In order to make the thing sound right, you don’t need to “deal with articulation changes”: you need to have a solid understanding of orchestration and just write the thing!
If you’re writing exclusively for a synthesized performance, you certainly need a score insofar as you need symbolic notation to manipulate, but not a score in the traditional sense. We’ve known since the very beginning of jotting down things what the limitations of a score were. You’re essentially complaining that a score won’t hold precisely the type of information that we’ve always known would go beyond the scope of notation, whereas the specific tools you need for that task are the very essence of a digital audio workstation.
And if you’re not writing for a synthesized performance but for musicians, even if you do need to synthesize the performance with any kind of detail, the score takes precedence, and you’d be better off taking it to the DAW after the score is done.
Do you demand as much from notation software as an engraver? Do you demand as much from a DAW as an audio engineer? Your solution, no matter how convenient to you, seems to bog down the features of both types of software. That’s what worries me.
The model of music notation in Dorico is completely different to the data model in Cubase and the audio engine. There is a many-to-many mapping between a notated note and a played-back note, and maintaining that relationship so that you can perfect round-tripping between Dorico and Cubase is incredibly difficult. And it probably isn’t what most users actually want. There are about 10 phases of processing in Dorico that are required to turn a note in the score into the (possibly) multiple events required to play it.
We anticipate that integration between Dorico and Cubase will improve over time, however we don’t know yet exactly what form that will take.
Please- to those who have insisted on ignoring the dev teams clear discussion regarding this in the blog and here in the forum. Take this post of Paul’s to be authoritative. You can spell the product name as you wish, but that doesn’t change the actual spelling , if you know what I mean.
More or less what I had in mind is that Cubase incorporates Dorico flows (even if it’s from Dorico’s own code base, but simply shows it visually in the normal CuBase way in the main overview). If you call up a 'Dorico Editor" it’s actually calling up Dorico modules to work with compatible ‘tracks’. Performance data could optionally be extracted to pure MIDI tracks and the like if desired.
CuBase itself wouldn’t be responsible for displaying or manipulating anything in a Dorico track. Dorico itself would do that…meanwhile Cubase would ignore anything but the pure playback properties of the Dorico track (or extracted performance tracks).
Seems to me that the only thing you would gain from this versus some sort of “Rewire 2” is a pricetag that I think neither Dorico or Cubase users would be particularly happy about.
Semantics… All I mean is that we don’t need to think of it has a DAW with a pro score editor, or as two different things… after all, the difference between the current DAWs with score editors (Cubase, Logic and others) is that the score editors in dedicated score editors are better. And the difference between Dorico and a DAW is that it has a better score editor + lacks audio and video tracks (with the extra tools and functionality that demands).
Besides, many have asked for the ability to have multiple video tracks in DAWs, to have audio tracks in Dorico etc. For a number of reasons that would be a good idea. Think of composing to a movie track, for instance.
So the bottom line may be: does Steinberg (and the others) really want to keep developing two or three apps, each with unique code, different key command sets, file formats and all that - if it’s possible to simply sell one product? That one product would need to run audio, video and MIDI tracks, and when being on a MIDI track, one should be able to select either piano roll or score editing (or a combination, actually) - but the score editor would be developed by the Dorico team with the same intensity it is being developed now.
Imagine that some company, secretly, has worked on a such a product for 6-7 years already. They release it this year, and it does all these things (for those who pay the full price). It would allow you to do exactly what you can do in D, but add audio tracks, a video track or two if needed, you wouldn’t any longer need to maintain (and learn) two or three apps, but could learn one app, one set of key commands, one “user interface philosophy”, and apply that knowledge experience across your various needs… audio editing, MIDI composing, high end notation. You could see the movie you compose music to in there as well. If that product suddenly is released, and it is done well, I’m sure lots of us would be interested in investing time in learning it. I’m also pretty convinced that the other DAW (and score editor) developers who have been stuck in the idea of having two or three different apps as the optimum solution would have a really hard time catching up with the product.
Regarding why I think Sibelius is better for composing, Rob, I believe I have written something about that earlier (some important key commands are missing in D (especially for composing piano music), an Idea Hub for user ideas is missing in D, and some other stuff). More about that later if you are interested.
Back to the original question about what’s wrong with the world of notation software… in addition to the baked in limitation (the fact it’s only notation software), and related to what DT-Sodium started this thread with:
I think a main part of the problem (or “problem”), is that both developers, product designers and users are thinking along the lines of what we have seen already. We look at one product, or product type - and try to make (or ask for) something a la that product, only better. But personally, I’m not even sure we’ll have “programs”, as we know them today, in a couple of decades. Maybe we’ll just have functions, and that the OS itself takes care of the various… wait, that’ll be too complicated to explain in this thread. But in short, we may in the future simply be able to start anything we want to create with one blank page, and add a text block there if we want text, a video track there if we want video, and audio tracks, notation and so on… all with one, single modular concept. One could write a book, educational material, write a symphony or a dubstep album with msuic video all within one single concept.
And - a reason, DT Sodium, that Dorico has manual VST2 activation, no possibility to add correctly formatted drum parts, and that D. may be especially good at dealing with classical music while other apps are particularly good at dealing with everything but classical music… may be exactly due to the topic some of us are talking about: that there are several teams working on isolated products, and that this means a lot of extra work.
