As a beta tester of Dorico said, “IIt’s going to go from “Can’t even do chord symbols” to “Market-leader for chord symbols” overnight.”
Would whoever is holding a gun to DT’s head trying to force him to buy Dorico, please stop. 
What? even version 1.0 of Dorico did things straight out of the box that took hours to fake in Sibelius. And there have been a 75-page list of enhancements and bug fixes to Dorico since then (compare with the number of enhancements to Sibelius in the same time frame, which can probably be counted on the fingers of one foot if you ignore the “this release fixes the bug that screwed up something in the previous release” type of enhancements…
If your whole musical life depends on having guitar chord diagrams, that doesn’t mean everyone else’s whole musical life has the same issues!
Hi DT,
I’m a jazz musician and although I still can’t do everything I want in Dorico (I need to write drum parts), I’ve found that the quality of the output is superb. If I were you, I would come back to Dorico in a year or so to see whether the functionality you need is there.
Best,
Rich
I agree. He guessed wrong. Seriously.
Again, I agree. Strongly.
Well put, spot on! 
People, please DO think before you SAY/WRITE. 
Well put and said. I am getting the impression that DT-Sodium does not really know what he is saying and talking about. Excuse me, but he (she?) sounds surprisingly selfish and dilettantish. Why is (s)he even writing if (s)he does not understand the world of highest level, really demanding professional composing? (I know, I am again going to be killed by some guys - and I don’t mind it.)
Now now, we don’t want to gang up on DT. There’s no need for any kind of hostility. We were all kids in bedrooms at one point in our lives, most likely — and I say this without a tinge of condescension, believe me. My experiments back then set me on the path I’m in today. This holds even if he’s not a kid per se, but another kind of amateur. DT might not be able to manipulate the tools to their fullest extent, or he might not have found what he wants to express with them. One way — the way — of fixing that is through feedback and immersion in a culture. The pros are all networked: we talk, we work a lot, we think, we share. Those connections are seldom available to amateurs. That being said, his reflex of blaming the tools for not being able to do this or that is not productive at all, as evidenced in this topic…
I’m not really thinking of “a pro score editor bundled with a DAW”, Rob. I’d rather forget those terms. I want a program that is optimised for both notation, composition and mixing/arranging, as opposed to have to rely on 2 or 3 programs for those tasks - with different workflows, non-identical sets of key commands and so on. But it would have to have a really non-cluttered UI, where I don’t need to look at all the stuff I don’t need to look at unless when I need this stuff.
At the moment it seems that Sibelius is best for composing, Logic and Cubase are the best overall DAWs, and Dorico - when it is more finished than today - will become the best score app. There are ways to implement a lot of functionality to a music program without a lot of clutter and tons of menu items and icons all over the place. And again, please try to imagine that we aren’t thinking of “DAWs” and “notation programs” as two separate things, but rather think of what we need to do with the software we use to compose/notate and mix music, and see if there are any good or valid reasons for splitting up this functionality across two or more apps. Price matters of course, but most - if not all - people I know who use a score editor also has at least one DAW. And with that in mind, I’d rather see a unified tool to handle all my music needs: composition, organising my musical ideas, notation, arranging and mixing than what I have now: this functionality spread over 3 or 4 apps.
I would say that Dorico is really the first piece of software that even aspires to do what you describe, which is why some are so excited. Let’s see how far the team want to push Play mode into DAW territory.
To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure I want that. Call me old-fashioned, but I think a great DAW will always be a great DAW, and a great notation software will be a notation software — what I want is flexible, easy communication between the two, as in the ReWire protocol. There are trade-offs, and the resulting mixture between the two types of softwares will always be somewhat superficial, I fear, though I acknowledge this would make a certain type of person’s life easier. In addition, a tool always becomes from a certain plane of immanence. The concept of arranging, particularly, is a battleground, where many different approaches share the word without really sharing its meaning, so it is no easy task to chart such a development.
That being said, I’m very much available to let myself be surprised by the way Dorico’s Play mode evolves.
Re: The merging of DAW/Notation functions into one product, it seems to me that interoperability will be a necessary middle stage. If well done by one company, it might be enough on it’s own. (Clearly Steinberg wants to sell us two mainline products, and does not want one to eclipse the other.) Presonus Studio One is in the early stages of attempting this with it’s purchase of Notion.
I’d be fine if Dorico and Cubase could seamlessly exchange detailed musical data (including virtual instruments, tempo, dynamics, articulations, etc.) in such a way that tedious editing is not required. Further development of Music XML or a new, proprietary musical language would be needed for that. Steinberg has pioneered a number of things that gradually became more generally supported standards (VST 3 is an example). My guess is they will end up taking this road instead of making Dorico into a mere module for Cubase.
