DAWs and Notation software: Where is the Holy Grail?

By Stephen on October 29, 2011 | Category: Blog | Comments Off

Notation and DAW software, working together. Still waiting for the dream to become a reality...

I came across this excellent post today by media composer Marius Masalar:

http://mathazzar.posterous.com/daws-vs-notation-software-why-theres-no-conte

It really got me thinking because here was another composer who seemed to be encountering the same challenges I do when working between different digital audio and music notation applications in writing music. (By the way, once you’ve read my post, go read his, and also check out some of his music at http://mathazzar.com.)

I am a (mostly) pencil and paper type of composer, who worked using Finale for many years until I switched to Sibelius back in version 4, which was 2003 or thereabouts. I also have the NOTION 3 program, and have spent a lot of time learning the hell out of all three of them, so I feel pretty qualified to discuss their capabilities and limitations.

I also really dig digital audio and digital audio workstation (DAW) programs like Digital Performer, Cubase, MetaSynth, etc. because of the level of flexibility, power, and control they offer over the final sound of your electronic composition (not to mention their abilities to record and mix audio as well as realize MIDI). Like notation programs, I own several, and of them I know Digital Performer very well, and Cubase and Pro Tools fairly well…again, well enough to discuss the limitations that I’ve run into as they apply to my workflow as a composer.

Finally, I’m also quite the “sample fiend” in that I love all of the excellent sample libraries available from third party developers like Native Instruments, East West, Cinesamples, Sonokinetic, ProjectSAM, etc. I grab these for my collection whenever my budget allows—many companies offer staggeringly realistic emulations of modern (and exotic!) acoustic instruments, but you really need to use them in a DAW to get the maximum level of power and detail from them.

So with all of this software and variety of sounds at my disposal, how does one go about actually writing music? Which program do I use to write? Can I use both? How do the sounds fit into the workflow? It’s really amazing how much the technology can actually get in the way.

Since I love DAWs and sample libraries so much, why don’t I just compose entirely in one of those programs? Because I’m a pencil and paper guy, and I have this little thing with actually seeing and manipulating the pitches, rhythms, and textures in my score, be it hard copy or virtual paper. I’m trained as a classical composer, and although I totally get MIDI events, piano rolls, channels and tracks, and what not — I think about music in terms of musical notation and the image of the entire page of score. The notation is part of how I compose, and for what should be obvious reasons, notation programs—since they in part emulate pencil and paper—lend themselves to this approach.

But almost all DAWs have a notation view built into the program. Problem is, THEY ALL SUCK. Sorry, there it is. Every one of them—Digital Performer, Cubase, Logic, Pro Tools—don’t even come close to the capabilities of Sibelius or Finale. Some of these DAWs actually have fairly impressive feature sets built into their notation views, but all of them still are terrible because they’re unintuitive and time-intensive to use. One of the great advantages in a notation program is that you can work fast and, for the most part, intuitively. I learned Finale and especially Sibelius without hardly touching the instruction manual. The notation views in DAWs almost require a college-credit course and exhaustive consultation of the manual just to perform some of the most basic functions of the notation programs. And let’s not even start on the user interfaces; some of them (ahem, Cubase and Digital Performer…) still look like they came straight out of an early 1990s version of their software.

As Masalar says in his post:

“…in the sequencing world, it’s worth noting that developers have mostly acknowledged the inferiority of their notation views. Rather than trying to get them to compete with Finale or Sibelius, they simply work on making sure that they’re as seamlessly integrated as possible so that the basic functionality they have is at least perfectly implemented and streamlined.”

On the other hand, why not write just in the notation program? That is what I usually do, and it works great for, well, notation. But not so much for playback. Granted, notation software developers have taken great pains to improve the playback abilities of their programs, but as Masalar suggests, this is probably a waste of effort since the level of control a notation app offers will never rival that of a DAW. Another issue is simple stability. Sibelius and Finale both now have the ability to host third party sample libraries and the software players that run them, but both programs love to crash under any kind of intensive audio playback. Ostensibly, this should be much better in Sibelius 7, which is now a 64-bit application, but for me at least it’s been a giant crash fest, even after several small updates. DAWs are much more reliable under a heavy load.

Now for those who might be “purists,” and feel that the playback shouldn’t matter, remember that not everyone is writing for live players all the time anymore; this is, after all, the digital age. Lots of composers in media are expected to produce production-quality music using only their computers. The ability to create realistic “mock-ups” of acoustic instruments has become a skill, perhaps even an art, in and of itself. Also, if you work only in the notation app, you lose the ability to record and integrate recorded audio into your compositions, which for me is one of the most promising directions of new music. In a DAW you are able to mix multiple streams of MIDI data—realized as synthesized or sampled sounds—with multiple streams of audio material—prerecorded loops, live players, or your own sound design creations—in an essentially limitless variety of combinations.

It has nothing to do with orchestration or inner hearing, either. I know perfectly well how to put a piece of music together and how to orchestrate it, with or without the sounds. Go listen to some of my music on the Audio page if you have doubts. (Come to think of it, go listen to some of my music even if you don’t!

So then, if you’re like me, you want a solution that allows you to write in the notation view, and have the DAW take care of the playback. The notation software takes care of notation, and the DAW handles all of the audio-related chores. Each program handles what it is best at doing—the hot side stays hot and the cold side stays cold, or however the old McDonald’s commercial goes (anybody remember the McDLT? Anyone? Am I dating myself a bit now, or just demonstrating what a geek I am?).