But If Steinberg had merged the Cubase and Nuendo teams a few years ago and hired 12 (?) people for four years to make better notation tracks for that merged product, Steinberg would have maybe been close to that universal product already. That would mean only one set of code for expression maps to maintain, only one automation engine, only one score editor, and nobody would miss the ability to add audio tracks or a movie track in Dorico, because Dorico would exist only as score tracks in Cubendo, which already has audio tracks. So the two topics we have discussed here actually are connected somehow. Not bad.
I miss Cubase and Logic functionality in Dorico, and miss Dorico/Sibelius functionality in Logic - and so on. Still, while Logic may be the product that’s closest to become a modern all-in-one app at some point, Steinberg is the company that most likely to have the right people to do it, due it it’s focus on notation, expression maps, freeze-and-unload-samples, VST/Note Expression, chord inversion (and drop), better Kontakt automation and so on. Someone would have to kidnap them all and lock them into one building and work one the same product for some years if these dreams should come true.
For those who are ‘not forum moderators’ ignoring and openly trying to shut down conversation on everything optimistically discussing the VST3 protocol and what it stands for, the long touted virtues of modular software development, inter-hosting capabilities of multiple modern apps, etc…the very things that sold many of us on Steinberg products in the first place, people like me are not ‘ignoring’ the blogs and discussions.
We are simply throwing thoughts out there, into the ‘discussion’ just in case some of the Developers see it and get some ideas from it. They can agree or shake their heads in disbelief all they want in their private spaces and meetings. They can ignore it all, or jot it down in their little note books. That is their personal call. So, what is the harm of ‘discussing’ it?
No one is saying it’s ‘definitely going to happen’. If it does happen, no one is saying it will happen quickly. All I am saying is that two teams in the same company should be able to do it if they are communicating and establishing the protocols and standards needed during the development process.
If it is true (as is being suggested here) that this is not the case…well, I’m thinking about the O ring in the solid rocket booster of Space Shuttle Challenger. Or the air scrubbers on Apollo 13. OK, it’s just software…nothing so catastrophic…but there will probably be some sort of price to pay at some point in the future. At what point does Dorico fork off with its own branch of audio engine code that heads off in a totally new direction? Does it lag behind or jump ahead? Do all these branches of code ‘inter-compete’? If they do eventually end up with significantly different branches, what happens when CuBendo is ready to push VST4 (or whatever), and Dorico is still stuck in VST3 land?
The fact still remains that CuBase is supposed to be a very modular system, that we’re led to believe is capable of integrating new types of data tracks, and calling all sorts of editors and interfaces to interact with those tracks. Of course there are rules, standards, and protocols to follow to make it happen. If something is missing from the CuBase side to make it possible…send them the information so they can build the pipelines necessary…etc.
I suspect this sort of communication between the Steinberg teams is happening, but if I’m told otherwise, oh well…I’ll be wrong (and a bit discouraged, and maybe even slightly more sympathetic to AVID, who I really don’t like much after the way they treated their Sibelius people…but if all this is true, and this is the sort of thinking going on…maybe AVID had a valid point?).
I personally love your thinking, FlowerPower, especially as a composer myself who routinely does extensive mockups in Logic for clients but then ultimately has to go through the painstaking and absurdly antiquated step of exporting as MIDI into (currently) Sibelius to produce a proper score for others to subsequently play. What you described, to me, is truly the “holy grail” of DAW/notation integration - this is one of the reasons that I became obsessed, for a time, with Overture, which was clearly attempting to do that even many years ago (although they never produced a suitably robust notation engine). It always seemed like a no-brainer to me that in Overture, for example, you could press a button and immediately see piano roll notation superimposed on the existing notation, with midi controller editing lanes visible below and full plug-in integration, with your score’s playback based upon all this data versus a much less exact interpretation of dynamics symbols, etc. One can still hope (and Dorico is at least slowly on a road towards this path, it appears, even though I’m not as confident about the extent of DAW-like editing/playback that will ultimately be allowed)…
I would personally love to feely go back and forth between score and full VSTi mock-up of the music. Admittedly I’ve been dreaming of that happening for 25 years. Dorico looks like it has the right infrastructure to go further than others on that front, but I would definitely temper my enthusiasm by the knowledge that Notation is a small market with small development teams and I suspect that there are a lot of priorities on the plate to keep the the current development team rather busy for quite a while. (It certainly can’t hurt to dream of two-bridge with Cubase or even an all-in-one solution, though. )
No, you’d gain actual integrated Dorico editors, as well as the ability to manipulate the performance data independently of the score data. It could effectively extract a performance stream into a performance track and keep that independent of what is displayed via notation if desired/needed, but otherwise it’d play it back exactly as entered in Dorico.
Sometimes (not very often!) I feel sad at being old.
Not because of any problems it causes ME, but because of how much more recent generations have never learned to do without continually relying on crutches like computer software.
Sure, I create music pretty much the same way as FlowerPower described. But I can do most of what he said anywhere, anytime - and while doing something else at the same time, like driving a car. That’s because I do it pretty much the same way as every musician did it for centuries when there were no other options - IN MY HEAD.
Writing down the end result is just “the easy bit at the end of the process!”
Would anybody seriously argue that someone like Bach would have written either more music, or better music, if he hadn’t been limited by the technology of quill pen, ink pot, and paper? We know Mozart used to compose while travelling on the public transport of his day (i.e. stage coach, over roads too bumpy to permit writing while traveling) because he said so in his letters…
If the younger generations missed learning to do things without computers, but your and mine generation learned it (I’m born in the 1950s) learned that, we should be happy being old, shouldn’t we?
