Some beginner questions regarding Dorico.

I am being tempted by Dorico. I use Cubase and have lots of sortware including orchestral stuff and Halion Orchestra. I have been aw2ay fro a while on other projects but am considering writing again.
I should like to ask some Questions about Dorico.

1] How does Dorico handle Articulations on a single melodic line? If for example one wanted to write a line using different articulations for strings, does Dorico handle this easily?

2] Is it easy to get to a specific note and alter it’s characteristics - volume, length (whilst leaving the notated length static - so called display quantize), attack, and so forth? Does Dorico have good tools for this?

3] How does Dorico Integrate with Cubase? Is it a case of importing and exporting between the two programs or are they more closely integrated?

4] It’s probably too soon to ask but any rumours about MIDI 2 in relation to Cubase?

Thank you all

Z

  1. Yes, Dorico can add articulations to a single melodic line. Or chords. Can you define what you mean by ‘handle’?

  2. Yes, you can adjust the underlying MIDI data in Play mode, while keeping the notation intact.

  3. You can import XML/MIDI from Cubase, and drag and drop MIDI directly from one app to another. That’s it.

  4. The Dorico team MIDI expert has said:

“Short answer - it won’t mean much for a while. If you’re using old VST2 plugins then they won’t get any benefit. If you’re using vst3 plugins that support VST note expression then midi 2.0 mirrors what’s already possible via note expression (ie per-note control of volume, pitch and other parameters). The possibilities I think are more interesting if you’re playing VST instruments live via a rich controller such as a seeboard, eigenharp, etc”

Dear ZeroZero,
In any case, you can use Dorico SE (for free) to have an idea about what Dorico is capable of, then ask a 30-day trial to make sure you need Dorico Pro (or Dorico LE, which you can access simply by pressing alt key when you’re opening Dorico Pro), and be sure that there will be a lot of nice people here ready to answer your questions.

Hey zerozero,

I second what Marc says, get the trial version or lite version and check it out.

As far as your question about articulations, I’m going to assume you’re referring to notating something, and Dorico’s sample libraries play the articulation back correctly. The answer is yes, Dorico recognizes articulations and playing techniques (arco, pizz, col legno, etc), and signals that data automatically to the playback. They have a default sample library called Halion SO (and some others, but all under the Halion umbrella) that are configured to recognize these notations. This recognition is all governed by expression maps, which Cubase also uses. The parameters of articulations are configurable in options also— for example: how short is staccato, how accented is an accent, and so on.

You can also add in your own sample libraries, but you’ll have to find or write your own expression maps so your libraries properly switch articulations and playing techniques. I believe they are working on this for major sample libraries, and there are some forum posts with expression maps for third party samples. And do note that Cubase expression maps will not play nice with Dorico, they’re different things.

For now, I’d recommend getting the lite version or try Pro for the 30 day trial. Since you’re coming from a DAW I’d specifically recommend messing around with the “Play” mode of Dorico. It is the most powerful and most DAW-like of all the notation programs, and you’ll get an idea of how it works and thinks. It’s a very powerful program that I heartily recommend. Good luck!