tries to make people buy Dorico when they need a full functional Score editor.

But:

  • Dorico has an additional cost, where the old Score editor was included;
  • Dorico is not fully integrated in Cubase/Nuendo. I mean: no realtime bidirectional communication between Score and Key editors.

Also, because of Dorico being a separate product, I guess the new C14 Score editor will never get all the Dorico features. If a full Dorico will be included in Cubase/Nuendo, less users will buy it!

So, my feature request is: please include back the old Score editor in Cubase/Nuendo, “as is” in the current last version, as a separate module, or activated through a Preference switch.

This way, people will be able to choose the old one “as is” (of course: without support) or the new one. Meanwhile, Steinberg will continue to improve the new one and maybe users will have less complaints about it.

In the meantime, I will continue with C13.

Thanks.

2

My understanding is that the Cubase score editor being limited has nothing to do with trying to get users to buy Dorico as well. Even though the Dorico engine is running in Cubase, the UI elements to control all features still mostly have to be made individually on the Cubase side, which essentially means creating two UI’s for the same program engine. So if it was made at feature parity with full Dorico, they would have to add a huge amount of UI elements, dialog boxes, new windows, etc. Some features of the full Dorico may also need some other tweaks to work properly with Cubase-in-Dorico as it is different in some ways. That is a ton of effort for features that may be little used by the vast majority of Cubase users. So it is quite reasonable that they are only porting the features that they expect are to be most important to Cubase users (and that process is still not complete).

3

If I end up having to use Dorico for my score work, then I don’t need Cubase anymore.
I’m not fixated on Cubase and have other DAWs (e.g., Studio One) that are even better in terms of usability. But for me, the big and unique selling point for Cubase was/is the integration of a good, flexible, and customizable score editor directly into a decent DAW. If that’s no longer the case, then I don’t need Cubase anymore. It’s that simple.

I like the idea of ​​continuing to use the old editor optionally in newer Cubase versions. But I don’t think Steinberg supports it or it’s feasible.

The current state of the new Score Editor is almost OK. One bigger problem for me is for instance linking the display of chords in the score to the chord track. That makes no sense for me. The display of chords in the score must be completely independent of a track of playback functions. And of course I need several, not one chord track because there could be many variants of chords in the score or several layouts with different chords.

And for me there are unfortunately too few manually adjustable things and too many automatic functions that are not needed if you want to create a musical notation precisely and specifically for your purposes.

4

Yes, I agree that it is likely not feasible. Both score editors are most likely tied in fairly tightly with Cubase internals, and Cubase has a very old codebase which increases the likelihood that it has weirdness in places. Changes to some of those internals would most likely break the score editor, if the score editor did not receive updates to match. Having to update both the score editors would mean twice the work.

A potential example is the expression maps system. Right after the new score editor came out, they mentioned an intention to enhance the expression maps feature in the future. It had then immediately occurred to me that most likely, the old score editor is a main reason why the expression maps system did not have any major enhancements for a long time. It seems as though the old score editor was tied in on a very deep level with the current expression maps system as it is designed, and so changes to the expression maps design would doubtless require major changes to the old score editor just to keep it working (without crashing everything). It also wouldn’t necessarily make sense for them to make expression-map-related enhancements to Cubase until the new score editor was in place and they didn’t have to worry about potentially breaking the old score editor anymore.

I’ve been a Dorico user now for about 7 or 8 years (and a Cubase user for 20 years). One thing I should mention here is that one of Dorico’s big strengths has always been how well-designed the automatic systems generally are in reducing the amount of effort it takes to get a really nice score and parts on the page. They save a huge amount of time in this front.

Yes, you do occasionally need manual adjustments. But in fact in Dorico there are also very often ways of controlling some of the automatic features in a better way, and this can significantly reduce if not eliminate the need for manual intervention.

With other score editors, you often have to use manual methods for everything, but in the case of Dorico, the automatic functions are so well designed and configurable and adaptable that in many cases you can write entire beautifully engraved scores and only do one or two manual adjustments, if any. I’m able to produce scores and parts that look nicer than what I could do with Finale or Sibelius with much less time with less manual effort. However, it is fairly common to need to use the controls over the automatic functions provided in Dorico to get to this point (and even then, still on occasion manual adjustments are needed).

People learning Dorico are typically taught to always leverage the automatic stuff first, by being shown how to exercise controls over the automatic behaviors, and only drilling down to manual adjustments if the more automated methods fail (which is actually fairly rare given the levels of control over the automated methods).