And regarding writing down the end result being the easy bit at the end… yes and no. I work both ways. I can compose in my head and certainly without software or a DAW. But I don’t mainly see sample libraries and good software as a poor substitute for being Bach or Mahler with an orchestra at hand, but as a different way of making music. And when we use the computer method, it should IMO behave in an as transparent manner as possible.
It should be easy to forget the method and focus on the actual music. And with 10 steps needed only to reassign a key command and other limitations (all programs have such cumbersome areas), it’s often easy to forget the music, let alone inspiration, and focus on the tools we need instead.
“In order to make the thing sound right, you don’t need to “deal with articulation changes”: you need to have a solid understanding of orchestration and just write the thing!”
But when we deal with sample libraries - and many of us do - we deal with articulations. I actually like that I can use current libraries in the process of figuring out how things will sound before it turns into notation. In the midst of that process, many of switch back and forth between composing, notation, editing, automation, articulation changes, storing ideas etc - many times.
Some good players don’t even need to compose - they can improvise really well in many styles. I’ve heard Jarrett create ‘Bach pieces’ on the fly, live, and it’s quite impressive. But that doesn’t mean that I want to forget the process of composing, or that when composing, I don’t need to deal with articulation changes.
Hearing a relatively good version of what I’m about to create actually influences what I’ll create in the next bar. That’s why some of us have spent a small fortune on libraries from Spitfire, Orchestral Tools etc, it’s not because we don’t want to record our music with real orchestras - right?
Newer generations don’t have a choice. Our ‘crutches’ to include REAL PEOPLE in the process have been decimated by the slash and burn, high and mighty, snob infested, hazing tactics of our predecessors.
Try to build a real 200 piece marching band, or a local Suzuki String program in 2017 (every accomplished Conservatory performance graduate started somewhere). The resources, support and training from our academic and religious institutions, and the disciplinary and administrative clout to pull it all together has been all but decimated. No one led the way to preserve the system or enhance it, and did everything in their power to push any ‘trouble makers’ out of the industry. The few brave men and women I remember standing up in all the ‘associations and union meetings’ in the 70s and 80s who were voicing concerns or ‘rocking the boat’ towards meeting some of the on coming industry challenges head on were flat out black-balled and forced to find other occupations.
You can’t even get a decent modern brass instrument (beginner, intermediate, nor professional, yet still costing into the thousands of dollars per unit after the families finance them) that doesn’t fall apart within 2 years (with no way to fix it due to all the new electro-bonding processes involved). Even so…we’re sending kids home with bills at over $75 a pop to put on a stinking water key, or replace junk pads that fall out a week later. Families are trying to pay for this on nutty high interest revolving credit schemes (when music companies used to simply finance in house for a small interest fee…and they had a good safety net for families that did not pay as well…thus not taking it out on ‘poor kids’). “Do the repairs yourself” the old heads say…but the truth is, you can’t anymore…none of it really works the way it did 30 or 40 years ago…the materials and methods available have changed that much. Plus…one needs time to actually TEACH and PERFORM music at some point.
You can’t ask parents to help raise funds anymore, and you can’t ask a kid to practice and give an honest assessment without possibly getting sued into oblivion. You can’t do instrument inspections, or enforce any kind of maintenance regiment (even if YOU offer to pay for it out of your own pocket, it’s offensive, and a possible law suit waiting to happen).
You can’t find anyone that will come tune a piano anymore. The few that try are clueless and end up making it WORSE. Try to find a school to learn how to do it properly, and they’ll take your money for a while, then HAZE you out in less than 6 months with a bunch of social/fraternal nonsense that has nothing to do with maintaining musical instruments. So yeah, the churches are putting out beautiful and massive pipe organs on the curb for disposal, and moving in Digital pianos and wiz bang multi-media karaoke systems. Not so much because they ‘desire this’, but because they don’t have many options anymore. Even if they are fortunate enough to find someone that can (or want to learn) how to play the old organ…getting someone to fly in from 20 states away to maintain it is no longer practical (provided you can even find someone that can/will still do it).
Believe me…‘my generation’ tried with everything we had to be loyal, and devoted to our mentors and their guilds. We begged to keep our local instrument makers and service companies going strong, and locally financed, but the advice from YOUR GENERATION was to 'keep your mouth shut and keep your band hall clean. These things are NOT your problem." Then ya’ll retired with tri-state trifectas for pensions and benefits, and never looked back. We practically WORSHIPED our mentors…and tolerated endless HAZING B.S. rituals that wasted YEARS of our lives, while our ‘peers’ were out there ‘mixing and mingling with people from different lifestyles and ambitions’, ‘establishing a wide variety of connections’, ‘having a personal life’, ‘starting and maintaining successful families’, and even making millions to put together simple 4 track ‘pop tunes’. We ‘kept our band halls clean’ as directed…and THIS is what we’ve inherited. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
As for buying ‘stock arrangements’ from the publishing houses…well, in 2017 it’s notoriously difficult to build an ensemble that actually fits the ideal model. One ends up having to rearrange stuff to fit whatever odd-ball instrumentation you can manage to cobble together out of a rapidly changing community. We can have as many as 9 different pedagogical ability levels in the same ensemble to account for…so a good 60% of the time we end up having to re-arrange everything anyway…thus the growing popularity for Scoring software and some sort of personal or portable PC. We need custom arrangements on a daily basis, but we do NOT have time to sit down and hand write all fifty-some odd parts, in all the clefs and transpositions we need (which literally can change from day to day, week to week, as players come and go on about their lives). We can no longer ask for ‘volunteers’ to do it…be they students, parents, or paraprofessional community members (school rules often strictly forbid it). Even if we had a budget for it, we can’t wait around to hire a ‘professional arranger’ to do this either…so we plug along and do our best (and yes, the quality of our arrangements suffer these days for it, but we have to put it on the field ‘yesterday’, then trash bin it, and start the whole process over again).
