commercial movies cant function without notation?
fully synthesized means digital music with vst instrument samples?
The vast majority of commercial movies (at least the ones that end up in cinemas) still use live musicians. Session musicians read the sheet music thatās put on their stands that day.
If you donāt want your music to be played by human beings, you donāt necessarily need notation.
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Notation is not self serving, and surely composers donāt need it in order to compose a piece. Itās a tool for communicating with musicians over distance. In Jazz, itās often replaced by direct verbal communication, when the composer is on spot during performance.
MIDI, DAWS and VST serve none of these purposes and are thus used for different results.
There is no āoneā or āfutureā way of creating music today anymore and I doubt there ever will be (if there ever was).
when would i need notation? what are pros and contras of doing it in dorico before going to daw? and is it enough to just live record in dorico 4? or is daw better for that if i wanna live record? and in the end, is a midi keyboard even faster workflow than just adding melody with mouse clicks?
and is it normal that noteperformer does not instantly react when i press play in dorico?
(Outside of notation) Doricoās ahead of Cubase (and probably most other DAWs) in a few respects: polytonality, polymeter, microtonal stuff, complex tuplets, to name a few.
If audio is the only desired output, though - if you have no need for printed notation whatsoever - youāll probably be better served by a DAW.
A MIDI keyboard is definitely quicker than mouse clicking durations if your music is relatively rhythmically simple. This goes for Dorico and pretty much every DAW.
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Wellā¦if you create a pice of music for others to play/perform, notation is somewhat essential. You are correct in that you can use software and audio libraries to create what you want; you are both the creator and the performer. Some of us write music for others to play, and we communicate it via notation. Whether itās musicians in my own town, or those on another continent, written music - well displayed and intelligently formatted (yeah Dorico, Iām lookinā at you) - is how this is conveyed.
By your question, one could also ask, āwhy do I need to use written language?ā I can record everything I wish to say - someone can simply listen to the audio of me speaking. Yet for some reason, written language persists.
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DAW composing is a horror show IMHO if you can actually read music. With Dorico I finally enjoy getting the music into the computer (been at it since the 80ās on C64), even though my music is just played by computers.
So far ā¦ some day I hope to get humans into the loop, and the odds they can play from a MIDI piano roll are probably not good. What clef is that anyhow, some kind of alto thing?
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Maybe. Dorico manages so much of the tedium - instrument setup, inits/resets that itās a huge time saver. Better is it gets your out of the minutiae of sound production. Personally I think that much of what you hear in media music these days is due to not native abilities or desires, but time pressures and the mediocrity that the DAW encourages.
Composer-conductor-performer is all mashed together. In notation/Dorico, I just specify high level intentions, dynamics, articulations and so forth, and donāt care how itās done. This way I can focus on the music only - so thereās a separation of concerns. Iām not performer-composer, Iām composer. And the output I get is pretty good actually, later Iām composer (really conductor) and just touch it up to get some stellar output.
My humble opinion - FWIW - if DAW is youāre cup of tea no problem with that but Iād question spending much time on a Dorico forum in that case anyhow.
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But can you say them in a family-friendly way? 
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The bigger point here, which all of us have been guilty of, is that we see our own limited experiences and preferences as normative. Weāre all more myopic than we want to admit.
I find writing music in a DAW unspeakably frustrating. Iāve watched Guy do it, and while itās very impressive, it makes as much sense to me as notation makes to the OP here.
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Yes, NP uses a short time to read ahead and interpret the notation. Itās baked in, and documented AFAIK
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Recently, there was an interesting link on this forum to a YT documentary about the big shots in film composing: The Score - documentary on YouTube
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(And all those sessions had sheet music, lol.)
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All I will add is this: After 10 years of working nearly 95% in the DAW with sample instruments and no real musicians; all of my Midi-Orchestral or non-synth based music, when done in notation first, resulted in stronger arrangements and made it easier to program/input into the dAW - which lead to more placements in productions.
I believe the trouble people run into is trying to make one act like the other. A DAW is a different animal than a tool like Dorico. There is certainly crossover, but just like both a car and a bike can help you travel, they are completely different in the way they do it. There is a time and place for both, depending on your desired outcome.
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ok then just make stronger arrangements(whatever that is?) in the daw?
Notation is the āalphabetā for music. Yes, you can record your speech, or listen to spoken word recordings without knowing how to read; but being able to write, spell, and read words are essential skills ā particularly for an author.
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For me, notation utilizes a different part of my brain in creating. I love to improvise and it can inspire ideas but thinking through it and notating it opens up formal and contrapuntal ideas that I might not discover if I only laid down DAW tracks. Maybe thatās just because itās how I started and learned.
@napjts its ok if notation is not for you. Use your daws to your heartās content. But donāt yell at hammers for not being screwdrivers.
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Of course. Why didnāt I think of that?
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any there any real evidence in form of studies etc. which compares notation vs. daw in terms of quality of the music?