I do agree with those who are saying that users will continue to demand a more intuitive, efficient GUI, and while there are many these days whose only needs are notation and publishing, any attempt to fence Dorico into this domain will be counterproductive going forward. Dorico for publishers and Cubase for producers is a path forward, but I don’t believe it is the best path forward. The future may well be an integrated tool for musicians, from soup to nuts, sketching > composing > scoring > mockup > production > post-production. It doesn’t absolutely have to be one product, but it will need to be integrated.
Just one man’s opinion, and one that is not at all professionally connected.
Sorry, FlowerPower, but I’m not too good at mind reading. If you write “a DAW with a 100% pro score editor” I can only assume that’s what you meant.
(And I can’t imagine why you think Sibelius is better for “composing” that Dorico either - unless “beast for composing” was actually what you meant to write, and not a typo for “best for composing” - but that’s a different topic…)
I agree. The trouble is, right now we have two “standards” for integration, incompatible with each other, and both horribly inadequate: MIDI and MusicXML.
And if I had to guess how long it would take to define a better way that was acceptable to all the parties involved, I would guess somewhere between 10 years and “for ever” - based on first hand experience with standards committees in other fields than music! It’s far too easy for a “standard” to finish up as the lowest common denominator of the features that everyone’s software can handle - which no use to anybody.
(It isn’t just a music-related problem. The default method of interchanging geometry data for 3D printing technology is about 50 years behind the current state of the art in computer geometry systems, for pretty much the same reason…)
That’s old fashioned. 
You asked for it, right?
I did!
Hopefully I was clear in my post, but any type of blanket solution really worries me. I figure that’s an impossibility: no tool will ever be able to do everything, nor should we even want them to, really. I welcome Dorico’s push towards greater integration — as I said, I’m very much open to being surprised by areas it tackles that are not within my current needs — but I still think specialized tools are of greater benefit to its users. The learning curve is steeper, but it can only help the overall health of the industry if a single user can partake in different communities of practice, even if not in an advanced level.
“any type of blanket solution really worries me”
Not sure what you mean by that, but here’s a typical scenario:
Music starts with ideas, inspiration, composition. So I start fumbling around with an idea for strings. In order to make things sound right (I’ve never relied on the internal string sounds in score apps) one needs to deal with articulation changes, or at least automation of dynamics (and vibrato changes) - other wise it wouldn’t sound like strings. This is probably best done in programs like Cubase and Logic, bu neither of them have a score editor that has been developed actively enough for this kind of work. So after some ideas have been recorded or note has been entered, one by one, in Dorico - the editing process starts. If I want to switch back and forth between chords, Sibelius us the best solution, and the same goes for dealing with several user ideas inside the same project. But Dorico looks better, Steinberg is dedicated to keep developing D., so it’s more tempting to use D. But at some point, I’ll go back to the typical kind if editing which Cubase and Logic (etc is good at). Sio I need to export the material into a DAW again - and since I also prefer to record things in real time, and D. can’t do that yet, it’s tempting to leave D. for a while. but back in my DAW, the score will look different - and while piano roll editing can be good for certain kinds of editing, notation is, after all, the alphabet we have in the music world. Also - Logic has Articulation IDs, which will be brilliant if they are going to be developed further, Cubase is more mature in terms of Expression Maps and also has Freeze and Unload Samples which works with the Kontakt libraries I have. So while developing this idea, I can’t really rely of on of this apps. And not only that, but I simply can’t understand why someone would want do rely on two or more apps for something which should be doable in one. Why would would I not want better “DAW functions” (of the types I described and more) in Dorico? And why would any Cubase or Logic user not have a score module which behaves as if it simply was the DAW’s own, built in score editor - without any need to export/import files?
I’m in the slow process of learning Cubase, and I don’t know how usable the score editor is, but hadn’t it been for Apple’s extreme lack of interest in developing the stuff I mention (notation, composing features of the kind we find in Sibelius, better articulation control and a proper/mature way of dealing with automation of Kontakt parameters), Logic would have been quite close to the kind of app I’m talking about. But that never seems to happen, since all these areas have been ignored for years. So I’m more optimistic about Dorico’s future, and a possible merge or very tight integration between Cubase and Dorico. But I fear the ‘oldfashionness’ of it all, the too many old-ish men like myself have been used to a cumbersome workflow for so long time that they don’t even see that all this could have been much easier, with a one-app-approach (or totally transparent integration).
OTOH, if engraving and good looking score is pretty much is the important focus, many will become happy with Dorico. But I don’t think Steinberg - having put all this effort into making a new, note based program - can afford not to acknowledge the fact that ‘hybrid’ users like myself represent a much, much larger market than the engraver market. So I’m… kind of optimistic about all this. Ish.
FlowerPower - I totally agree with you that the process you describe here would be easier if it all could be done in one application. And I almost take it as granted that most of these functions are on Steinbergs roadmap for Dorico (I think real-time midi recording, automation lanes and expanded expression maps are already confirmed for the future).