We know our theory, pedagogy and learning theory, and we know many of the old rules, methodologies, and processes for building fine performers and ensembles. To this day, a good ole Rubank or Arban book is golden, but we don’t get a schedule or a pedagogically leveled group of students that those methods will work in anymore. We could do it if we had the OLD ‘people’ systems in place…but all those systems and support groups are long gone, and attempting to rebuild them is pretty much professional suicide among modern school districts…so please keep all this in mind. As things currently stand, we often pretty much have to create our own daily methods exorcises from scratch (constrictivists call it differentiating instructional methods for learning styles and group composition). We don’t have much choice…to keep our jobs we must turn in daily lesson plans linked to individual IEP paperwork for each student…and on and on.
Our school districts are all into ‘constructive’ learning theory these days. Situated cognition, and the sorts of methodically structured pedagogy prevalent in the world’s finest methodologies for developing individual performing musicians is not only frowned upon by Curriculum designers, but nearly impossible to cobble together with the modern schedule blocks that Music Teachers have to work in these days. Where we once got the ‘same group of students’ every day for a solid hour a day…these day’s we are LUCKY if we can get a ‘different group’ together for a solid 30 minutes at one time. So you might get 11 kinds of some weird assortment (varying grade levels and instruments) for 20 minutes on Monday, a different set for 70 minutes on Tuesday, etc…then be expected to cobble all that together for some sort of high profile public performance by Friday. And there you are with ‘beginners’ all mixed in with ‘grade 5 performers’ on the same stage…who’ve not really had any opportunity to ‘rehearse’ together. So yeah…we cheat…and the overall performance quality is rather poor…we don’t have much choice though. It is the plate we have to work with, and without modern technologies (I.E. asking kids if they’ll practice a part by rote and record it, then submit that for some sort of assessment/grade/reward…after all, we can no longer arrange any ‘private instruction’ outside of the ‘school day’ when the ‘buses are running’). Without our computers and other technologies, we’d most definitely be dead in the water in trying to keep up with all this modern ‘constructive learning theory’ that is all the global craze these days (not by our choice…if we take the gig, it’s what we have to work in).
In Nineteen Seventy weird, your typical school music program for a student body of 500 kids to build a talent pool from had 6 to 8 people on music staff. If you wanted to keep oboes and bassoons in inventory, and develop people to play them…you could do so. It’s not that simple anymore though. There is no money for a bassoon, which cost as much as a small fleet of beginner line trumpets. These days we are lucky to get ONE quazi certified teacher for EVERYTHING music on campus, who is expected to do Instrumental, Vocal, and General Music for all grades K-12. They demand we field up to 6 performance groups open to public scrutiny in any given month, incorporating all kinds of dance and movement drills, full uniforms, etc…with zero budget, and all that is expected with less than 90 minutes rehersal time per week (all scattered minutes, mostly spent setting up and breaking down in a ‘temporary’ classroom at that).
So…forgive us if we find 20 minutes and a set of technologies to sketch out and communicate ideas. It’s not our fault the unions have died (and we were never ‘good enough’ to join them anyway), and getting a group of studio musicians together is not only extremely difficult, but far more expensive than quite an elaborate home studio. It’s not our fault that universities and conservatories no longer graduate enough specialists in various instrument families to set up studios for private lessons in every decent sized town anymore (or that we might be sued for even thinking about referring a kid to a private instructor). It’s not our fault that a kid right out of college, will be expected to lead two choirs, 4 bands, and teach 12 general music classes in a single day can’t develop oboe and basson players for ‘traditional’ wind band stock arrangements (that are ironically still on required lists for program evaluations). It’s not our fault that budgets are not provided, and that arranging various booster or sponsorship organizations is now a taboo (considered unethical) practice.
Forgive us that our ‘peers’ that we might attempt to organize into reading and session groups, who majored in some instrument 20 years ago hasn’t had time to pick one up and PLAY in more than 20 years…because he’s got a family, and a life, and is always slogging popcorn and cokes in some two bit concession stand to help pay for that $6,000 community tuba and twelve $200 mouth pieces that’ll be shared among a dozen kids.
Enjoy the ‘superior generation’ complex, but in all honesty, you didn’t leave much of a legacy to keep us on your dream path for the way music ‘should be done’ throughout the ages. What we have, is what we have. We do the best with it that we can.
“My Generation” was set up for a ‘stuck in the middle of at least 3 inflexible and incompatible paradigms’ failure. People still demand a band that can rip an ASCAP Published John Phillip Sousa arrangement as if it were effortless, while marching an elaborate field show…but they want it with no talent building system at the primary school levels, and with less than 2 hours per week of rehearsal time, on a zero dollar budget. from a single Music Instructor. When the 2017 band is a joke musically compared to the 1950s band…the end conclusion is that modern Band Directors are ‘lazy and incompetent’ individuals who cannot do anything without a ‘crutch’ like a PC.