But, you also know what a pain in the rear it is to try to get the two different types of programs—notation and DAW—to interface and play nice together.

There are ways to do it, but they are anything but easy—fraught with digital peril and frustrating enough to make you want to bang your head against a cement wall. One can use third party “virtual MIDI cable” programs to pass MIDI from notation app to DAW, but the quality of these and ease of use seems to vary considerably—and in my experience, the MIDI data often gets tripped up, which results in “stuck notes,” pitches that sound but then refuse to be silenced. You then often have to hit a “MIDI panic” button or turn the audio engine off and then on again to get them to stop—and that doesn’t always work. Ask about these problems on any DAW or notation company’s forum and they will usually (a) ignore you, (b) deny that the problem exists, or (c) point at the other piece of software and say it’s that developer’s fault. Sometimes they try to help, but after a certain point revert to (c) above. The one thing they never seem to do is look into the problem and work together with the other developer to fix it.

A way to do it which seems to have promise is through the inter application protocol called “ReWire,” which allows two audio apps (provided the developer has programmed the feature into their app) to sync playback and pass audio and MIDI data back and forth, with one program acting as the “Master” and the other (or more than one) as the “Slave.” Sibelius has offered the ability to sync to a DAW via ReWire support beginning with version 6, but the integration is basic (the ReWire spec allows for 256 channels of audio and 4080 MIDI channels between two ReWired apps, but Sibelius allows only for two channels of audio, and no MIDI) and flawed in my opinion, since Sibelius also comes with a function to “fix” or “clean up” the ReWire protocol should it “break.”

Since Sibelius also doesn’t have MIDI functionality in its ReWire implementation, the only way to get MIDI from Sibelius to a DAW is by using the virtual MIDI cabling I described above. Enter those problems and others that specific DAWs offer up when trying to get the MIDI into the program.

What is needed is a reliable and dare I say—standard!—way of getting the two types of programs to interface and work together. Seamlessly. Without wasting time trying to make the tech work. Like Apple (at the risk of being labeled a fanboy), it needs to “just work.”

Masalar, in his post, makes similar arguments (which is what prompted my rant). He also (rightly, I believe) advocates that each type of software, notation and DAW, should stick with doing what it does best: notation vs. digital audio. But there must be a way to work between the two:

“…for those more advanced users who, like myself, may need a mock-up and and an engraved score for musicians, implement a system that allows for seamless integration between the notation program and the sequencer. Make friends with a sequencer developer and work out some sort of bridge that allows the notation program to serve as an integrated notation view for the DAW, so you can write in the notes and produce a printable score, and then seamlessly flip over into the DAW and exercise the power of that program to create a quality mock-up of the score with all the advanced libraries and synths at your disposal.

“[The] biggest problem is getting from one to the other. They do their writing in one and must sequence in the other, so having a method of integrating the two would save them the unnecessary step of exporting/importing a MIDI, or re-entering the notes, or otherwise trying to reconcile the two environments. Until everything can be successfully built into one program…the focus should be on consolidating the separate functions that these two groups offer and making working between the two as easy as possible.” [my emphasis]

What Masalar has just described is no less than the HOLY GRAIL of notation and sequencer programs. So when is it going to happen? Surely Masalar and I are not alone. Surely there is a market for this—an untapped constituency of composers who write in the traditional manner but also want their “mock-ups” to sound as realistic as possible? Composers who are ready to lay down the cash to the first company who does this AND gets it right?

There have been some forays into trying to get this integration done. Avid, the parent company of Pro Tools, acquired Sibelius a few years ago, and when Sibelius-esque notation showed up in Pro Tools 8, I really thought this was the beginning—that the Grail was finally going to be found. I believed it enough that I invested in Pro Tools 8, waiting for this to become a reality in a later version. But the notation in Pro Tools, even though it LOOKS like Sibelius, still ACTS like the usual DAW notation, and two versions later (Pro Tools 10 was just released last week), I’m still waiting. The integration has gone no further than a “Send to Sibelius” feature in Pro Tools, which is basically a glorified MIDI data dump.

Notion Music’s NOTION3 has taken some very interesting steps down the road toward total integration, but has a long, long way to go. It probably boasts the best integrated playback of any notation software—it’s own built-in sounds are pretty dang good—better than those in Finale and the new sound library in Sibelius 7 in many instances. It also can function as a ReWire “Master,” which could be very advantageous if there were a suitable “Slave” program to run with it (most DAWs will only run as ReWire Masters, not Slaves—ones that do, such as Ableton Live, do not permit you to use third-party instruments when in ReWire slave mode) and if it worked reliably, which it doesn’t. NOTION has a really good implementation of a professional mixing board, and offers transparent integration with a few third-party sound libraries. But trying to use any other library is rather difficult because you run up against the limitations of MIDI support that the program offers. And did I mention that the notation features have a LONG way to go when compared to Sibelius or Finale? Much better than a DAW’s notation set, but way short of the power and flexibility of the ultra-powerful notation apps.

So, to sum up all of this ranting—should we have this functionality between DAWs and notation software? Um, yes please. Somebody get it done already. There is money in my bank account ready and waiting to go to the first developer who makes this happen RIGHT.