extensive sound library expression maps vs. just using Note Performer (opinions sought!)

Don’t forget Cubase’s audio capabilities!
In Dorico I do not mix with the mixer, which I do not use at all, but I control (like a conductor the orchestra with the notation in front of my eyes or in my ear) everything in the notation or in the “lanes”. For my part, I “only” need an authentic sound without effects, it counts the musical substance.
Greeting
Bertram


Vergiss nicht die Audio-Fähigkeiten von Cubase!
In Dorico mixe ich nicht mit dem Mixer, den ich überhaupt nicht benutze, sondern ich steuere (wie ein Dirigent das Orchester mit der Notation vor Augen bzw. im Ohr) alles in der Notation bzw. in den “lanes”. Ich für meinen Teil brauche “nur” einen authentischen Sound ohne Effekte, es zählt die musikalische Substanz.
Gruß
Bertram

I find that the type of user and scope is different, in Dorico and Cubase. Cubase is meant for electronic/hybrid music production, with support of basic scoring needs to communicate with real players in a fast working environment, like cinema. Dorico is meant for producing sophisticate scores, with support for realistic sound prototypes for the composer’s sake, or as a guide for real players and members of competition juries.

Some of the more advanced features in Dorico’s Play mode might never be of use for a typical Cubase users. Think about the ability of having different voices in a staff play different virtual instruments. Or the separation between shown and played notes, going much further than the “interpretation” of a DAW.

As a composer in score, I find Dorico has already a degree of integration between music symbols and musical meaning for virtual instruments, that is not in any DAW. The importance of the written score is so high in Dorico, while being replaced by actual playing in a DAW, that there wouldn’t be any reason to do the same in a DAW.

I hope (and am sure about it) in further development of the Play mode, but I’m not sure the Cubase pianoroll can be entirely ported as it is in Dorico.

Paolo

The internals of Dorico and Cubase are very different at every level. When we started working on Dorico many years ago one of the first technical decisions we had to make was about whether we would be able to build Dorico on the same shared framework as Cubase and Nuendo. (WaveLab was already independent, and like Dorico is built on Qt.) Unfortunately there were many fundamental things that were going to be impractical to achieve using the shared framework, things that would have potentially delayed Dorico by multiple years, so we made the pragmatic solution to use Qt, which is a decision we do not regret at all. But it does mean that there is very little in common between how Dorico approaches anything and how Cubase approaches it. Again, I don’t think we regret this either, as it has allowed us to build Dorico in such a way that it addresses its domain in the way we judge to be best, rather than having to try to squeeze everything through a Cubase-shaped hole.

The disadvantage of this approach is that it makes it quite difficult, if not completely impractical, to actively use bits of user interface from Cubase. So we do have to reimplement key bits of editing functionality like the piano roll and automation editors ourselves.

I am always very interested to hear from people with a lot of experience with Cubase or indeed other DAWs as to what are the main pain points in Dorico’s editors in Play mode. There are several very experienced Cubase users on the Dorico team, but Cubase is such a deep application that in my own experience I can get a very different perspective on what the best or most efficient way to achieve a task is by talking to each user, and that is true even of my colleagues on the Dorico team.

So if you have a hit list of specific improvements you would like us to make to the editors in Play mode, please let me know what they are. Although we do not have the ambition to make the editors as functional and multi-purpose as their Cubase counterparts, we do want them to work as efficiently and painlessly as possible.

Daniel,

What is your intention with the “power button” that appears next to the VSTi or MIDI instruments in the right hand side of the play panel? I’m sure you know better than anyone that lots of composers have monster Cubase templates so that they can quickly grab that Flute Flauntando or whatever that is their favorite when they need it - but they also don’t want the weight of the world on their systems, or wait forever for a project to load. “Weight and Wait”, I guess.

I’m thinking that “power button” could be used as a way to enable/disable instruments short of deleting and adding/recreate their configuration. With lazy loading - do not actually load them yet on startup if they are disabled. It would be a bonus if you can unload them when disabled, though I know not all of them will clean up their samples.

I’m sold on letting Dorico do things for me automatically wherever possible, and manually tweaking only when necessary. So while it appears that Dorico will eventually add more sends that can be used for grouping or whatever, I’d prefer just an option in the audio export to “export instrument groups as stems” using natural groupings or the instrument groups we’ve already made in setup.