Heh…I’d love to direct a 1950s band or orchestral program. I know for a fact it was not ‘easy’…in contrast it was damn hard work to keep so many people cooperating and in line…but it was very DIFFERENT times, and SOCIETY was very different too. Those old conductors and teachers certainly had their ‘crutches’ as well. You could discipline people, and you could set up social support and reward systems. Your code of accepted work and social ethics from which to work with PEOPLE was a very different ball game. People wanted the musical models, and believed in the people systems necessary to achieve and maintain them. While it’s not ‘impossible’ to do in larger cities these days…it is very difficult…legally, ethically, and financially. Get out into smaller cities and more rural areas, and you’re definitely on your own…your DAW and folks creating it is going to be one of your best allies at nearly every stage in music-craft and performance.
Hey, I don’t write music for media (let’s call it that), where the use of sample libraries is most common, I’d say, but I do write electronic and mixed music, where the feedback process you describe is even more intense. Again, unless you’re writing for a synthesized performance, sample libraries — while useful pedagogical tools — are a crutch. As with crutches, they are absolutely vital when you can’t be on your feet (when you’re learning or experimenting, in this case) and not using one can in fact impede your development. But when there’s nothing keeping you, they are not beneficial. Unless the material is so far out as to absolutely kill the internal ear of 99% of composers, tinkering with sample libraries is far removed an activity from composing. And, like walking with a crutch when you don’t need one, it’ll slow you down.
That really doesn’t work as an analogy, the first reason why is that improvising is the (virtuosic) manipulation of an interface in real time, whereas composing or even working in a score mockup take place outside time. In fact, I find it more defensible to say that one should practice engaging keyswitches during performance than saying that you have to deal with articulation changes to be able to compose at a computer.
I should steer clear off replying to this, but here goes: small fortunes are spent on libraries because a whole lot of music today is not to be performed by live musicians at all, either because there is no budget (indie productions and the sort) or because, say, the jingle, while important, won’t be the most important aspect of a commercial. And because, let’s be honest, it’s not because we don’t want to record our music with a real orchestra, group or musician — it’s because most won’t have the chance.
To be perfectly clear, this should not be read as a sweeping statement for or against anything. My point is the following, and only the following: extrapolating from a (minor) personal gripe towards the modes of working of not one but several industries cannot and should not be done. The team has consulted — discretely, as they should — with top pros from all kinds of areas in many different points of the development of this wonderful software. That doesn’t make it useless to talk here, but hey, they know what they’re doing.
Brian, don’t be discouraged. I think it was the right decision to let the Dorico architecture be different from the Cubase one. building Dorico must have been architecturally very challenging, and to try to constrain it to the Cubase model might well have made it impossible to build properly. There are many potential models for future integration even given the differences between them. And if I understand Paul correctly, part of the difficulty is unavoidable, i.e. Dorico stores notes, and Cubase stores midi events, and there really is a many-to-many relationship between them.
Yeah, but that’s why we’ve got Play mode, which already can do timing independently. With time, I think we’ll also have velocity, controller automation, and maybe the ability to enter ‘un-scored’ midi data, like keyswitches.
My point is - I’m very optimistic about Doricos “midi” capabilities in the future, and I think everything that is needed for a good mockup fits inside the concept of Dorico. And I’m sure that if you’ve got requests or ideas, they will be taken seriously into account.
But I think trying to create a £800 Cubico that needs to maintain and balance two such different approaches only will result in clutter.
Here’s my wishlist for Cubase - Dorico integration:
Better excange of data (≈better xml import/export in cubase + some way to exchange multiple flows)
Universal copy/paste of “midi” data: copy a section in Cubase, and paste it directly into Dorico.
Tempo sync
A synced marker track that is visible in both Dorico and Cubase
Automatic stem-by-stem rewire
With Play mode’s potential, and sync features such as these, what’s missing?
The benefits of this versus Cubico is:
It keeps the price down for those who are only interested in Dorico or Cubase
The internal logic can remain completely separated - making each app optimized for it’s own approach and features
The road maps can remain separated - allowing the Dorico team to push new features in it’s own pace. They are more free to listen to their user, as they don’t have to consider what fits inside of Cubase’s structure
Personally, I think having two sets of key commands is actually a huge benefit (of course - these should be uniformed as much as possible). I rarely mix up KCs in two such different apps - I think I would be more confused if the same KC applied to two similar but semantically completely different functions within the same app. It also makes it possible to have one perfect KC setup for Dorico workflow, and one for Cubase workflow.
OK, based on my previous posts in the forums, I’m incompetent to use two standard issue ears and a piece of paper…as is my entire generation. I get it…
Newer generations don’t have a choice. Our ‘crutches’ to include REAL PEOPLE in the process have been decimated by the slash and burn, high and mighty, snob infested, hazing tactics of our predecessors.
Try to build a real 200 piece marching band, or a local Suzuki String program in 2017 (every accomplished Conservatory performance graduate started somewhere). The resources, support and training from our academic and religious institutions, and the disciplinary and administrative clout to pull it all together has been all but decimated. No one led the way to preserve the system or enhance it, and did everything in their power to push any ‘trouble makers’ out of the industry. The few brave men and women I remember standing up in all the ‘associations and union meetings’ in the 70s and 80s who were voicing concerns or ‘rocking the boat’ towards meeting some of the on coming industry challenges head on were flat out black-balled and forced to find other occupations.
