Film Scoring Features

darrob · July 16, 2016, 1:10am

Peter Roos:

ReWire will keep Dorico in sync with the DAW program, but the core issue imo is the ability to have a great degree of control over playback within one system, i.e., Dorico; so being able to choose which VST to use, to tweak things like velocity / expression / mod wheel etc. / tempo, not in a separate DAW program, but in Dorico. As far as I understand it, that will be happening, not as sophisticated and detailed as in e.g. Cubase, but certainly on a basic level; with the ability to create certain preferred “default” settings where, for example, dynamic hairpins can be translated into the correct behavior of whatever VST you are using.

If you are able to do all of that in one program, it will save a lot of time, and you end up with (a) a nicely engraved score that (b) gives good enough playback for a midi mock-up. If the cues are approved then you can take it from there by further tweaking the playback in a sequencing program if necessary, and preparing for a live recording session by adding film scoring engraving things like big time signatures etc. (if you haven’t set those up from scratch already).

I Agree that this is where the emphisis should go while developing Dorico. Getting a great looking score, and then getting a great deal of control over playback, based on how the score is written.

Adding the additional features of Cubase into Dorico risks Dorico becoming ‘bloatware’, doing a decent job of a lot of things related to scoring and video editing but not really excelling at anything. If, however, time is spent on getting decent rewire integration between Dorico and Cubase, you can treat the two programs as one efficient production system. In essence treat Cubase as the “Film tab” discussed earlier

(edit)
The key IMO will be Dorico’s ability to export its tempo/time signature map into Cubase’s internal tempo envelope format so as to have the projects line up nicely and work seamlessly.

In conclusion, an analogy

You do not give a film/movie to the orchestra and task the conductor to get all audio associated with the production into line. Rather, you bring the orchestra and conductor into the studio to work with the audio/visual people instead.

Cheers…