I’m very new to scoring and arranging. That’s all I need to say about that I guess.
What I’m hoping to do is take music that we’re currently using at my church, scan it into Cubase via MusicXML, produce an arrangement with additional instruments that I’ve added/performed myself, and then produce individual charts/sheet music for the group. It would be really nice if some of that were chord charts vs sheet music. Lyrics should be included.
Is Dorico the right tool for this, or is it overkill? I’ve seen, and I’m not sure what to call it, but a master arrangement of music where all the instruments are on one page. Can you split that up into individual instruments and then print/distribute that music? Would I need to produce the chord charts manually? I’m thinking something similar to what you’d see at any Guitar-tab site for pop songs, etc. Just lyrics and the chords approximately where they should be played.
I have Cubase Pro 9.5. Could I just use that? I have not used it for Scoring before.
How important is it to have integration between a DAW and the Scoring software? Is there any integration between Dorico and Cubase? Or are they really two separate programs? Would any VST instruments be available in Dorico?
Apologies again for the newbie questions. Thanks for your time.
AFAIK You can still download a demo of the software to play with for a month. That might be the best way to answer some of your questions.
Yes, you can create separate Layouts for each instrument/player in a full score . In fact in most cases the program creates the layouts for you, although you may wish to tweak the formatting before printing.
You can add chords to your music and have it sow on lead sheets or any other player’s part you wish; but so far, fingering charts are not included.
Some aspects of drum notation (if that is important to you) is not yet available: measure repeats and slashes are the most obvious lack.
You can add VST instruments beyond HALion to Dorico, but expression maps to make them sound more realistic are not always available, and so far the list of techniques you can attach to expression maps is limited.
Yes, you can use Dorico for that. You could also use the built in notation feature of Cubase, but the results aren’t nearly as good in terms of engraving quality.
I’m not quite sure that I understand what form your current music is in. Is it printed sheet music? Or is it midi, which you input into Cubase, maybe using a midi keyboard?
The “master sheet” you are referring to is the score with all instruments, and in Dorico (and Sibelius) you can automatically print parts from that for individual players.
There’s no “integration” (yet) between Dorico and Cubase, but don’t worry about that. It’s not important for creating scores and parts for the players. You’re just looking for a program that is good at creating sheet music, and Dorico does exactly that (as do Sibelius and Finale btw).