+1 for the previous post.

There seems to be a kind of minor war going on between users of DAWS vs. users of Notation. In some ways this is similar to the tension that sometimes exists between those who read music and those who do not. As if there is a right way vs. a wrong way to do it. Let's remember first of all that people made music first, and wrote it down later - much later. We were no doubt making music before we even had written language, for that matter. Music is, first and foremost, sound. It doesn't require any tools at all to produce. You can just sing. Or do it in your head (but then only you would hear it). Everything beyond that is simply a tool. This includes instruments, notation and computers. If a tool helps you make music, that's all that matters. Whatever you need for whatever it is you do, that is the right thing. And that can differ for different people, even if they are doing the same thing. A hobbyist such as me can use either notation or a daw, either will work. I choose a daw, since I don't need to worry about publishers or performers. So I can concentrate on the sound more. This is helpful for me because I can get better feedback from a daw, because it produces better sound. And since I'm unlikely to have my music performed, it's a way for others to hear it as well. However, I do read music, and would like to produce better scores than I have in the past, if only for posterity (you never know, somebody may get the crazy idea to actually perform my stuff somewhere down the road). That is where a notation program would be helpful. I plan to try exporting my stuff to Musescore soon (I'm waiting until I finish my current project, otherwise it will be an excuse to procrastinate -I know myself too well). I don't expect Sonar to incorporate the scoring capabilities of Finale. But the fixes previously noted would be doable and helpful. It would also position Cakewalk to compete better, as other daws are going to be doing this. Reaper is working on it, and we all expect Studio One at some point to have it. As Jerry has pointed out, Sonar's staff view is superior in many ways to DP's or Cubase's. The scrolling especially comes to mind. When working on my piece, which is about 240 measures, I can, say, find a particular spot in the harp part by scrolling the entire piece until I see the figures I'm looking for. I can do this almost instantly. That is powerful. It means you can indeed compose in a daw. And I have come up with wonderful ideas (to me anyway) by banging away on my midi keyboard. Sometimes even accidents have triggered entirely new and rewarding passages. I can compose in my head if I want to; I can even "play" Debussy's La Mer (all three movements) in my head. But I agree with Jerry that it's risky to divorce yourself from physical media. He's right, music is a creation of the whole being. The efferent and afferent nerves both come into play. Sensation, perception, a sense of aesthetics, yes; but also acoustics, the overtone series, the unpredictable effect of combining instruments (aka orchestration) is also important. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Only what works. And the more tools you have, the better. In the end, the result is all that matters. No one cares how you got there.

What I'm gathering from this thread (and agree whole-heartedly with) is that there is a particular pain point whenever a user wants to work on a piece in both a notation-centered way and a production-centered way. Currently, the two don't mesh well and whoever figures it out first will make a mint (paraphrasing what has already been said.) Notation software vendors have been making attempts for years to produce a more realistic sound from scores. But for professional quality sound you just need a DAW. DAW's have rudimentary notation capability at best. I think what we are really after is a perfect bridge that will allow us to go back and forth a lot easier than it is now. Something like a two lane structure to replace the rope bridge we are using to cross this chasm with currently. Once we have that maybe it can be upgraded to a superhighway. For now, just don't cut our rope.

brentboylan
What I'm gathering from this thread (and agree whole-heartedly with) is that there is a particular pain point whenever a user wants to work on a piece in both a notation-centered way and a production-centered way. Currently, the two don't mesh well and whoever figures it out first will make a mint (paraphrasing what has already been said.) Notation software vendors have been making attempts for years to produce a more realistic sound from scores. But for professional quality sound you just need a DAW. DAW's have rudimentary notation capability at best. I think what we are really after is a perfect bridge that will allow us to go back and forth a lot easier than it is now. Something like a two lane structure to replace the rope bridge we are using to cross this chasm with currently. Once we have that maybe it can be upgraded to a superhighway. For now, just don't cut our rope.

