cparmerlee

FZ1
As I see it its only a matter of time before the Integration between Notion and Studio One will make it impossible to resist for those users who need notation

Yes, we can import as MIDI but that is a one-time, one-way thing and frankly a real PITA.  What we need is more active integration that allows us to continue to make changes in the notated score and have those automatically reflected in our DAW realization.  It is a work flow thing. 
 
Let me put it another way.  In my circle of musician friends, there are 10 people frequently using notation programs for every one that regularly uses a DAW.  That may not be indicative of the market as a whole, but there are a lot of people using notation programs, and some percent of them would find it really cool to be able to easily render (and fine tune) their works in a DAW.

 
I don't find exporting a SMF type 1 into Sibelius from Sonar a PITA at all.  It's easy.  Of course the score has to cleaned up, slurs, tempo marks, dynamic marks, have to be added, but this has to be done anyways even if you start a score from scratch.   When I import from Sonar, the tied, dotted and nested triplets get displayed correctly in Sibelius.
 
Also, Sonar is a production tool, you can make actual recordings with it, record and edit audio, etc.  If all of your friends are using a notation program instead of a DAW they're not making recordings or dealing with audio, at least not in Sibelius or Finale.  If one is working in the world of electronic music, a notation program won't be much help, if one is working with live players and not making recordings, a notation program is all you need.
JG
http://www.jerrygerber.com
 

The solution is obvious - do all of your composition & arranging in Sonar.
 
Why exactly are you using Finale?
 
Genuine question: you don't mention printing out parts or anything else that needs a dedicated notation program

Bristol_Jonesey
Why exactly are you using Finale?

Because I am being paid for publication-quality scores.  What comes out of Sonar is the most primitive stuff that wouldn't be acceptable to any client or publisher.  Have you ever used a real notation program?

I am but a hobbit myself...

cparmerlee

Bristol_Jonesey
Why exactly are you using Finale?

Because I am being paid for publication-quality scores.  What comes out of Sonar is the most primitive stuff that wouldn't be acceptable to any client or publisher.  Have you ever used a real notation program?

So, my point being, why not do all the hard stuff - composing, arranging, editing etc in Sonar. Then, when you've finished - dump it out into Finale for publication.
 
To my mind it's a very viable workaround/solution.

Not sure how many people do this, but I use the Staff View to compose, then I add lyrics, and then i use the lyric view to teach singers to song or to use as a teleprompter during a session.  I know we are talking Staff View, but i think these two are pretty related.

jsg
You appear to be confusing the role of notation in a DAW with the role of notation in a dedicated notation program.  What you're talking about is publish-quality scores vs. a good midi editor. 

With no offense intended, sez who?  That is one opinion about one way to use the technology.  I do not accept that as the "right" or "proper" or even "expected" use of the technology.  There is nothing wrong with composing in a DAW, and if the parts that come out of that are good enough for your purposes, that's OK with me.  They aren't good enough for my purposes, and my work flow starts from notation.  I will not accept the subtle implication that I am doing it backwards.
 

jsg
Most professional music publishers use Sibelius or SCORE, not Finale. 

 
Please provide a citation that supports that point.  As of 10 years ago, most publishing houses accepted submissions only in Finale.  In the last decade, they have become more open to Sibelius.  But I haven't had a single client ask me for a product in Sibelius, Finale is frequently expected.  Either way, that doesn't change anything.  We have all the same issues with Sibelius.  Go back to my original post and replace every instance of "Finale" with "Sibelius" and it is exactly the same story.

cparmerlee

Bristol_Jonesey

cparmerlee

Bristol_Jonesey
Why exactly are you using Finale?

Because I am being paid for publication-quality scores.  What comes out of Sonar is the most primitive stuff that wouldn't be acceptable to any client or publisher.  Have you ever used a real notation program?

So, my point being, why not do all the hard stuff - composing, arranging, editing etc in Sonar. Then, when you've finished - dump it out into Finale for publication.
 
To my mind it's a very viable workaround/solution.

Because I compose in notation.  I can do that 10 times faster than hacking away at a MIDI keyboard until it sounds right, then going back in and trying to make the score usable.  Universities still teach orchestration using music notation.
 
Let me give you an example of a project. A client found a score at the Smithsonian and decided they wanted to present that piece, It was in the composer's original hand.  But they wanted to add some new sections to the piece, and they wanted to expand the orchestration for a full symphony orchestra including Celeste, pedal harp, thicker woodwinds, and various percussion that was never in the original.
 
The obvious way to start was to recreate the composer's original score, then carefully add the new elements, making sure to keep the essence of the piece.  I guess a person could do this inside a DAW, but why would anybody do that?  That would be insane.  It would be extraordinarily tedious to make sure I hadn't inadvertently altered any of the original score.