I’m hoping those are bite sized enough to be reasonable to consider.

The button at some point will be a ‘Project Activation’ control similar to Cubase, where you can make one project active for playback and then swap to another project without all the VST plugins getting unloaded. We hope to have time to implement this in a future version.

Sounds sorta close Paul? The way you said sounds like its more global to the project but the buttons are beside each instrument. It would still be on a per instrument basis as that is where the buttons are now?

Ah sorry, I misread - I thought you were talking about the power button that’s on the toolbar at the top of the document window. The power buttons next to each VST instrument function as they do in Cubase - they just temporarily disable it, which you might use to reduce CPU usage. I don’t know whether that would prevent the plugins from loading their samples - I suspect that’s at the discretion of the plugin.

Hi Daniel,

I didn’t mean actually sharing code between the two programs. I know about the framework differences etc. I mostly meant differences in what mouse clicks you have to do or the keys you have to press to do the same task as in Cubase. For instance, scrolling vertically in the piano roll in Cubase is done with the mouse scroll wheel. Scrolling horizontally is done with Shift and the scroll wheel. In Dorico, these are exactly the opposite - the scroll wheel scrolls horizontally and Shift + the the scroll wheel moves vertically. Those are functions that are used all the time in the piano roll. When I am working in both programs quite often I keep doing the wrong thing in the wrong program. I imagine somewhere I can possibly reverse what those do. There may be a good reason why those are different, like perhaps to keep consistency within Dorico’s different modes regarding the mappings. But there are quite a few small things like that which tend to add up.

One of the main things I would like to see is a better design of the piano roll view. Dorico’s piano roll view does not give a tall enough viewport so you have to scroll vertically much more often than you do in Cubase. In Cubase, the piano roll for the selected MIDI event appears in a pane in the bottom of the screen, or you can double-click on the event to open it in a popup window. In Dorico, the lack of vertical space means that you have to do a lot more scrolling. This is further impacted by how tall the piano keyboard is on the left hand side. In Cubase, the piano keyboard is shown as a nice small size by default which reduces scrolling greatly vs Dorico, where all the notes are extremely tall. The rectangles that let you change velocity are also a bit on the wide side in Dorico which can make editing more awkward in dense passages.

Dorico also does not currently have the ability to show multiple CC lanes at the same time - you can only select one. I also wish that Dorico’s CC editor had a “parabola” tool since I use that all the time in Cubase.

On the other hand, there are a few things that I feel Dorico does better than Cubase in the piano roll. One is the playing techniques lane - in Cubase, the lane has to be made extremely tall because the articulations stack vertically. The way Dorico lays it out is actually more similar to Logic’s articulation sets, just showing rectangles in the same lane for articulation changes. This is one area where I would like to see Cubase become more like Dorico. Also, the fact that Dorico allows drawing lines for MIDI CC’s where it interpolates between the start point and the end point - Cubase does not have this feature and I think they should adopt it, because I think it would be really beneficial. When you draw lines in Cubase with MIDI CC’s, it adds a series of discrete changes in between.

Obviously Dorico is a very different program from Cubase, and jumping into Play mode in Dorico should not feel like you have suddenly arrived in Cubase and end up making the program look completely different than the other modes, so I get that certain adjustments need to be made. But I get the feeling that things are sometimes different between the programs (quite a few of which I have mentioned above) for no obvious reason.

What I meant in terms of working together on UI on those common areas is that, if the Dorico team implements something new and beneficial in the piano roll feature that Cubase doesn’t have, that the Cubase developers can consider implementing something similar on their side, and vice versa. If Dorico has different scroll wheel options and key modifiers for the scroll wheel than Cubase (and it does), it would be nice if either Dorico could adopt the Cubase method or Cubase could adopt the Dorico method, so that working in the programs becomes less dissimilar of an experience.

Not that I don’t like the other feature you describe! I’ve cursed myself for unthinkingly opening another project and forgetting what will happen as far as loading.

