Large Time Signatures for Film Scores

I agree with Bob, and the sentiments left by Daniel. I truly believe that Daniel, Paul, and the rest of the team are working very hard to ensure that things are being worked out efficiently, accurately, and properly. They have a hugely broad range of features that are needed and wanted. And they are tasked with the tremendously tedious job of making decisions about what can and cannot be tackled.

And as Daniel said, everyone thinks what’s most important is what they need. I, for instance, don’t need large time signatures. I need percussion stickings!! And I will tell you, percussion stickings are very important in the world of percussion arranging. However, I know that while many users will use percussion stickings, possibly the vast majority of users will not. As such, I am just going to have to wait for it to be implemented accurately and appropriately. Hopefully it comes soon. But I will not refuse to get in on the ground floor of this software, just because something I need isn’t available. I’ve seen the work of Daniel and the team at Sibelius, and I know he and the team listen.

Many years ago, with an early version of Sibelius (Sib 2 I believe), I was in a short-lived arranging project with a colleague and we began by inputting Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet. The key at the start caused one of the transposing instruments to be in the key of Cb. The original score rewrote the key of Cb into B (which makes more sense to me). Sibelius could not do that. I left a message on the Sibelius forum, Daniel responded. Daniel added it to the feature request. It was later implemented in the next version. From this interaction alone, I know that it will be very worth it getting in with what the team is working to achieve. And in time, it will do what people want it to do.

Robby

I plan to switch my career to transcribing music found on ancient Sumerian tombstones. I hope that Dorico is fully optimized for this notation – if it really is music notation – and that it will play back correctly according to Sumerian performance practice. I’m sure that success or failure is riding on this.

I think the bottom line here is: how many more million euros is Steinberg willing to spend on this project without revenue?

I hope I understood this correctly–

As Dorico is being released the 19th–next Wednesday–revenue will start coming in that day…

Thanks Bob

Even if Dorico had every possible feature on day one, I would have to postpone using it exclusively in place of my current notation program while I learned how to use it effectively. So I see this first release as a wonderful opportunity to start learning the program while the Team continues to expand its capabilities. For me, the release schedule sounds very forward-looking.

I’m afraid this will be unlikely in the initial release. Unfortunately there is a huge schism within the Sumerian tombstone community about the best way of handling rest positioning, and it’s just not practical for us to support all the options. It’s likely that we’ll wait for the appendix in the 2nd edition of Elaine Gould’s book before we can commit.

LOL - some of these posts really crack me up.

More seriously, I am with Claude / Daniel / Robby: everyone has their own little pet peeves. The first release won’t have all the feature I’d like to have, but based on everything I have seen and read so far, I am completely confident that in time Dorico will have everything to make me a happy little boy.

In terms of film scores, and in terms of prioritizing features, from my perspective the following features are closely related:

  1. large time signatures
  2. the ability to import video
  3. the ability to add hitpoints
  4. the ability to add timecode
  5. the ability to integrate third party VSTs with expression mapping etc.

Not everyone will agree on this; e.g. film orchestrators may not have a need for 2 through 5, as their job is to create playable scores and parts, they don’t care about how it sounds or whether it works with the picture; that’s the composer’s job.

And many film composers may not particularly care about being able to create score and parts that are playable by orchestra, as that’s the orchestrator’s job. (on a side note, many film composers are not classically trained and can’t even read notes; obviously that is not your market)

But that’s the situation right now. There are people who like to do everything, e.g., Alexandre Desplat, who composes / orchestrates / conducts everything himself. And he is not alone.

If you can create something that will cover all 5 bases you will create a Revolution.

My point was simply that I’m convinced that the Dorico team has a clear and pretty complete view of what features they want to add over the coming months/years, BUT the order in which these features are added must to a large extent be governed by how (and to whom) Dorico will be selling.

A huge amount of debate goes into all the decisions about the relative priorities, and none of the decisions are taken lightly. Every feature that goes in is at the cost of another that has to be pushed back. Our focus has been on getting the fundamentals right so that we can easily build on them to support new notation or playback features in the future. We are very aware of the requirements of different groups of users and that will guide our timetable for the future.

The only one of those that is a show stopper is 2. All the other ones have workarounds.

I do wish that the film community would get over this large time sig thing. Not only is it ugly, but can cause mistakes to be made by the conductor.

DG

This would not be a problem if you would simply add a native-born Sumerian to the development team. :sunglasses:

Well that would depend if they were a Big-endian or Little-endian Sumerian.

And I’ve never met a Sumerian without a time signature!

I met a Little Endian Sumerian on an Internet Carbon Dating site. She’s older than she looks, but but she can count time in Sexygesimal! :laughing: :unamused:

People have been squabbling about rests in Sumerian music for a long time. It’s nearly 1000 years since some exasperated monk, trying to make sense of the score of “Sumer is i-comen in” (which was obviously the fight song of some Sumerian national sports team or other) wrote

“Each [performer] should take notice of one of the long written rests, but ignore the others”…

There are MANY possible features out there, and NONE of them should be decided upon lightly.

Meeting a Little Endian Summerian is rare since according to the song there are only Ten Little Endian Boys.

As to your second comment, the use of large time signatures is ubiquitous in film music world. Ask any film orchestrator or conductor, and they will all confirm the same. It’s been a tradition for decades, and it’s not going to change. Big time signatures give an easy visual cue for conductors as to where the time signature changes. Remember that most all film tracks are recorded to click track, with players sight reading. It’s a fast paced environment. Nobody cares whether it looks beautiful or not, as long as it is easy to read and conduct, with zero mistakes.

I know, hence the comment.

I asked myself, and I agreed.

I know. Still sucks.

No, it’s for “conductors” who can’t really conduct and have no conducting training, and for film composers who can’t really read music. Much in the same way as scores are not transposed,. Anyone who really knows what they’re doing can read a transposed score. Not so, a lot of the film community.

Agreed, but large time sigs can actually lead to mistakes, because unless a conductor has the ability to read the whole score at once, they could be focused momentarily on a section that doesn’t actually have a time sig, because the stupid big one is elsewhere in the score.

Look I know nothing is going to change, but it doesn’t stop me grumbling. :wink:

DG

LOL -

I’m trying to work with the System, not fight it a la Don Quixote.

To illustrate my previous post, one of Hollywood’s most successful film orchestrators, Tim Davies, who also has his own big band, recently released his newest CD with original jazz / big band compositions.

In addition, he put up several score reductions on Youtube. This is absolutely wonderful stuff, and I can warmly recommend everyone to watch them all in full, but in the context of this discussion - large time signatures - notice the large time signatures in the youtube video I am reposting below. The score was created in Finale, playback is synced with the live recording as available on CD (obviously this is not Finale or any VST playback - this is a live band).

This guy is a really seasoned orchestrator, and conductor, and while you may disagree with his workflow, there is a reason why he does things this way. (and why he has been so successful and keeps getting asked back etc)