You can’t even get a decent modern brass instrument (beginner, intermediate, nor professional, yet still costing into the thousands of dollars per unit after the families finance them) that doesn’t fall apart within 2 years (with no way to fix it due to all the new electro-bonding processes involved). Even so…we’re sending kids home with bills at over $75 a pop to put on a stinking water key, or replace junk pads that fall out a week later. “Do it yourself” the old heads say…but the truth is, you can’t anymore…none of it really works the way it did 30 or 40 years ago…the materials and methods available have changed that much. The brass is too thin to rub, it’s of an alloy that cannot simply be hand soldered, etc. Modern woodwinds are even worse…you can’t flex the keys and align/set the pads. Nothing uses the old heated laqure method anymore. The best you can do is peel a sticker, poke it in, and hope it sets at some point (which is rare). It’s a bloody nightmare…and this is coming from sales people that will bald face lie and tell you that intermediate flutes with step rather than inline key configurations ‘do not exist’, or that they can’t supply you with replacement parts, etc. This is coming from places where directors can be blackballed from an entire state for wanting to use Brand X instruments instead of Brand Y. We’re all locked in…and WE ‘incompetent’ teachers/directors don’t have much course to fight back. Plus…one needs time to actually TEACH and PERFORM music at some point.
Building a solid instrumental music program is a constant series of dances with school/community ethics and politics. Almost anything we come up with to solve a seemingly simple problem is subject to stepping on some powerful person’s toes who can crush you like a bug. It’s not t he same world as it was in 1950. Even when we think we might have some options…we often have to keep them quiet and ‘under the table’…again, major ethical delimas. Good lord…why should it be an ethical delima full of potential legal pits to make sure a kid has an instrument that actually works?
Well…in 2017…it is. Passing out a great method book and teaching your bom off isn’t enough EVERYTHING is questioned and scrutinized instead of ‘backed’ by modern ‘administrators’.
So here we are in 2017. A kid walks into your program holding some X brand horn made in India and purchased at Wal Mart that is 1/2" too long. It barely makes a noise even resembling the instrument it is supposed to be. Industry standard reeds/mouthpieces etc will not fit it. It can NOT be tuned to fit in with an ‘ensemble’ of various branded instruments…and we’re stuck with it! We can’t even send a note to the parents about it, as that would be politically offensive somehow. We can’t go to an anonymous source and have a proper instrument ‘donated’…again for the same political non-sense reasons. This is just one of many examples of the issues we ‘modern incompetent younger whipper-snappers’ (who based on previous posts, obviously can’t transpose with two standard ears and a piece of paper) are faced with daily.
You can’t ask parents to help raise funds anymore, and you can’t ask a kid to practice and give an honest assessment without possibly getting sued into oblivion. You can’t do instrument inspections, or enforce any kind of maintenance regiment (even if YOU offer to pay for it out of your own pocket, it’s offensive, and a possible law suit waiting to happen).
You can’t find anyone that will come tune a piano anymore. The few that try are clueless and end up making it WORSE. Try to find a school to learn how to do it properly, and they’ll take your money for a while, then HAZE you out in less than 6 months with a bunch of social/fraternal nonsense that has nothing to do with maintaining musical instruments. So yeah, the churches are putting out beautiful and massive pipe organs on the curb for disposal, and moving in Digital pianos and wiz bang multi-media karaoke systems. Not so much because they ‘desire this’, but because they don’t have many options anymore. Even if they are fortunate enough to find someone that can (or want to learn) how to play the old organ…getting someone to fly in from 20 states away to maintain it is no longer practical (provided you can even find someone that can/will still do it).
Believe me…‘my generation’ tried with everything we had to be loyal, and devoted to our mentors and their guilds. We begged to keep our local instrument makers and service companies going strong, and locally financed, but the advice from YOUR GENERATION was to 'keep your mouth shut and keep your band hall clean. These things are NOT your problem." Then ya’ll retired with tri-state trifectas for pensions and benefits, and never looked back. We practically WORSHIPED our mentors…and tolerated endless HAZING B.S. rituals that wasted YEARS of our lives, while our ‘peers’ were out there making millions to put together 4 track ‘pop tunes’. We ‘kept our band halls clean’ as directed…and THIS is what we’ve inherited. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
As for buying ‘stock arrangements’ from the publishing houses…well, in 2017 it’s notoriously difficult to build an ensemble that actually fits the ideal model. One ends up having to rearrange stuff to fit whatever odd-ball instrumentation you can manage to cobble together out of a rapidly changing community. We can have as many as 9 different pedagogical ability levels in the same ensemble to account for…so a good 60% of the time we end up having to re-arrange everything anyway…thus the growing popularity for Scoring software and some sort of personal or portable PC. We need custom arrangements on a daily basis, but we do NOT have time to sit down and hand write all fifty-some odd parts, in all the clefs and transpositions we need (which literally can change from day to day, week to week, as players come and go on about their lives).
We know our theory, and we know many of the old rules, methodologies, and processes. To this day, a good ole Rubank or Arban book is golden, but we don’t get a schedule or a pedagogically leveled group of students that those methods will work in anymore. We could do it if we had the OLD ‘people’ systems in place…but all those systems and support groups are long gone, and attempting to rebuild them is pretty much professional suicide among modern school districts…so please keep all this in mind.
The constructivst learning theory currently pushed by many school systems around the world pretty much forces us to abandon the old proven methodologies rooted in behaviorist or situated cognition learning theory. Many of us in the field don’t like it, but to keep our jobs, we must turn in ‘differentiated’ lesson plans for every individual child. Besides the fact that music method books are not on our state text book lists, and we are not allowed to ask kids to buy their own, All this means, on multiple levels, that we really need the Notation software to create our own ‘method books’. They change and grow pretty much daily. Yep, it’s forcing us to reinvent the music methodology wheel…and in many ways make it WORSE than anything that was used in the 1950s, but if we want the public school gig…we fall in line or get fired.