However - when it comes to audio based DAW functions, such as multi track recording, time- and pitch stretching, loop based playback (ableton), and so on, the scope might be too big for one app.
I’m not seeing many reasons why at some point Dorico’s editor modules and score events cannot be integrated into CuBase.
VST and MIDI events are VST and MIDI events; plus, xml is xml; etc, etc, etc. I suspect we’ll eventually get full integration; however, Dorico is currently focused on making Dorico all it can be as a stand alone application. This makes plenty of sense, since it is targeted to a specific audience as a package that will ultimately include everything one needs to produce top quality scores with industry leading playback interpretation right out of the box.
Playback interpretation for Dorico will improve by leaps and bounds in the future. It shouldn’t be long before Dorico has most of the VST/MIDI controller event automation abilities we currently get in CuBase in the Play tab mode for people who prefer to work this way over using expression maps. It should not be long before Dorico supports the same expression maps, with exclusion groups, and the ability to make custom techniques for scores. Some degree of remote control for VST Automation is certainly possible for Dorico in future versions as well. It has the audio engine under the hood, already, to do pretty much anything CuBase can do. The Dorico team simply needs the time and resources to decide how best to incorporate things into the work flow, and design the UI and implementation standards for features already supported by the underlying DAW engine that they wish to implement. All that takes research and time, and chances are very good that Dorico started development with sets of standards and a road map that should some day make integration with CuBase/Nuendo not only possible, but fairly simple (compared to the very difficult work they have already accomplished, and yet ahead of them specific to the Notation and engraving).
So Cubase calls things in its worklfow “tracks, parts, channels, and events”, and Dorico calls them “flows, parts, instruments/players, and notes”. To the ‘machine’ it is all the same stuff…MIDI and other data in VST containers. At the end of the day, there is no reason I know of that CuBase cannot create a ‘folder’ with the same name as a Dorico “Layout”, and pull all the “Instruments” into subfolders, and “players” onto “tracks”. and then access the Dorico compiled modules to throw up windows/editors/or processes called for by CuBase to work with them when required.
Of course I cannot say for certain that Dorico follows all the rules to be modularized into the CuBase UI as a new set of seamless ‘editor options’, but I strongly suspect that they will probably do their best to try keeping things in exiting Stienberg schema/standards/protocols. The same goes for the CuBase side of things. If the Dorico team communicates that something they need is ‘missing from the DAW engine’, there is no reason they can’t create a set of rules and standards that they will need future versions of the CuBendo and HALion engine to conform with.
Determining all this requires loads of meetings and strategy sessions. It’ll take some time, but I think we’ll see a fair amount of progress each year. Once Dorico is solid and a bit more mature as a stand alone application (the team does have a dedication to Notation and Engraving first and foremost) I figure playback and DAW integration features will start coming about fairly rapidly. We just need to let Dorico get his skeleton firmly in place…then we’ll start to see all sorts of options for his ‘skin’.
Will Steinberg ever release a version of CuBase and Dorico that is ‘integrated’? Who knows…but in theory it seems highly possible for them to do it at some point if they so choose.
Personally, I envision CuBase more or less keeping the editors it already has in place, but simply adding the Dorico ‘engrave mode’. I suppose they could also add the Setup, Write, and Play tabs as editors in CuBase as well, but that will be rather redundant and increase the the resources demanded to do score editing in CuBase.
As for document interchange…I honestly don’t see any good reason from a purely technical perspective why scripts or compiled modules can’t be integrated into CuBase to directly import a dorico document with as close to a 1 to 1 import for CuBase’s existing score module as possible. It won’t be ‘the same’ in terms of formatting and engraving/printing, but much of the information (notes, symbols, rests, articulations,etc ) could be preserved and imported, as well as the setting up of virtual instruments and effect chains.
I’m not seeing many reasons why at some point Dorico’s editor modules and score events cannot be integrated into CuBase.
How could you possibly see any reasons at all, if you don’t work on the dev team?
Look, there may be some minor technical set-backs, or even valid ‘business/marketing’ reasons NOT to integrate the apps…maybe even ‘visionary reasons’ that’ll be better than anything we users are currently anticipating…but the core audio engine of Dorico and CuBase is essentially the same. VST is VST. MIDI is MIDI. A dll module is a dll module. Unless they are going out of their way NOT to make the apps compatible, it should be very doable.
Since it is all based on the same sequencer and playback engine…it stands to reason that the modules of all Steinberg products built around this engine are somewhat compatible and interchangeable. A hosting UI could call up any portion of any of the Stienberg suite of applications it wants, and let them all have access to the same data-pool, as well as pipe commands and such between the hosted apps. I could be wrong, but I kind of doubt the Dorico team started from the ground up, and totally redid aspects of the CuBendo audio engine. I could be wrong, but I also doubt they went out of their way to buck any standards already in play for maintaining full compatibility with any existing development standards for that audio engine.