Hi,
I only occasionally use the piano roll in Dorico, even though I do a lot of midi work in Logic. I might bring more of my midi work over to Dorico as Play mode evolves, but I’d never expect Dorico to replace a daw for my kind of work. Since you ask for some input, here’s my ad hoc list of stuff I think could improve the piano roll in Dorico:

  1. For the general feel, I too welcome improvements to scrolling and zooming in the piano roll. Neither of these are big issues, but they add up to a slight discomfort. I’m a heavy trackpad user, as I do a lot of ‘field work’, and I find using the trackpad to be quite wobbly in Dorico compared to Logic. In Logic, trackpad zooming is restricted to the horizontal axis, which is what I want to do most of the time. This works similarly with the Z and X keys in Dorico, but trackpad zooming works in both directions, which I find to be a bit disorienting. More importantly, trackpad scrolling in Logic sort of snaps to one direction, which makes moving around much smoother.

  2. In Logic, clicking a key in the vertical piano selects all notes of the same pitch, and auditions the sound.

  3. In Logic, you can quickly add notes by holding CMD without changing tool (provided the right click tool is set to pencil).

  4. In Logic, there are key commands (. ,) for moving the playhead to the next/previous bar, which I use constantly. I haven’t really missed this in Write mode, where I mostly use P, but when it comes to fine-tuning timing, I need more context than what ‘Play from selection’ gives.

  5. I’m a big fan of the various lanes in Dorico, but wish the velocity was visible and adjustable without needing to open the lane in every track. I think this is done quite elegantly in Logic with velocity colors and the slider.

  6. Various MIDI transform tools for randomization, scaling velocity etc.

  7. This is probably far beyond the scope of midi editing in notation software, but the way Logic handles midi loops is brilliant for work that includes drums/percussion. If this could somehow be built around the existing Bar repeat function in Dorico, but visible and editable in Play mode, that would be totally awesome. I realize this is a huge task, and not something I’d really expect.

These two can however already be done in Dorico.

  • Type D to switch to the pencil, and S to switch back to selection. E is the eraser, and I assigned L to the line tool.

  • Cmd-Right and Cmd-Left move the selection (both in Write and Play mode) to the next or previous bar.

Paolo

This isn’t quite the same thing, though. I’m not a big fan of switching tools when doing related tasks - not because of the additional key presses, but because it feels as a change of mindset as well. This is probably just a personal preference, and possibly something that would grow on me if I spent more time in Play mode, but it’s one of those minor things that makes midi editing in Logic flow so well for me.

Thanks, this is something I use all the time in Write mode, but it never crossed my mind to try this in Play mode. I’ll give it a try, but I think I’d still prefer moving the playhead when working in a piano roll, as this gives visual feedback, gives you a consistent downbeat and generally is more predictable than navigating through “hidden” concepts of rests, voices, chords etc.

F9 or F8 will move the playback head by a bar, Ctrl+ F9 or F8 will move the playhead for small amounts

When using the pencil via Cmd-click, in Logic, you are in any case changing tool. The only difference with the method used in Dorico is that in Logic you are in latch mode, in Dorico in toggle mode.

An advantage I see in the Dorico way, is that you can switch between various different tools, without having to reassign them to the Cmd-click shortcut. I very often wish to be able to quickly switch between Select, Pencil, Scissors, and Line. Unfortunately, with Logic you can only switch between two tools.

Paolo

That’s true, and a better description of my preference. When I edit and input in a piano roll, I use pointer and pencil interchangeably as my main tools, so I’m very happy with the latching behavior.

Well, there’s one more keypress involved, but you can easily change tools by bringing up the tool menu with T. T E for eraser, T V for velocity, etc.

There are obviously different cups of tea in this area, but since all modifier keys seem to be unused, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suggest expanding the mouse tool with latching behavior. I think this is fairly common in mouse-based editing in a wide variety of applications. The developers are obviously the ones that know what makes the most sense for Dorico, so this is not meant as a critique, and I’m not going to pursue this any further, I simply wanted to present what I like about Logic’s piano roll, which I use quite heavily.

Thanks for the feedback, Michael and Anders. Other people who read this thread and are heavy users of the piano roll and associated editors in Cubase, please keep the feedback coming.

