To compose in the DAW or outside the DAW?

[trampofnine]

Yes, I can't help but to paraphrase The Lizard King as a pun:
"There is the known, the unknown and in between are the DAWs."

So far I have composed 45 minutes of music. I have done it all in Finale as typed in note symbols with my mouse. I have not done any composition in my DAW: FL Studio. Nor have I used a midi keyboard. I have enjoyed the control of composing in Finale. It takes a long time. But I can get any note that I want or any chord progression, trill or anything else, exactly as I want it. So in the long run it saves time. This is the good part of composing "outside the DAW".

However there are some negative aspects. It seems to me that sometimes the range of instrument notes in Finale don't fit the possible note ranges in Kontakt instruments. I am not sure what to do about this. I could go back and change my composition in Finale; but I don't want to alter my tunes. Also, it is annoying that the instrument quality in Finale is pretty terrible, frankly. If I knew how I would swap out the Garritan instruments in Finale.

So I am thinking for the next 45 minutes of composition [it will be a 90 minute album all up] of composing in the DAW of FL Studio. I won't have as much control. Especially with my complex ideas that involve a lot of suspended chords. But composing "in one place" might be better and easier.

So are you are inside or an outside person? [that sounds SO wrong!!!!!! Better keep it a family show! ]

[brainzistor]

I started using FLS 14 years ago, when it was Fruity Loops 4 and because of its piano roll.
I play guitar and drums, I had zero interest in learning to play piano or using MIDI keyboard
because in the beginning I was using Fruity as a drum machine to record demo tapes, ideas, etc.
But because how its piano roll was made I started learning a lot about music theory and looking at things from a different perspective.
That's how I became interested in other music genres, outside of guitar based music.

I never looked at Fruity or later FLS as a DAW, but as a composing tool because at that time DAW was a software which you use in studio to record multiple instruments, when you have multiple inputs, not something you would use for clicking with your mouse + keyboard to make music.
This was the main reason why FLS has been trash talked by many throughout years and why it has been considered a toy because people were expecting from it to have functions of a traditional DAW.

One crucial thing to know is that piano roll is just a different way of presenting music. It's missing many informations like: what articulation should be used (you define this by using different articulation with sampler, Kontakt, Sforzando, whatever), you define velocity too, but there's no information about that neither, etc, etc.

There's literally NO meaningful reason to compose something in Finale or any notation software if your music will not be played by real musicians.
You are writing it in Finale because...why?

In the past I was having the same dilemmas too, I was also using some notation softwares, to learn notes and to make music in them, but soon enough I realized that it's a waste of time.
Times are different, nowadays you need to present your music by yourself, to compose and to learn about music production as well.
Unless your music will be played next day by real orchestra, there's literally no reason to waste your time jerking off in notation software.
It's simply losing focus and wasting your time, figuring out how to set everything up to work, instead of just storming through piano roll and having results.

Practically millions of times I had to set up individual note in piano roll to fit the music because of how sound libraries work.
In notation software you CAN'T do that, that's the most important thing to realize.
You NEED to humanize things, to humanize sound library while when writing notes in notation software that humanization should come from people playing music live, musicians performing it and humanizing it.

For example, if I take Symphobia I would turn off snapping and to adjust notes individually in piano roll, I would set different velocities when chord is played, etc. You CAN'T do that in notation software, this humanization should come from musician's playing and you should be able to know and understand how instruments work so that you humanize things in piano roll.

That's the reason why so many things composed in notation software + sound libraries sound plastic, lifeless and artificial.
Even if you start using different piano sound libraries, they all sound different and if you decide to switch piano you used with another you would need to adjust everything. FLS has "scale levels" tool in piano roll (alt+x shortcut) so that you select all notes and change automatically, adjust velocities of notes and this tool alone saved me thousands of hours, literally.

I'm 50-50 when it comes to music because I would use guitar to get ideas, or I will have ideas in my head, or I will get ideas from just jerking around in FLS' piano roll. I think it's CRUCIAL knowing how to play some real instrument because it gives you a different perspective how you look at music, no matter what music you want to make.
If there was no FLS I would probably never touch any DAW in my life to create music, maybe I would use trackers to jerk around a bit, working in other DAW's with their BS Excel spreadsheet piano rolls is just way too painful when working with mouse+keyboard...while in FLS when I get the idea, set the key and scale in piano roll and just storm through it. For me personally existence of FLS is truly a bless. It's easy for me to pick guitar and to work, for example, in hungarian minor scale and to play notes without thinking and the only DAW which helps me to feel comfortable, to work really fast and to put out ideas straight from the head was always FLS. Its piano roll is just f**king awesome, there's no other way to say it.

PS
There is a guy who works under the name Synthetic Orchestra, he also uses FLS and he has created nice plugin for FLS, BRSO Articulate which you may find useful:
http://syntheticorchestra.com/articulate/

[harvon]

Normally I use the musescore score editor when I start to compose a song, then move the project into a DAW. This is a little bit dissatisfying because I can't move the project back and forth between the two programs. So this time I started to compose straight away in a DAW piano roll. It's my way how to evaluate a potential DAW I might move into.

I found out that I very much prefer a sore editor over a piano roll as a composing tool. So my answer to the question in the title of this topic is to compose inside a DAW that has a decent score editor.

[DJ Warmonger]

Not a trained "composer" by any means here.
Last year I use Orb Composer to, well, compose the stuff for me - usually based on some initial motiff or chord progression. Then I record single phrases into DAW and work on loops from here.