Moreover, In Nineteen Seventy weird, your typical school music program for a student body of 1,000 kids to build a talent pool from had 6 to 8 people on music staff. You got the same students every day, for at least 50 minutes per day (we’re lucky to get a different group every day for 20 minutes a pop). If you wanted to keep oboes and bassoons in inventory, and develop people to play them…you could do so. It’s not that simple anymore though. There is no money for a bassoon, which cost as much as a small fleet of beginner line trumpets. These days we are lucky to get ONE quazi certified teacher for EVERYTHING music on campus, who is expected to do Instrumental, Vocal, and General Music for all grades K-12. They demand we field up to 6 performance groups open to public scrutiny in any given month, incorporating all kinds of dance and movement drills, full uniforms, etc…with zero budget, and all that is expected with less than 90 minutes rehersal time per week (all scattered minutes, mostly spent setting up and breaking down in a ‘temporary’ classroom at that).
So…forgive us if we find 20 minutes and a set of technologies to sketch out and communicate ideas. It’s not our fault the unions have died (and we were never ‘good enough’ to join them anyway), and getting a group of studio musicians together is not only extremely difficult, but far more expensive than quite an elaborate home studio. It’s not our fault that universities and conservatories no longer graduate enough specialists in various instrument families to set up studios for private lessons in every decent sized town anymore. It’s not our fault that a kid right out of college, will be expected to lead two choirs, 4 bands, and teach 12 general music classes in a single day can’t develop oboe and basson players for ‘traditional’ wind band stock arrangements (that are ironically still on required lists for program evaluations). It’s not our fault that budgets are not provided, and that arranging various booster or sponsorship organizations is now a taboo (considered unethical) practice.
Forgive us that our ‘peers’ that we might attempt to organize into reading and session groups, who majored in some instrument 20 years ago hasn’t had time to pick one up and PLAY in more than 20 years…because he’s got a family, and a life, and is always slogging popcorn and cokes in some two bit concession stand to help pay for that $6,000 community tuba and twelve $200 mouth pieces that’ll be shared among a dozen kids.
Enjoy the ‘superior generation’ complex, but in all honesty, you didn’t leave much of a legacy to keep us on your dream path for the way music ‘should be done’ throughout the ages. What we have, is what we have. We do the best with it that we can.
We begged and pleaded, warned of the coming changes in the world, and possible methods to ‘get organized’ and address them. We protested, courted, tried our best to lobby as ‘young fools’, and went unheard. We can’t turn back now…at least not without a major social movement, orchestrated from the top down by leading Music Universities and Conservatories, with some BIG MONEY backers, and loads of international law firms to undo the morbid and nearly insane legal, social, and ethical ‘advances’ that have put us in the position we are today when it comes to building musicians for acoustical instrument based ensembles. My ‘incompetent’ generation asked our Deans these things, and when we submitted our thesis papers to attempt to address some of these issues about our crumbling support systems and resource supply lines, not only did they fail us on those papers for ‘trying to rock the boat’ and ‘stick our noses into industrial matters of which they do not belong’…they pretty much told us to shut the heck up and get out of their institution. So…we did…and from then on they went from graduating hundreds of musicians per year, to graduating less than 10 per year (most of which leave professional music via attrition). The Universities have their most qualified scholars, still getting six digit salaries to direct the same basketball pep band they’ve been doing since they came on as a ‘graduate assistant’ 20 years ago…and such ‘scholarly leaders’ out right refuse to publish, or sit on any peer review boards where they might actually be influential in helping to hammer together plans and resources do something about some of these issues…
They play the fight song 200 times a month, graduate maybe a dozen music major students per year, and get the six figure pay check…this is what MY GENERATION had/has to work with in terms of scholarly ‘leadership’.
We’re now a DAW generation…and don’t have much choice in the matter anymore.
Mockups often contain a LOT of tracks, so relying on having to import/export tracks manually between apps is already and outdated solution IMO. The most future proof solution would be a way for the two apps to be one, if one insists on keeping the two apps separated, I mean. This would mean that if you open a MIDI region in the score editor while using Cubase, the software would do whatever needed for that region to open up in Dorico. But there are many things to deal with if the apps should be kept separate.
The benefits of this versus Cubico is:
It keeps the price down for those who are only interested in Dorico or Cubase
Not if one can buy Cubase with or without the pro score functionality.
“The internal logic can remain completely separated - making each app optimized for it’s own approach and features”
I don’t think that makes, sense, given that once one has opened up a region or track in the score editor (Reaper, Cubase, Performer, Logic and others can do that already) that “score editor” would be Dorico as we know it today - with local menus, it’s own contextual menus, the needed key commands (which in many cases would be the same KCs you use in the non-score area: play, play from selection, move one bar left/right, rewind, delete, transpose etc…
“The road maps can remain separated - allowing the Dorico team to push new features in it’s own pace.”
With a model where one constantly would copy-paste events or import/export events (imagine how often that would have to happen), one would still have to ensure full compatibility. And don’t get this wrong, but after 4 years of developments, Dorico can’t export and import material to/from itself even (yet).
“Personally, I think having two sets of key commands is actually a huge benefit (of course - these should be uniformed as much as possible”.
What would the benefit be if they should be uniformed as much as possible? One clear drawback would be that if you change a KC in Cubase, you need to change it in D as well, to keep the commands uniform.
“I think I would be more confused if the same KC applied to two similar but semantically completely different functions within the same app.”
