Composing at the sequencer or notation software
19/09/19 23:01 Filed in: Creative Work
If you are like, a considerable amount of time is spent, before even touching a key, to decide if the project has to be done in a sequencer/DAW software, or a score notation program. If you can’t read written music, there is only a choice. If you can, you are falling between two stools, torn between two possible choices.
In general, I tend to go for a sequencer when I have to write for visual media, or to create a credible mockup of classical music. If I have to compose something in a style that implies sophisticate notation craft, I go for the notation software. If you are like me, you know that a written page of music is something more than music – it is an art in itself, where the composed symbols on the page translate into performed music, and are never just a mere transcription of resounding music.
There are situations where the choice continues to be hard. Hybrid scores, for example, might require so much realtime control, that notation software may lack the needed tools. Sibelius, for example, allows for MIDI controls written over the score. Handy, if all you have to do is to send an articulation switch here and there. Not much so, if you have to control the hectic filter opening or a synthesizer.
Dorico seems to promise to be the best of both worlds. As a notation program, it thinks are a contemporary composer does, with an innate flexibility in recording, transcription, separate editing of the two parallel graphic and performance layers. And then actual playback. As a sequencer, it has a clever piano roll page, where you can access notes as two overlapping layers (graphic; performance), running next to lines representing MIDI controllers and a lane with articulation changes.
Still, I feel that a sequencer will continue to be my preferred tool to model sound as clay; and notation software will mostly serve for art music, where either real performers are involved, or the graphic art is simply too important to leave it to a bare Score page in software conceived for noisier music.
In general, I tend to go for a sequencer when I have to write for visual media, or to create a credible mockup of classical music. If I have to compose something in a style that implies sophisticate notation craft, I go for the notation software. If you are like me, you know that a written page of music is something more than music – it is an art in itself, where the composed symbols on the page translate into performed music, and are never just a mere transcription of resounding music.
There are situations where the choice continues to be hard. Hybrid scores, for example, might require so much realtime control, that notation software may lack the needed tools. Sibelius, for example, allows for MIDI controls written over the score. Handy, if all you have to do is to send an articulation switch here and there. Not much so, if you have to control the hectic filter opening or a synthesizer.
Dorico seems to promise to be the best of both worlds. As a notation program, it thinks are a contemporary composer does, with an innate flexibility in recording, transcription, separate editing of the two parallel graphic and performance layers. And then actual playback. As a sequencer, it has a clever piano roll page, where you can access notes as two overlapping layers (graphic; performance), running next to lines representing MIDI controllers and a lane with articulation changes.
Still, I feel that a sequencer will continue to be my preferred tool to model sound as clay; and notation software will mostly serve for art music, where either real performers are involved, or the graphic art is simply too important to leave it to a bare Score page in software conceived for noisier music.