More accurately - for now - just rebuild the rope bridge (of previous versions).

brentboylan
Notation software vendors have been making attempts for years to produce a more realistic sound from scores. But for professional quality sound you just need a DAW. DAW's have rudimentary notation capability at best. I think what we are really after is a perfect bridge that will allow us to go back and forth a lot easier than it is now.

This explains my situation perfectly.  I feel there is a gigantic disconnect.  Calling the Sonar notation "rudimentary" is to be extremely generous.  It is what it is, and some people find it useful.  That's OK.  But it isn't anything like even the most basic music notation capability.  I doubt anybody who needs to produce professional-quality sheet music would ever find that acceptable, and surely Cakewalk never intended it to be so.There are good notation products out there.  The bridge is the piece that is missing.
 
Given the intense resistance to that simple proposition here on the forum and given that virtually all the enhancements in Sonar Platinum are nowhere near this "bridge", I think it is fair to say nobody should expect that bridge to come from Cakewalk, and I don't.  I do get some other value from Sonar unrelated to notation-based projects, so I will probably continue paying for Platinum until I see at least some hints of bridge construction elsewhere.

cparmerlee

brentboylan
Notation software vendors have been making attempts for years to produce a more realistic sound from scores. But for professional quality sound you just need a DAW. DAW's have rudimentary notation capability at best. I think what we are really after is a perfect bridge that will allow us to go back and forth a lot easier than it is now.

This explains my situation perfectly.  I feel there is a gigantic disconnect.  Calling the Sonar notation "rudimentary" is to be extremely generous.  It is what it is, and some people find it useful.  That's OK.  But it isn't anything like even the most basic music notation capability.  I doubt anybody who needs to produce professional-quality sheet music would ever find that acceptable, and surely Cakewalk never intended it to be so.There are good notation products out there.  The bridge is the piece that is missing.
 
Given the intense resistance to that simple proposition here on the forum and given that virtually all the enhancements in Sonar Platinum are nowhere near this "bridge", I think it is fair to say nobody should expect that bridge to come from Cakewalk, and I don't.  I do get some other value from Sonar unrelated to notation-based projects, so I will probably continue paying for Platinum until I see at least some hints of bridge construction elsewhere.

The above quote tells more about the poster's understanding than it does about Sonar's notation.   A common misunderstanding, which this poster seems to demonstrate, is that the notation editor of a DAW has the same, or should have the same, function as a specialized notation program.  It does not.  The notation editor of a DAW is first and foremost a MIDI editor, it is a composition tool, not a device to create printed, professional quality scores.  He says:
 
"...it isn't anything like even the most basic music notation capability."
 
If the capacity to enter notes on a staff, change their pitch, duration, attack time, release time, velocity, volume, articulation and patch, as well as copy, paste, invert, transpose whole sections, create crescendos and decrescendos, change tempos, use multiple meters, asymmetrical meters and orchestrate isn't "basic" I don't know what is.  If a musician cannot invent complex, polyphonic music with Sonar's staff view, that says more about that musician's skill level than it does about Sonar.   The one thing that I don't do with Sonar' notation is print out a finished score.  I've never expected that from a DAW, since 1988 I've used a dedicated notation program for that, first SCORE, now Sibelius.  
 
It's not so dissimilar from the time when composers wrote out their compositions by hand, in pencil or ink, and afterwards, plates were made and the music was engraved and published, an act entirely separate from the creative act of composition.   When I import an SMF into Sibelius to create the score, I am entirely focused on the written score, because the composition, arranging and orchestrating has already been done.  It's also a good time to find mistakes and omissions.  
 
I'm not trying to make cparmerlee wrong or to win an argument for the sake of winning.   I think those who use a DAW to create a "MIDI mockup", which it sounds like he does, and who notate their music for ensembles to play, are naturally going to work differently than I do.  My aim is to create recordings of my compositions that have the best digital performance values I am capable of achieving, I put all of my efforts into creating a finished product, the recording, not as a "mockup" (I hate that term it sounds so dismissive) but as an end in itself.  This might explain the difference in approach.
 
