[Laurence Payne[_2_]]

On Sat, 13 Sep 2008 08:10:17 -0700 (PDT), genericaudioperson
wrote:

I find it easier to perceive and write music using score notation,
rather than dealing with pattern sequencers and piano-roll editors. I
would like to score most of the music in notation (to be played back
by internal VST's), and then go behind the scenes to do some volume
editing or effects adding when needed.

Cubase and Sonar both have very good Score Edit pages, alongside all
the other sequencer functions and facilities. You may prefer the
look-and-feel of one or the other - demo versions are available.

You can get much prettier score notation from Sibelius or Finale. But
they are primarily score-publishing programs with playback functions
bolted on. From your description of your needs I think you'd find
them fiddley and frustrating when it comes to tweaking the
performance.

I use Sibelius for what it's best at - scoring for live musicians. For
a quick preview of what an arrangement will sound like its playback is
quite adequate. But if the goal is a really good audio version I move
to Cubase. Very often I don't even bother to transfer a MIDI file
between the two applications. I print out the score and play it into
Cubase - sometimes all synthesized, sometimes a mixture -playing
whatever real instruments are available onto audio tracks.

As so often, it isn't really about the tool :-)