I may create some variations of loop myself. Sometimes later, in arrangment stage, I add or remove extra notes to create tension and make stuff flow.

[fese]

I usually compose while playing guitar and singing to it (but then I write songs and don’t compose orchestral work or such). I arrange in the DAW after I sketched the basic structure of the song, just by playing instruments and try to come up with good parts.
Two times so far I needed a string arrangement (never done that before) and that I found easier to do in a score editor because I can read a score better that a piano roll.
So for me it would be using the tool that fits the task

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Yes, I can't help but to paraphrase The Lizard King as a pun:
"There is the known, the unknown and in between are the DAWs."

So far I have composed 45 minutes of music. I have done it all in Finale as typed in note symbols with my mouse. I have not done any composition in my DAW: FL Studio. Nor have I used a midi keyboard. I have enjoyed the control of composing in Finale. It takes a long time. But I can get any note that I want or any chord progression, trill or anything else, exactly as I want it. So in the long run it saves time. This is the good part of composing "outside the DAW".

However there are some negative aspects. It seems to me that sometimes the range of instrument notes in Finale don't fit the possible note ranges in Kontakt instruments. I am not sure what to do about this. I could go back and change my composition in Finale; but I don't want to alter my tunes. Also, it is annoying that the instrument quality in Finale is pretty terrible, frankly. If I knew how I would swap out the Garritan instruments in Finale.

So I am thinking for the next 45 minutes of composition [it will be a 90 minute album all up] of composing in the DAW of FL Studio. I won't have as much control. Especially with my complex ideas that involve a lot of suspended chords. But composing "in one place" might be better and easier.

So are you are inside or an outside person? [that sounds SO wrong!!!!!! Better keep it a family show! ]

You should invest in NotePerformer for Finale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIianfs-xNc

Unless it's sound-design-heavy music, I never compose inside a DAW

There's literally NO meaningful reason to compose something in Finale or any notation software if your music will not be played by real musicians.
You are writing it in Finale because...why?

You are completely wrong about this, no offense. One could write a novel with voice-to-text software, but almost no serious novelist does.

Notation offers a number of advantages. A few off the top of my head

The first, and biggest is that it is distraction-free and doesn't operate under the assumption that you already know what you're going to play. Which a DAW does because a DAW is primarily recording software. This means that I can write a couple bars, come up with the next two, go back and tweak things, etc. without ever having to record anything (where I can be limited by my keyboard ability) nor get side-tracked in screwing around with keyswitches, CCs, choosing sounds, etc.

The second is that, because the sound playback is often crappier (in terms of stock sounds) on notation software, you cannot use fancy audio tricks or cool synth sounds or something to hide a mediocre piece. If it doesn't sound good with those GM sounds, then it's not a good piece.

It's also a LOT faster to realize the composition. Once I've come up with the melody on my guitar or whatever, notating it takes less time than writing this forum reply does. I'd say I could write a good, 3-minute piece in just a couple hours. Problem is, recording that all and turning it into a MIDI mockup can take DOZENS of hours. I have a short, Resident Evil 3 mockup over in Music Cafe. That tune is ridiculously simple, but I spent around 4 hours just to realize those 50 seconds to get the crescendos, vibrato, sound design elements, mixing, etc. and playing all the parts in separately.

Another reason is that 9/10 (orchestral at least) sample libraries made for DAWs are actually terrible. Most of them just focus on having big name halls, musicians, engineers etc. and blow their budget on that, so you're left with a pretty crap selection of articulations, weak homogeneity between them, dynamic imbalances, etc. and so realizing musical music with them is either a very time-consuming process, or outright impossible — depending on what you have.

With notation and notation software, you do not have to make any musical compromises based on your samples. With notation, I can write those slower, repeated brass chords like in "Star Wars" and not have to worry about how doing the same in Cinebrass suddenly makes Cinebrass sound worse than general MIDI. I don't have to avoid writing passages that go from really short note, to really long note because of timbrel imbalance in my samples, either. I can write for the instruments exactly as they're played.

That results in a lot better music. I definitely believe that, especially where orchestral music these days is concerned, DAW composing and sample libraries are responsible for the ubiquity of the pad+ostinato+melody-using-exclusively-legato-articulation style where the melody is clearly improvised, with little regard for structure and rhythm — which are absolutely vital components.

In the new year, for these new projects I'm writing for, I'm switching over to NotePerformer to handle the bulk of the orchestral stuff, rendering it out to mix in reaper and augementing whatever and wherever it is lacking (which isn't that much) with superior samples and live players.

The amount of time it will save me, with no quality sacrifice, is priceless.

And time is the most valuable thing there is. Composer or no.

[Hermetech Mastering]

Outside, ALWAYS

[Ploki]

Trained composer (MA) - i always composed inside DAW and used notation software only for distribution to live players.

I just find notation software too constricting. Majors such as Sibelius and Finale are made for best notation possible so they're cluttered with a lot of graphical symbols and articulations that have no affect on sound.
Sibelius is terrible if you write anything out of time signature, it just dies and makes a mess.
Copying/modifying musical ideas is convoluted and a pain in the ass, so is interpolating and transforming them.

This is not like writing a novel speech-to-text, it's like writing a novel in Adobe InDesign. Which nobody does, because it's made for authoring not writing.

There might be some "composing" oriented notation software, probably Dorico and Notion fit the bill.

If you prefer working in notation as opposed to piano roll, both Logic and Cubase have a score editor. (which is better fitted for composing and much less for authoring)