DAW's with Notation

Hi Ken, I understand this work is a bit old now, but I was going through the hall of fame and I found it. I absolutely love it, so very well done. It's amazing how you mix very melodic parts with some sharp dissonance sections. I also wanted to ask how did you create the score with respect to the mixture of instruments and effect. I am a novice in the area but generally I write my stuff in sibelius and play it with noteperformer. How would you go about in adding effects there? I understand this may be a complex topic, so maybe you can just point me in the rigth direction and I'll figure the rest out? 🙂 Thanks! And congratulation again, amazing work

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Valerio. I don't use Sibelius for playback,  only notation. And I doubt that you will find sound sets that have sound design and effects. I used synthesizers and samplers that were recorded into my digital audio workstation (DAW). There are some very good ones out there that are free or low priced. You should familiarize yourself with these. They are basically maulti-track tape recorders. Many composers use these in conjunction with notation and there are two approaches (that I know of). Importing a Sibelius score into a DAW as a MIDI file, or importing from a DAW into Sibelius. Both are extra work and both have benefits and drawbacks. Yes, it is complex. But it's doable and it's worth it. There are some good Sibelius forums on Facebook as well as forums for DAW's. Good luck!

Hi Ken, thank you very much.!As I got interested in the topic recently, I actually learnt how to use Ableton, but I am still not brave enough to actually incorporating it in my music! So if I understand you correctly, you notate all the parts (including the FX parts) in sibelius, then you import it in your DAW and associate every part to a different instrument (which supposedly is 'saved' in your DAW), and then you play it there... is it correct? 🙂

That's more or less how I do it when I do it.

Sometimes for acoustic instruments you're best off using the note performer or built in Sibelius playback. Unless you need a really high quality output for something like a video game track, in which case free/cheap isn't the best route to go anyway. Buuuut I can't afford pricey stuff either haha, so I understand. Believe it or not, Sibelius/Finale will actually do most of the stuff Ableton/other DAW's can do in terms of playback capabilities - return tracks for effects, loading your own sound libraries, etc.

The biggest reason to use a DAW like Ableton is for the electronic instruments and audio/midi effects that aren't available in notation software like Sibelius/Finale. I watched a lot of tutorials when I first started, if you're interested here's the guy I found most helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wt_NNYMwJY

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gustav

4 hours ago, Gustav Johnson said:

That's more or less how I do it when I do it.

Sometimes for acoustic instruments you're best off using the note performer or built in Sibelius playback. Unless you need a really high quality output for something like a video game track, in which case free/cheap isn't the best route to go anyway. Buuuut I can't afford pricey stuff either haha, so I understand. Believe it or not, Sibelius/Finale will actually do most of the stuff Ableton/other DAW's can do in terms of playback capabilities - return tracks for effects, loading your own sound libraries, etc.

The biggest reason to use a DAW like Ableton is for the electronic instruments and audio/midi effects that aren't available in notation software like Sibelius/Finale. I watched a lot of tutorials when I first started, if you're interested here's the guy I found most helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wt_NNYMwJY

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Gustav

 

Thank you so much! Great info, will follow that tutorial 🙂

I see that the thread was moved here. It is a deep topic. For your interests there is a lot more on youtube by people that use both as a matter of course. And the methods are many. One thing you might look into is Rewire. I, myself, don't use it.

I experimented with rewire aland ableton and it kind of works. Do you export the midi from sibelius and play it in your DAW, @Ken320? 

No. I compose directly by playing the parts myself into the DAW. In the rare times when the music is clear and intact in my head, I'll write it on paper first, old school, just so I won't forget it. I don't know Ableton at all, but most DAW's are track based MIDI sequencers. They are useful tools because they give immediate feedback of sound with endless possibilities, even if it's a standard orchestra. Once you have notes represented as MIDI you can import them into a notation app. At this point scoring it out is a formality because I already know how the music sounds and how it should look. For example, I know that the fifteen or so string tracks will need to be merged into the standard five staves for an orchestra.

If you can compose for an orchestra directly onto paper without having to sit at a piano, a notation app might be all you need. But if you compose at the piano, then the piano might as well be a computer. Make sense?

10 hours ago, Valerio said:

I experimented with rewire aland ableton and it kind of works. Do you export the midi from sibelius and play it in your DAW, @Ken320? 

 

I'm going to butt in on this conversation, if I may be so bold. I go about it the opposite way of @Ken320, although we both end up with great results (for his part, at least). I have a MIDI keyboard connected to my DAW (Kontakt 5 in this case) but I've found that inputting directly from the keyboard makes my part writing too unrealistic. So I compose everything as a score first in Sibelius. I usually save two files: one as an official score, and one that I can tweak for playback. Then I export each stave individually as an audio file (.wav on PC, .aiff on Mac), convert them to .mp3 files, and mix them in Reaper, which is a pretty cool mixer that's free to download. (There's a $60 one-time license fee after the 30-day trial. They don't make you pay it, though, so you can keep using it for free as long as your conscience lets you.)

It's not a perfect system, and I do wish Sibelius' reverb and pan/volume settings worked better so I wouldn't have to import everything into an external mixer. Oh well... the things we do for our craft!

Hey @Tónskáld thank you for your input! I will experiment and try to find my favourite workflow 🙂