"Using a DAW isn't the same thing as "hacking away at a MIDI keyboard", interesting choice of words...as though playing a keyboard, MIDI or not is somehow not involved in serious composing.  Stravinsky detected and rebelled against this unhealthy idea that the mind can conceive what the hands cannot play, so therefore the superior way to compose is to despise the fingers and see them as no use in composition.  I think that's an immature attitude, because really, its through the body and arms, hands and fingers that we feel music, and without that holistic feeling of rhythm, meter, strong and weak beats, etc. I actually doubt music can rise above the mediocre, regardless of superior craft and/or training.  It's too unnatural, too disembodied with the stuff of life.  I call this the pseudo-academic bias.  That being said, one doesn't necessarily sit at a keyboard and play into the DAW.  That's one way to do it, and I think the best way, if, say, you're constructing a blues tune arrangement.  But one can, if one chooses to, sit at the DAW and simply compose.  Sequence and Compose.  just like sitting at the desk writing in a manuscript book, only with a mouse and sound.  And of course, you're arranging and orchestrating as you go in any style, order and concept you imagine. With a DAW you can hear the music played over a far wider choice of libraries than with a specialized notation program like you use.  It doesn't sound like you've learned the value of a DAW yet.  Maybe that's not your path, who am I to judge?
 
"Why would anybody do that?"  (referring to DAWs and arranging and composition)
I think I answered that.
 
JG

cparmerlee

jsg
No professionals use a graphics program for recording, editing audio, sequencing MIDI or any other activity that involves making a recording. 

By "graphics program," I presume that is intended to be a perjorative meaning traditional European notation systems.
 
How do you think John Williams works?  Danny Elfman?  And the others who score for the big movies?  I don't know them personally.  I suppose it is possible that some of them try some ideas from time to time on a DAW, but they are scoring for the top studio musicians in the world.  These are big orchestras that have very high-cost sessions.  The composers (their assistants actually) must produce high quality scores.  I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that they work primarily within the realm of traditional notation unless they are specifically composing for a unique synthesizer sound.  A friend of mine is deep into the movie scoring program at USC (that's the program that produces most of the successful Hollywood writers) and I can assure you that he works heavily in notation.  He probably also uses DAWs, and would undoubtedly benefit from the kind of time-saving integrations I have described.
 
I think it is really a bit odd for you to insist that everyone must work the way you work.  I certainly don't insist that you work principally in notation.  If you can accomplish your goals entirely within the DAW, good for you.  I cannot.
 

"By "graphics program," I presume that is intended to be a perjorative meaning traditional European notation systems."
 
Wrong again.  There is no intention to be pejorative.  I have the deepest respect for the evolution of Western music notation and understand its power as a symbolic musical language.  Why would I be pejorative toward something I use and teach every day?   Makes absolutely no sense at all.
 
"I think it is really a bit odd for you to insist that everyone must work the way you work.  I certainly don't insist that you work principally in notation.  If you can accomplish your goals entirely within the DAW, good for you.  I cannot."    
 
Man, you are really out there. . I could care less about the way "everyone" works. That's not my concern.  You seem to have this oddball idea that those who work in a DAW don't use notation.  I advise you to drop the idea as it is a false idea.  I use Sibelius as well as Sonar and I work in notation every day, composing in Sonar's notation editor.  Do yourself a favor a learn at least a little about DAWS, please.
 
Since my role models are definitely not film composers, I don't pay attention to how John Williams or anyone else in Hollywood works.  If you feel you're expressing yourself clearly and honestly, we'd probably both be better off concluding this conversation as little of what you are saying makes any sense to me.  I detect you like to argue, but I have no idea what you are actually arguing about.  Your original post complained about the difficulty of making changes in Finale and then having to redo your work in Sonar.  People have made suggestions but you end up arguing with them.  Honestly, I have no idea what you should or should not do to speed up your workflow.  I hope you realize you're not the only professional musician around this forum because the tone of your posts suggests you think you are.
 
JG
http://www.jerrygerber.com
 
 
 
 

A small note from one of the "silent" majority.
 
FWIW, I am quite comfortable composing/arranging in traditional notation style and appreciate having some level of notation included in Sonar. I use it for "MIDI editing" as well as working out "dynamic arrangements" when tracking live musicians with Sonar. Their training/musicianship is often much more excellent than their English/engineering skills and it helps to present parts in the traditional format. I also find it quite useful to document guitar voicings in arrangements.
 
I prefer core stability over competing with existing full fledged notation programs. But as the platform becomes more and more stable, it's features such as these that will reinforce the overall value of Sonar. 
 
I suppose "notation fixes" cannot be separated from "work flow" but I tend to support what I assume is the intent of the OP (and Sidroe), which is generate some visibility/support for a few improvements. I believe the potential exists for an "80% benefit for a 20% investment". This looks like as good a place as any to define the 20% improvements that will be appreciated by 80% of the user base. I can only hope this thread might capture the insights and suggestions based on the more experienced/traditional composers/arrangers in addition to those who only "hack" at it.
 
So ...
+1 for an original poster head count
+1 for the suggested improvements
+1 for the original intent of the thread

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.

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).

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
 
 

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.

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.