Finally got a chance to try out the new score editor, and my first reaction was “Wow, it’s like a mini Dorico!” With minimal effort, you can get beautiful-looking scores directly from your MIDI parts. Having used both Cubase and Dorico extensively, I could really feel the Dorico engine at work here. It’s great to see scores in Cubase with proper layout, spacing, and snapping objects, similar to the full Dorico experience.
There are a few features from the original editor that I’m hoping to see reintroduced soon:
Hide
Bezier Slur
Properties Tab (aka the old “Set Note Info” dialog—an incredibly powerful tool for note customization)
Also, it would be fantastic if we could have key commands for every clickable object and action (like dynamics changes or display quantize adjustments), and ideally, aligned with Dorico’s command set for consistency.
Overall, this is definitely a solid step forward. I can only imagine the challenge of “Doricorizing” such a long-standing (yet deep and robust) part of Cubase, so thank you—it’s about time Michael got some backup!
Now, for the bonus bug:
There’s a reproducible bug with the tool buttons:
Select any tool, like Zoom, Glue, or Erase.
Change layouts in the Visibility tab.
Result: Even though the selected tool appears active, its behavior reverts to the Object Selection tool.
(Windows 11 Pro)
Looking forward to seeing how this develops. Thanks again for all the hard work!
Those features are all on our list – we need to think about how best to support them.
Key commands are a bit trickier because Cubase’s key command editor doesn’t have editor-specific commands, so you can’t set (eg) Alt-Up to ‘Pitch up’, because it’s already bound to a Nudge command, so it would break key commands in other modes.
Hi Paul, thanks for your response! I totally understand, the overlap with key commands could definitely get tricky. However, if you could still add the notation actions and objects selection as customizable key commands, leaving them open for users to assign their own shortcuts, that would be great. Cubase already has tons of actions that are unset by default but ready for custom shortcuts. With the ability to create macros, use the logic editor, etc, it could really open up new workflow possibilities in the score editor.
Actually I want to thank the people that up until now did develop and maintain the old Cubase score editor. After using it for many years it brought me a solid income - as well as many frustrations and issues, but good support from users like Vicfrance, Steve, Martin. Some new issues that make me stick to the old one could be: Cumbersome entry of lyrics. In the old editor I could prepare my lyrics in notepad++ or so and then paste them as a whole to a voice in the score. (and undo without crashes) And do the same lyrics for the altos or tenors. That’s gone now. Saving your personal layout preferences/Fonts etc? Gone. Custom chord font? Gone. Boxed text? Gone. Rehearsal marks from musical Markertrack -Gone. New: Scissors tool doing different stuff depending on which pixel offset you click. Getting that layout so that rehearsals start at the beginning of a line or a logical place? Gone. Defining your own symbols like harp pedals or bitmaps glyphs? Gone. That last page that contains just a few bars? We used to be able to get rid of that easily. Gone. We have crashes again undoing lyrics etc. Tempo track “Lock protection”, not respected by score editor. And I can go on. - So yeah I’m crying a bit. it feels like starting all over again. Hope this editor will be improved soon - let’s get to work!
Hi Stefan, I remember Cubase just quitting on me entirely, but true - I have found no receipts in the error directory. Will test more do not worry. yep I’m not able to reproduce so far. The projects arrangeing/scoring/adapting/re-arrange and re-score that I did contained typically around 300 pages total ( in multiple songs - my max was around 800). And the old score editor also could at times behave like: '“I’m quitting Cubase and leave no trace”. So nothing new.
But I do not want to be too harsh - I’d like to thank Yamaha/Steinberg for being active in this niche market which I feel is not a growing one. Much appreciated!
Hi Paul, I am a bit confused about this. Could you please explain why then Alt/Option-Up and Alt/Option-Down do actually change the pitch of selected notes chromatically in the Score Editor, even though the same commands indeed nudge top and bottom elsewhere in Cubase, including the Key Editor? Does this mean that Score Editor and only Score Editor interprets “Nudge Top Up” and “Nudge Bottom Down” as transpose up and down?
On the other hand, Up, Down, Shift+Up and Shift+Down change the pitch of selected notes chromatically or in octaves (variants with Shift) in the Key Editor, but have no effect whatsoever in the Score Editor. Shouldn’t the two editors behave the same in this regard, given that they are simply different views of the same underlying MIDI events?
This is a question that @StefanFuhrmann may be more equipped to answer, but I think the basic issue that in the score editor, the editing and navigation model is different to the key editor. There are some concepts that are quite established in Dorico, one of which is that up and down key are navigation operations (which is consistent with left and right). In Dorico, up/down is used to navigate vertically in the score, to the stave above or below. Vertical navigation between instruments in the score is a common requirement, probably more so than the same kind of vertical navigation in the key editor.
However, vertical score navigation isn’t working yet in Cubase, as I think there are some issues with setting an active track that are outstanding.
There is a tension here which is that there are some operations that a section of users may expect to be consistent with the key editor, and some users who expect behaviour consistent with Dorico, and then the third option of trying to find a model that tries to find the best ways to unify both. In the future we hope to be able to support mode-specific key commands so that users can choose the behaviour they prefer.