Some of those controls of the automatic functions are already there, and Cubase users have not necessarily learned how to use them yet, but some of them are not exposed yet in Cubase. But, in Dorico you can actually get a surprising amount done without the manual adjustments that you would need with other scoring packages, and I expect the same to be true of Cubase once they add more needed controls into the software.

5

I made the same request some months ago.
For me it would make sense totally. Simply put the code of the old score editor back, don´t improve it, don´t provide service, all fine with me…but what do I know of software programming? Nothing!
Allegedly it´s impossible…

6

No, we are not going to bring the old Score Editor back. It’s not “impossible”, it just doesn’t make any technical or economic sense.

We would much rather spend our resources on improving the new Score Editor. We continue to evolve the tool around workflows that improve upon the immediate interaction with the rest of Cubase, which is why it is designed around being a midi editor showing notation.

The example of the chord track which synthplayer mentioned is interesting, because it warrants further thought about how that may work with our new infrastructure. Michael’s comment about Expression Maps is another case of deeper integration that would be great to improve on in future.

The old Score Editor works as well as it ever will be in Cubase 13. Dorico on the other hand complements workflows that require further engraving or notation-based compositional tools, and we’re not writing another Dorico within Cubase either. I’d like to encourage to keep talking about the workflows that you like to see improved, but we must be mindful of how we prioritize.

7

To build on Stefan’s reply, if you find that the new score editor doesn’t appear to do what you need then please describe what it is that you want to achieve. There may be many cases where it is possible, but the method has changed. We do read all feedback and take it into account.

I suggest reading Daniel’s blog post that describes the motivation and some of the technical background to the need to replace the score editor: Introducing the new Dorico-powered Score Editor in Cubase 14 – Dorico

8

I too am staying with Cubase 13 for the time being while the new score editor gains some important features. I’ve been heartened to see some absolutely essential features get added in - for example, score staff names not matching the track names was a complete deal breaker for me, but it was quickly added in after me and other users bugged the devs about it! (thanks again guys for engaging with us here so frequently).

I can’t stay on 13 forever, obviously, because I’d miss too many feature updates in other areas of the DAW. For now, I’ll probably stick with 13 until the new score editor creates some kind of template system. As it stands, going through 12 steps to setup a staff the way I want it every time in every session is not workable for me as a film composer working on projects with 35-40 sessions a project. I need quick recall of settings exactly as I have them, or I’m just not going to use it.

But to circle back to the OP - we shouldn’t hold out hope the old editor will come back and instead support the devs to bring back features we need. Hopefully the devs will surprise us with new features we didn’t know we needed, too!

9

Curious to see a list of the 12 steps Greg.

10

I don’t think the old score editor is coming back. I would like to hear more specifics about what is missing in C14 compared to C13 in terms of score editor functionality, Its my understanding that Steinberg intends to improve score functionality in Cubase over time, this will probably happen more slowly then many of us would wish, and its unfortunate if it took 3 steps back compared to the old editor in order to make the change, so that potentially in the future the end result will in fact be superior in every way to the older editor…and better interchange or whatever between Cubase and Dorico.

11

Can’t find my old post on the subject but like a dork I had the text saved. Here’s what I wrote back when it came out. Turns out it was 7 steps. Step 3 (typing in track names) is no longer needed thanks to updates. Haven’t explored recently to see if some of the others are defunct now as well.

I’d like to emphasize the largest deficiency I’ve encountered by outlining the steps I need to take every time I create a part, times 15 Cubase sessions, per episode of television I work on.

1.) Create the new Layout
2.) Open layout settings. Choose “treble staff” as 9 times out of 10 the instrument name is not correctly detected.
3.) Type the names of the staff
4.) Set the markers to not display
5.) Set the chords to display on individual staves only.
6.) Set the chords to not display.
7.) Setup the default display quantize values I want

That’s 7 steps I need to repeat 4-10 times per session, across 20 separate sessions, per episode. That’s a ridiculous amount of work, and I hope points to the fact that we desperately need some kind of template system so I can set up defaults as I need them once, and only once, and then have a way of importing those settings from one session to the other.

In addition (or perhaps instead of) this template system we need the option of setting default behavior for all layouts, or perhaps the ability to create custom instruments that save these defaults. If I could have, say, an instrument defined as “Treble Staff Default” that had all my settings I wouldn’t necessarily need the template system.

Something I find myself forced to do is use the sync layout only, and change the view depending on the parts I want to print, since at least there I don’t need to re-set all of my settings. But this is not how this layout is meant to be used, and it has other drawbacks.

12

How are you creating the Cubase projects for each of these sessions? Do you have a Cubase template already? If so, you should be able to set these scoring properties in that template file.