JG
www.jerrygerber.com
 
 

Here's what I would be happy with: Cakewalk improves staff view so that it represents what I have done muscially in a minimally correct manner. So it sounds the way I want, AND also displays the notes correctly. so that, when I export it into a notation program, it is read correctly, and I can get on with bringing the score up to whatever standard I need. That standard determining whether I use Finale or Musescore, for example. As a hobbyist, the latter will probably work for me. For Jarry and cparmarlee, they need the pro software. I think Sonar is pretty close to this already. Just take care of the defects, and make it user-friendly for the notation programs. Then I think everyone will be happy. sure, it would be nice if Sonar could be that DAW which reaches Mt. Everest, and successfully merges daw with true notation. But I could live with just doing what I've suggested here, which is a whole lot more likely.

jsg
I put all of my efforts into creating a finished product, the recording, not as a "mockup" (I hate that term it sounds so dismissive) but as an end in itself.  This might explain the difference in approach.

What you call a mock-up, I would refer to as a reasonably life-like rendering of the publishable sheet music, which can serve the purpose of a live recording session at a far lower cost.  And said realism can also assist the arranger in identifying any defects in the product BEFORE publication and/or before paid musicians see it in the first rehearsal.
 
If one isn't engaged in that kind of work, then one probably will find my point of view foreign.  I get that.  But I can assure you that a great many people work exactly as I have described.  This is a big enough market that some vendors will address "the bridge" eventually.  May or may not be Cakewalk.  I like Cakewalk, and have invested a lot of time in learning SONAR, so I selfishly want to see Cakewalk be a leader in this convergence, but it seems that is not in the cards.
 
This does affect my spending on DAW-related things.  Going forward, I will be very careful to spend money only on technologies (effects, instruments and other tools) that I can take with me to another DAW sometime in the future when this convergence path becomes a bit more clear.

cparmerlee
But I can assure you that a great many people work exactly as I have described.  This is a big enough market that some vendors will address "the bridge" eventually.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any stats on the size of this market...something around which one could base a business plan? Manufacturers who have no choice but to treat product development as a business can't afford to rely on anecdotal evidence. If there are a million potential users, and you could be reasonably certain that 5% would actually buy and support the software, that could be enough to justify the development costs.
 

Anderton

cparmerlee
But I can assure you that a great many people work exactly as I have described.  This is a big enough market that some vendors will address "the bridge" eventually.

Just out of curiosity, do you have any stats on the size of this market...something around which one could base a business plan?

If I were in Gibson's marketing department, I would do it this way.
 
Estimate 1
Get estimates of the number of active users for Finale, Sibelius, Notion, Muscscore, and any other professional-grade notation system that has a substantial user base.
 
I would then develop estimates of the percentage of those users who have some experience with any DAW, realizing this percentage will only increase over time.  Multiplying those together gives you a primary target market size.
 
From there, I would look at the possible levels of integration.  The number of actual paying customers will be a function of how seamless the integration is and how much improvement comes from this integration.
 
That should give a target with a decent degree of confidence.  There will not be perfect numbers available, but there never are in marketing.  I would attempt to validate this number by approaching from different angles:
 
Estimate 2
 
Look at the publishing houses.  It should be possible to estimate the number of people who are publishing music regularly.  If you look at the big ones like Pepper et al, you will find that they strongly prefer to have MP3s included with the submission.  The composers and arrangers on those sites will all be strong candidates for this convergence.
 
You can then look at a hierarchy of people who are using notation actively but have less demanding circumstances.  This would include, for example, thousands of music directors in churches, theaters and anywhere else live musicians are used.  If the convergence is highly seamless, these will be second-tier candidates.
 
Estimate 3
 
Identify the major universities that have significant music technology programs.  This number is going up every year.  One can estimate the number of graduates annually from these programs.  Most of them would be strong candidates for this convergence because music technology programs will almost always include both notation and DAW.  And these are the opinion leaders for the next generation of customers.
 
If you are looking for an exact number, I can't give you that, and marketing never produces exact numbers when predicting the size of a target market.  But the "hot spot" would be several thousand very active professionals, and if the solution is easy enough to use, then the target market can expand to tens of thousands of people who routinely work in music notation.