# Composition/orchestration in DAW vs notation program - are we seeing the same things?



## renochew (Dec 2, 2012)

Hi, most teacher, including mine, teach music using traditional notation, and I start learning and doing my composition with Finale/Reaper, but working with two software and making them communicating well sometimes drive me nuts. 

But the fact is I find myself more and more dependent on notation to get the intuition of what the sounds like. I am just wondering if doing composition in traditional notation actually has any inherited merit over doing it in the DAW. Or its just a matter of getting used to a different representation of the same things.

Hope in make sense.

Thank you.


----------



## SamGarnerStudios (Dec 2, 2012)

I think there's this pre conceived notion that if you use notation software, your supposed to transfer the midi file to the DAW you use, but you get a lot better of a sound if you manually record anything. It's so much harder, at least for me, to input the midi file then tweak it to sound good. But like you I get the best result working stuff out in a notation software, at least for more orchestral stuff. Takes alt more time, but the result is a lot better. That's just me.


----------



## mducharme (Dec 2, 2012)

Composing in a DAW can give you tunnel vision of individual lines, where you can easily lose the sense of your vertical doublings, or not notice wrong notes, etc. It is not hard to imagine how this happens - if you copy and paste a line to another instrument, and then decide to change it in one but forget that the other is doubling it. This is not always as audible as you may think. My Cubase template is set up in such a way that I can view my music as notation inside Cubase to address such issues. If I was in a DAW that did not allow viewing notation, or did not have a capability such as VST expression which allows my tracks to match the traditional score staves (Violins 1 with all articulations keyswitched on one track rather than having separate tracks for Legato, staccato). However, for working out counterpoint and tricky voice leading, I still find pen and paper easier.


----------



## sstern (Dec 20, 2012)

I still struggle between choosing where to start a new composition - Sibelius or Logic.. My orchestration has much more quality when I do that on paper or in Sibelius and this approach for me is much more free and creative. Starting in Logic gives speed. If you decide to start in your notation program, don't forget to "play" all the instruments in your DAW afterwards to make it sound good


----------