Re: display quantize – our goal is that you shouldn’t need to change this unless there’s a passage that is rhythmically complex, ambiguous, extremely fast notes, or highly swung. If you cases that aren’t quantized well by default we are interested to see them so that we can improve the algorithm.

13

I also would like to have presets in the score editor. Using templates isn’ t that practical. E.g . if I create new tracks in the template project, everything in the score has to be adjusted again.

14

There’s a lot missing, but to me the important question is “what is missing that (most) people need” rather than “what is missing” in general. In the Cubase 13 score editor you can freely move all sorts of objects around the page that normally you would not want to be able to move. You could drag objects off the staff to some completely unrelated part of the page, things you cannot do even in Dorico. Why would you want to do these things? I have no idea, but you could do them.

It’s kind of like old versions of MuseScore - I remember one student submitted a score for homework (done in MuseScore 2.x or some old version) and had accidentally somehow dragged like about 20-30% of his bar lines from where they should be to some other horizontal or vertical position on the page, so there would be a random bar line floating in space and no bar line where it should be. In newer versions of MuseScore they made it a lot harder to accidentally drag bar lines to some random part of the page because people would do it by accident, and you’d almost never want to do this on purpose anyway. But those are are the sort of thing that the old Cubase Score Editor was able to do as well. You could take anything and easily drag it anywhere, even if it didn’t make any sense to do so.

The Cubase 13 score editor was kind of Finale-like in its customizability for doing all sorts of crazy avant-garde scores with all sorts of unusual notations. People were able to make things in it that didn’t even look like scores anymore.

On the flip side, the default appearance and default spacing was atrocious so that in many cases to get reasonable results with a more standard-fare score, you’d have to manually space every note by hand. So even though you could do just about anything with it, the amount of work it involved to make it look nice was tremendous. I could never use the Cubase 13 score editor (or older versions) as a result and always had to turn to outside notation software.

The new score editor has a completely different goal - to significantly reduce the amount of work involved in getting a nice looking score prepared. I think it will never be as completely flexible as the Cubase 13 score editor.

15

I’m sort of, of the opinion that getting great looking scores should not even be a goal in DAW’s. I’m not sure how we got to place where that is an expectation. They put scoring features in decades ago before we had the tremendous support that we have today for music notation in dedicated software and musicXML to transfer it over, etc. In my mind the objective of DAW-score functionality should be simply to enable DAW production using notes-on-staff note entry and editing, perhaps some simple lead sheet print outs, etc, Its ridiculous to duplicate all the functionality of scoring applications into DAW’s. Interchange between software is much better when there is a need for deep and heavy score production.

DAW’s are about producing audio, which sometimes involves some midi along the way. And many people want to view and edit the midi on traditional staves, myself included. They will want to use score objects to define playing techniques and articulations for expression mapping, etc. An alternative to the piano roll basically. I personally would like to see Cubase and other DAW’s focus on staff notion in that light, optimize it so that we can edit the score, see the automation lanes, etc.. just as if the staff was an alternative to piano roll lane. Help us to produce audio, using score instead of piano roll.. Beyond that I think it’s ludicrous to expect Steinberg or any other DAW to conflate the purpose of the 'daw with the purpose of notational programs…Sibelius and Dorico are both quite capable, anyone needing to produce quality scores should use those. Notion, MuseScore, StaffPad, Lilypond, and even others…all can do these tasks quite readily. I personally do not want to see Cubase side tracked by that endeavor…but I do want to be able to enter and edit my midi on staves, in fact I would prefer if I never have to look at a piano roll ever again…so please Steinberg make the score editing more like that. Why no galley view for example? I want to see the score slide to the left exactly in sync with the piano roll that is sliding to the left, along with automation lanes sliding to the left. This is what we need in DAW’s, not the ability to create avant garde scores.

16

I agree with a lot of that. What I really wanted most from the Cubase Score Editor (personally) is to be able to see the music that I’m writing in a score view, to get a better sense of the overall orchestration, such as doublings, voicings, etc. It is hard to get a sense of that from the piano roll and a lot easier in notation. Working in the piano roll I would typically work more by ear and line-by-line, which means I could miss some things.

I tried to get this from the old Cubase, but it was so much work just to tweak the score in order to take a reasonable look at it that it wasn’t worth it. The default spacing made it hard to read, and having to do all sorts of engraving work just to see what I had written - that kind of defeated the purpose, since I didn’t need a polished/finished score for any reason. My biggest issue with the Cubase 13 and older score editor for this purpose was that had only two spacing modes - exactly proportional where a 16th note took up exactly 1/4 the horizontal space of a quarter note, with a 32nd note being exactly half that, or equal where a whole note took up the same amount of horizontal space as a 32nd note. These two choices are not sufficient, as most good notation software uses a more flexible algorithm that isn’t precisely proportional to make it easier to read.

