The Sound Board

I understand that your needs are quite different Daryl, and yes, it should be an off/on thing-however, I suspect my interests are widely shared: a few parts or lead sheets exported from a MIDI file every once in a while. It's not a particularly inexpensive product-if it's to have a wide market, it would be good if it had some sort of intelligent time saving functions that would make it attractive to guys like me. Otherwise, I'll just fight with Cubase or write stuff out as per usual.

Music - I think - or rather music notation is sufficiently different than the spoke-word to written text thing that AI is not required, nor even desirable. Again, just my opinion, but I think a decision tree, a set of rules would be much more useful, and usable.

Imagine (and I've tried this, it ain't trivial) a rule that suggests that any note on that occurs between tick 1 and 23, or 2 and 24, or 94 and the next 23 occurs on the first beat of the measure, and any note with a duration between 20 and 28 is a quarter note.

The translation does not require AI, it requires only a rule set - and the rule set requires multiple profiles, and the user should be able to generate and/or modify the profiles. And disable them entirely!

This is a uni-directional transform - from MIDI to standard notation, and that makes things even simpler - the MIDI data is not changed by the rule set, only the presentation is changed - or maybe generated.

I have no inside knowledge of what the Dorico team is up to, but from their blog it appears that at a minimum there will be abstraction of performance (MIDI) and presentation (notation) data. That sounds promising!

The score editor in Logic can "visually quantize" MIDI notes without changing the actual playback. It looks like Dorico works with a similar philosophy, treating the score as a visual representation of MIDI data as opposed to Sibeliis and Finale which treats the music as graphics with audio playback being an afterthought. If you've ever written something in a DAW, exported a MIDI file and imported it into Sibelius and Finale, you know it looks like a mess. You have to do a lot of clean up to the MIDI data before you export it if you want it to look correct. Imagine if you could just import that original MIDI file into Dorico and it knows that a 128th note tied over the bar line to a dotted eighth note should really just be a quarter note on the downbeat. It sounds like Dorico is going to be a very powerful piece of software. I am very excited!

SBmusic wrote:The score editor in Logic can "visually quantize" MIDI notes without changing the actual playback.

Cubendo can also visually quantise and that's where Score to MIDI comes in. You can export a MIDI file that is exactly the same as the Score view, rather than the project view.

Daryl wrote:Cubendo can also visually quantise and that's where Score to MIDI comes in. You can export a MIDI file that is exactly the same as the Score view, rather than the project view.

That sounds like a very useful feature. I usually do clean up in Digital Performer because it has Smart Quantize which pretty much fixes 99% of the problems with the click of a button.

here is a video briefly discussing some of it's features.

So the release date is October 19th. Demo out 4 or 5 weeks after release and crossgrade available to March 2017.

Daryl wrote:So the release date is October 19th. Demo out 4 or 5 weeks after release and crossgrade available to March 2017.

And I see they used you in the marketing campaign as well!

SBmusic wrote:The score editor in Logic can "visually quantize" MIDI notes without changing the actual playback. It looks like Dorico works with a similar philosophy, treating the score as a visual representation of MIDI data as opposed to Sibeliis and Finale which treats the music as graphics with audio playback being an afterthought.

Just to note, that Presonus's Notion has this feature as well, which is good to have (IMO it's a must with today's VI's).

anyone using Overture around here? For serious copying work I'm a Finale user, but to prepare parts and mockups for my jazz students I work in Ove5, and the included handwritten font is nice... and you can draw controller curves and see the piano roll like sequencers do... that said I'm also waiting for the Dorico release

RobS wrote:anyone using Overture around here?

I tried the demo on mac a while back, but it felt so unfinished and - dare I say - ugly, that I gave up rather fast.
They offer quite decent discounts for Notion (and most likely Sibelius and Finale) users, so I might pick it up at some point, since those MIDI features are pretty much exactly what I want from my not-too-serious-engraving-notation-tool.

Tatu wrote:

RobS wrote:anyone using Overture around here?

I tried the demo on mac a while back, but it felt so unfinished and - dare I say - ugly, that I gave up rather fast.
They offer quite decent discounts for Notion (and most likely Sibelius and Finale) users, so I might pick it up at some point, since those MIDI features are pretty much exactly what I want from my not-too-serious-engraving-notation-tool.

I find that surprising, as the program (5.1) looks quite nice to me... have you tried the latest version?

So, any further words on Dorico? I know they have taken some heat as to the incompleteness of the program from the release - but that is to be expected.

I am currently downloading the demo. Anyone replaced Sibelius or Finale with it yet (Seems like Daryl said he had) -if so, how are you getting along with it?

kpc wrote: I am currently downloading the demo. Anyone replaced Sibelius or Finale with it yet (Seems like Daryl said he had) -if so, how are you getting along with it?

No, I haven't replaced Sibelius yet. I haven't even found a project to use Dorico on. It's nearly there for one of my current projects, but there are a few things that it can't do, and I'm not about to get out the pen and draw on the music...!

For most people doing lead sheet stuff, once chord symbols work well, I think they'll be pretty happy. There are certainly some great features where it already wipes the floor with both Sibelius and Finale. However, until the basic stuff works, I can't risk it.

The new update 1.1 looks really promising!
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewto ... be#p647972

This release is promising, but still nowhere near the flexibility needed for professional-level copying work. I think it will come, perhaps when they hit 2.0. I'll give it a hard look at that point. They seem to have an excellent team behind the software, and this sort of rethink in notation programs is long overdue.

Looks loads better. Still going to wait a while longer before jumping from sibelius.

Notation is something I do very little of, and I am still on Sibelius 6. So for me it isn't high on my list of purchases to make. But if/when I get to a point where I need notation on a regular basis, I am 90% sure I will get Dorico instead of upgrading Sibelius. I really dislike what Avid has done with it - and I know that Dorico is only going to get better.

After the chords are implemented (very good!) these are the next things I'm missing most now:
- realtime recording
- drum and slash-note notation

I'm sure it will be the killer notation app in the close future.

The chord and repeat functions already seem to be working much better than Sibelius!

OT but not completely, is there a simple /cheap program out there to do lead sheets and single parts or small scores, including realtime MIDI input and easy lyric entering?

Cool! Dl'd, gonna check it out. Thanks Anders!

OT squared - anyone remember Passport Memphis? Designed solely to create lead sheets quickly and painlessly. It was really pretty cool, and it was simple enough that I was able to keep it working through Windows 7. Alas it no longer works.

So I use ChordProManager, which is fine if you don't need any notation. And I use a very trimmed down template in Finale when I do.

Band in a Box is ok for fast lead sheets too. And a lot of standards tunes are already there...

Been using MuseScore myself when the need arises. It isn't as friendly or slick as it might be, but it seems pretty capable and the price is great. And, oh, look, a new version with some interesting new stuff.

My main problem with MuseScore is MIDI output capability. It requires obscure and difficult third party software to work.