Here are the things I use all the time in Logic Pro’s Piano Roll that I’d love to see in Dorico Pro (apologies if some of these features are already there and I just haven’t noticed!):

  • Logic has robust quantization options in the Piano Roll I use all the time - directly selecting a group of notes in a give region I’m editing and then setting whether to round them to the nearest 16th notes, swing values, etc. and also the percentage of 100% I’d like to move my performance to retain the “human” feel of the original input (but with more quantized accuracy). From what I understand, Dorico has the option of retaining the originally performed MIDI, OR “resetting playback overrides” to have the notes start times line up exactly with timing notated in Write Mode (but nothing that retains the perfect notation, but which then allows you to finesse the playback separately via quantization, other than by manually moving things note by note). For example, it would be nice to be able to have Play Mode set to show just played durations (as is now possible), and then to select those notes and have access to menu-based, more tweakable quantization options a la Logic Pro (including things like different swing values, etc.) that ONLY affect the playback (not the notation) (right now if I invoke the Quantization menu after selecting notes this way they also affect the way they’re notated, as far as I can tell).

  • Love the presence of the Velocity lane in Play Mode in Dorico (a great start). However, it would admittedly be EXTREMELY helpful if the actual notes displayed in Piano Roll were colored (as they are in Logic) according to their velocities (or to at least have the option to turn this on). For example, in Logic, very high-velocity notes are colored red, medium green, all the way down to purple. This allows one to look at a range of Piano Roll notes and immediately grasp what the velocities are. Logic also allows you to then select a range of actual notes and quickly raise their relative velocities up or down as a group, or set them all to the exact same velocity and then raise or lower them. Logic also has a separate Velocity Lane below this similar to Dorico’s, where you can further act upon the data. To this end, it would at the least be helpful to be able to grab a group of velocities in the actual Dorico velocity lane and with a key command set them all to the same velocity, and then raise or lower them as a group (right now it appears that all I can do is Draw new velocities across them with the Draw or Line tool, though this is certainly also helpful).

Just in general in Dorico’s Play Mode it feels like you could do more with the utility of color (much as you use it in Write Mode already in Dorico optionally to differentiate voices or show red notes out of range). To facilitate this, it would also (admittedly) be nice if there was much less “brightness” in Play Mode in general (understandable for more of a “notation on paper” metaphor but with Piano Roll I’ve often seen things against darker backgrounds when you have to stare at them for long periods of time and do “micro-tweaks”, etc.).

  • Would be helpful to be able to select a note in the Play Mode’s vertical “piano keyboard” (up the left hand side) and have all notes of that position/pitch be selected, as I believe others have mentioned (since right now this of course does nothing).

  • More quick “zoom” options in Play Mode. In Logic’s Project Window, for example, you can set a zoom level for a given track (by dragging the height to where you want it), and then have that zoom level automatically propagate to any other selected tracks whenever you hit “Z”. This sort of thing could be very useful for all of the Play Mode windows to zip in and out of them more quickly.

Just a few quick things -
Best and keep up the great work -

  • D.D.

I think Dorico is on the verge of being the best option for notation composers looking for good mockups. Right now the simplicity of NotePerformer may still be more appealing to notation composers who are uncomfortable with MIDI programming, but soon, with a few well-constructed expression maps, the ability of Dorico to play well with the best sounding instrument libraries will put it over the top.

I am in the middle of switching my current workflow to load my orchestral template in Cubase, but control it with Dorico MIDI routing using virtual MIDI cables. I used to use Finale as the MIDI driver, but I think that time is over…!

As I continue to refine my expression maps, I will be able to apply them for all future pieces, until at some point I imagine my MIDI tweaking will be minimal and I’ll just be working in notation (as it is with NotePerformer)

Where possible, we have modelled the UX of Play Mode in a similar way to Cubase. There are some constraints though that are more difficult to work around. The scrolling behaviour is controlled by the underlying Qt framework and that’s harder for us to override to work in the other way, but it’s something we may look at in the future.

There are some other things though that do work like Cubase:

  • Shift-G/shift-H to vertically resize the current lane (unfortunately ‘G’ in Dorico is used for note input so we can’t use G/H for horizontal resize, but you can do this with Z/X)
  • Drag the bar/beat ruler vertically to zoom in or out
  • Change the vertical scale of the piano roll. In Cubase there’s a scaler control in the scroll bar, but in Dorico you can shift-drag the piany keyboard vertically to rescale.

We do hope to add support for multiple automation lanes in the future.

Parts of this thread should be moved, I think …

For me, Dorico’s scrolling behavior in the piano roll is very practical. What I don’t like is that it’s the other way around in writing mode. That is annoying - is quite a challenge. :wink:
greeting
Bertram