Cubase 14 is great at that. I can write something and quickly see my orchestration as notation. So, to me, it is already “great-looking” notation in that it is quite readable without me having to touch it hardly (thanks to the Dorico layout engine), which couldn’t be said for earlier versions. I think when you meant “great-looking” scores that you were probably referring to the details etc and having a finished/polished score, whereas I mean it more in the sense of easily readable in terms of notes and rhythms without having to do anything.

The one area where it might be behind from your description is you describe wanting to work from notation first (writing notes into the score in Cubase). It currently seems much more geared towards people going from a piano-roll-to-score approach, rather than writing in notation from the beginning. I did some experiments in an earlier version of Cubase 14 with a score-first approach, but quickly went back to the piano roll when I realized how few tools there were in the score editor to speed up workflow for entering notes etc. (unlike in Dorico where it is quite fast to work in the score due to all the keyboard shortcuts and popovers).

I think where Cubase 14 has made very important gains is catching up to Digital Performer’s QuickScribe feature. It used to be that in terms of seeing your notation quickly from what you had written in the piano roll, QuickScribe couldn’t be beat, but I think Cubase 14’s notation is quite competitive with it. It used to be that QuickScribe was sometimes used as an in-between for DAW-to-notation software workflows, where you would export MIDI from the DAW, bring it into DP and export MusicXML from QuickScribe and bring that into the notation software. Now I think Cubase is good enough to fill this role.

17

Exactly!
I´m no piano player, I don´t care about instant good looking scores based on what I played.
I used the score editor to WRITE notes, that´s the way I arrange my music - and I simply cannot do it in C14 any more! Editing, selecting, moving and copying notes got so complicated…and often times it doesn´t work at all!
Additionally note lengths often times are not what I write, staccato articulation appears against my will, accidentals keep changing after I edited them…it´s driving me crazy!
I´m forced to use the key editor more than I want to, which is way more time consuming and doesn´t deliver the oversight I used to get from notation.

18

My point of view is that cubase is a DAW and DAW should be focused on producing audio. this may included the use of traditional staff notation for both editing midi as well as for expression map based playback.

I feel the C14 tools in this regard are still lacking a lot. its more like an afterthought add on to display some notes on a page, but I’d really like to see it more integrated into the DAW oriented work flow. There are many different ways that could be done. I agree with you that C14 is pretty cumbersome to enter and edit the data.. I don’t think we’ll be able to see dorico-like note entry because of the way Dorico is optimized for QWERTY use and a lot of that will simply conflict with Cubase workflow. Perhaps in cubase it will be more about using the mouse more than dorico typically does. Usually most people don’t use the mouse in dorico..the QWERTY is so much better and frankly in dorico the mouse is qwerky to use. So Cubase score editor might need to be more like mouse-centric…or using step entry, a daw approach, but still we want to enter and edit on the score with the same ease as the piano roll…and like you said…we should be able to select an adhoc collection of tracks and instantly see well spaced staves of those tracks…ideally in galley view down the DAW timeline, rather than on a page, which does not line up down the DAW timeline.

LogicPro actually has a lot of kind of odd configuration options that are all related to how to group different tracks into staves, etc..they are options that don’t make sense in a notational program, but do make sense if you’re trying to use a DAW like a DAW and also trying to use notation editor to work on it. Cubase needs to move in this direction, but with the nicer quality score renditions from Dorico, with expression map playback features from Dorico, with realtime translation features from Dorico, etc…yet still in the context of typical DAW workflows…where some of us want to work on the music with notation rather than piano roll bars.

Typical work flow for a composer would be compose in Cubase, work with staves, compose and arrange, even get very sophisticated playback with improved expression mapping, ability to tag all playback techniques on the score, etc…and manually edit piano rolls and automation lanes and mix automation and everything else a DAW can offer…make the audio, export the MusicXML into Dorico and have it be nearly almost ready for printing very quickly at that point with very little extra work required presuming the MusicXML is imported into pre-established layouts, templates, house styles, etc.

19

In this case, I don’t think MusicXML would be involved anymore (with Cubase 14 and newer), much better to just save as a Dorico project file directly. The main use case for MusicXML from Cubase would be if you wanted to go to Sibelius or something else.

20

true they could bypass MusicXML within Steinberg products and probably get much tighter translation.