An issue which has not truly benefitted from the new liaison between Sibelius and many sequencers (in my case Apple Logic) I have been raving about in my recent posts is the quest of whether to use notation software at all if the music one is going to write is in between "written" and improvised or groove oriented music.
As I said, I love the strong visualisation of music achieved by notation. This remains true even for music which is usually not written down at all. I am here mainly referring to groove oriented pop music, be it electro or r'n'b or whatever style. Most pop producers/composers can't prepare sheet music, this being no severe drawback at all for what they do. Fumbling around with a beat, "orchestrating" a house arrangement, editing software instrument sounds, recording a studio singer after humming a hook line to her, and so on.
I am attracted by both. Even if a song or a passage is totally groove oriented there comes the moment where I want to check or add harmonies using notation, or to see how the rhythmic patterns of the instruments interlock or interfere. I have often found myself switching to the notation view in Logic after inputting notes with the keyboard or mouse in piano roll view, but, needless to say, Logic's notation view is really uncool, so that I call that off quickly. The most satisfying way would certainly be a seamless integration of the two, where switching between different views would require no more than a shortcut.
How could this issue be resolved? If the notation software could be used as external notation editor by the sequencer software, just the same way as it is possible to add an external wave editor, for example. Rather than saving to MIDI from the sequencer and opening in the notation program, the latter should be able to map the sequencer's internal coding to notation.
What comes relatively close is to input notes with the keyboard in Sibelius with a) a ReWire connection to Logic running so that both programs sync, and b) to have Sibelius use the real deal Logic production sounds using the IAC bus MIDI connection from Sibelius to Logic I'm talking about all the time.
However, the ReWire connection is not so strong as to allow for, e.g., smooth cycle mode. Plus with this way of proceeding one is ending up with the sequence information being stored in the notation software, whilst the piano roll editor is the tool to go in order to tweak every single note as is required in programming pop music.
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