I use a DAW where the score editor has it’s own set of key commands, but where all the other commands are common. It’s a no brainer, really.
I agree, but hopefully this would only be needed once in a project - if you need to send it off in a different format or do some final adjustments
This would mean that if you open a MIDI region in the score editor while using Cubase, the software would do whatever needed for that region to open up in Dorico
Again (I’m sure I’m being naive here, but why not? ) - with the futher development of Play mode, I hope there won’t be any need for midi editing in Cubase. Why not use Dorico for midi tracks and cubase for audio tracks?
Not if one can buy Cubase with or without the pro score functionality.
True, but then we would also need a “Cubase with or without pro audio functionallity”, or it would be too expensive for those only interested in Dorico’s engraving capabilities.
I didn’t mean the UI, but the internal structure - as Paul says "“The model of music notation in Dorico is completely different to the data model in Cubase”
With a model where one constantly would copy-paste events or import/export events, one would still have to ensure full compatibility
That’s true, but I don’t think that would necessarily be any different from current compability issues with midi import/export.
What would the benefit be if they should be uniformed as much as possible?
I just meant that zoom, transport, and other common functions should be the same (I think some of them are already). Uncommon functions should be optimized for each app. You’re totally right that an app may have different KC sets for different parts of the program- that is indeed a no brainer (and that would indeed allow the same optimisation). My argument was totally bad, but my point is, I don’t feel too much compassion for those saying “I want Cubico, because it’s so hard to learn KCs for two applications”, as there are benefits of having separate sets (either within the same app or in different apps)
If Dorico gets what it needs in terms of all the useful key commands in Cubase + all the functionality in Cubase (minus the audio tracks), I wouldn’t need to jump back and forth between the two apps that much. Personally, I haven’t recorded/mixed albums or worked with audio for several years - but there’s still a lot of what you may call “DAW stuff” that’s missing in Dorico. And of course - audio tracks in Dorico has come up a few times in this forum an elsewhere already, but my point is only that adding audio tracks in Dorico (and the relevant functionality that implies) + developing some interchange solution between Cubase and Dorico could represent just as much work as heading towards a unified, ‘modular’ app. And there are dozens of benefits from not having to deal with two apps.
“with the futher development of Play mode, I hope there won’t be any need for midi editing in Cubase. Why not use Dorico for midi tracks and cubase for audio tracks?”
See above (and earlier posts from others than me) about the benefits of having one app to deal with. And - to use myself as an example again - Cubase and Dorico has some clear benefits over Logic, which has been my main tool ‘forever’. If I would have to learn one new tool, and not two (of which one of them - Dorico - still is missing some of the stuff I find essential (eg some Sibelius stuff), switching would have been a lot easier.
“True, but then we would also need a “Cubase with or without pro audio functionallity”, or it would be too expensive for those only interested in Dorico’s engraving capabilities.”
I don’t think finding a way to enable different parts of a program is an impossible task It’s of course more complicated than just making Cubase or just making Dorico. But is it a lot more complicated than making both? Even if the answer would be yes, I’m convinced that it would be a solution that’s much better for almost all users.
“The model of music notation in Dorico is completely different to the data model in Cubase”
Well, I have no idea what it would take for Steinberg to offer a solution which would - for the user - appear more or less as if one would have to deal with only one app. I’m just saying that such a solution would make diving into the Steinberg world a lot more tempting, and I know that many Steinberg users also really would like such a solution. It would serve as a strong argument for going Steinberg for all current and future Logic+Dorico users (and many other Dorico users who don’t use Cubase).
“I just meant that zoom, transport, and other common functions should be the same (I think some of them are already). Uncommon functions should be optimized for each app.”
Well, I know this is how many Logic users see it: they/we use a dedicated score app not because the Logic score editor is horrible, many of us actually think it would be tons better if it only would have kept being developed by Apple. There’s even stuff in Logic’s score editor that some of us find superior to what the dedicated score apps offer. Many of us would never consider any of the the three main score apps if Logic only would have, say, 17,5% more (silly with a percentage here, but forget that for now) more score functionality than it has.
So if Apple can make a combo app that’s so close to being what most Logic users need, why can’t Steinberg make a combo app that also only lacks those silly 17.5% I mentioned - but spend a handful of years to add those missing things? Steinberg is serious about notation, they don’t suffer from the pop culture thing Apple has gone into, they are serious about Kontakt, with working with Kontakt libraries etc… Again: Logic is closer than Steinberg in terms of being capable of delivering such a product (and who knows, maybe they are working on it), but Steinberg is closer in terms of having the needed people, knowledge and (drum roll…) interest in the stuff I’m talking about here.
"but my point is, I don’t feel too much compassion for those saying “I want Cubico, because it’s so hard to learn KCs for two applications”
The KC part of this is only a little part of it. A product - or merging two products (or pseudo-merging them - is about much more than key commands. Most of all it’s about providing a workflow that doesn’t need loads of interruptions because you need to do some of your important tasks in one app, and other tasks in another. Editing music with decent looking notation and using the many advanced MIDI features the best DAWs have shouldn’t have ti require two apps.
, if you know what I mean. 
All I mean is that we don’t need to think of it has a DAW with a pro score editor, or as two different things… after all, the difference between the current DAWs with score editors (Cubase, Logic and others) is that the score editors in dedicated score editors are better. And the difference between Dorico and a DAW is that it has a better score editor + lacks audio and video tracks (with the extra tools and functionality that demands).
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EVERYTHING is questioned and scrutinized instead of ‘backed’ by modern ‘administrators’.