Alan Silvestri, Scoring a Blockbuster, Part 2: Working in Dorico | Artist

American composer Alan Silvestri has scored some of the most iconic Hollywood films, with two each Academy Award (Oscar) and Golden Globe nominations, three Grammy awards, three Saturn awards and two Emmys to his name. In this video he describes his scoring workflow - starting with loading the film into Cubase and composing the music to play in time with the picture. From there he begins scoring in Cubase, adding different instrument parts to complete the basic arrangement in the timeline, and then exports that to do the main scoring in Dorico. If you want to score a blockbuster movie, or think you have the talent to be nominated for Best Song for a Motion Picture, learning from Alan Silvestri’s scoring process will certainly help.
Song: Helicarrier composed by Alan Silvestri
We hope you find this video entertaining and useful. If you like what you see, please leave a comment and tell us what you think. Thank you.
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[@eirik_myhr]

Of course, there was only a matter of time until big composers like Silvestri started using Dorico. Glad to see it's happening! No other music notation software comes even close.

[@sorartificial]

But why ? Why you choose this over Sibelius or finale ?

[@eirik_myhr]

I recommend taking a look at Dorico's own videos showing some of the concepts of the program and how it works. I was very quickly sold on the way Dorico thinks about music, in a more "elastic" way more like a sequencer. As with everything else it's a matter of taste and personal preference, but at least Dorico thinks more like my brain thinks, and therefore it's a much faster and more intuitive program for me to use. And there's so much more, like the way you can have different cues (Dorico calls them Flows) in one big master project, and the engraving options and automatic layouts are so good that it literally eliminated the need to hire a "cleanup guy" like I had to do before. Which saves me both time and money.

[@zakriyabh]

@@sorartificial The best way to understand is to just get the free trial. You'll figure out why pretty quickly :)

[@dorico]

@@sorartificial the flexibility when composing, the fact that our team can implement changes quickly... many reasons! Give it a try!

[@daleturner]

4:14 I just watched this segment 10 billion times! THE BEST!!!!!!!!!

[@ArnoArtner]

Better than anything by Zimmer.. :p

[@davidefant3045]

I think I'm gonna start using the word "miraculous" on every sentence now. Silvestri is the coolest.

[@daleturner]

@@davidefant3045 Lol!

[@IroLidorikioti]

6:26 "They say one plays music", so honest and true! Love this bit!

[@8dioproductions]

Wow. Deep, beautiful and humbling!

[@polkmusic]

Simply incredible. Love his music. Thanks for sharing this great behind the scenes video.

[@heplaysjazza]

I very much appreciate - and would like to see more! - insights into composers ‘ creative workflow. Eg the bit where Alan says “I’m not a keyboard player” and demonstrates getting his ideas into Dorico rhythm-first and then Lock-mode editing the pitches. Barriers removed from the creative process! That’s what we want to see in the tools we use. Excellent!

[@Leotique]

Majestic sounds, Porch was such a masterpiece ! Perfectly balanced, as everything should be.

[@rickmcguire1761]

Okay Steinberg you’ve convinced me

[@zorglub667]

i love mr. silvestri. one of the greatest of our time. and, as so often with the greatest of the greatest: what a nice, humble and fun person to be around with. its so true what he says: music has to be played. and already in kindergarden, you only want to play with the kids that are good to you. in one of the rare instances of the ironies of the universe leading to pleasant things, this leads to most of the real giants being super classy people. its an essential quality in the profession. but i digress. so, yes, this video makes me want to look at dorico. sibelius user at the moment, but tight integration with cubase of course is a giant plus for me. now, if only they would simply unify the two programs and replace the cubase notation functionality (which is almost hilariously similar to the early atari days) with dorico. make it an upgrade option if you want. but imagine that: the power of cubase, plus a fully integrated professional notation. no need to import and export tempo maps, midis, markers or anything. i think silvestri would approve too :-)

[@manaberry]

I love this guy and his music. Happy to see him working on the same tools as I do ♥

[@DavidTerrill]

What a great couple of videos. Alan Silvestri is as good as it gets. It's very enlightening to see the way he works and hear him talk about the things that are important to him. Thanks for posting.

[@timmlive]

Great guy! Put a smile on my face.

[@diogorodrigues989]

Thank you for this videos! It is wonderful to hear about his process - and his salesperson skills... Dorico team, what about a series of tutorials explaining how to do every little thing he mentioned? Do that and you have my crossgrade and my money ;)

[@dorico]

Not a bad idea. We've shown some of these features before in our videos, but I'll see if we can link them all up.

[@dorico]

(and Alan's no salesperson - just genuinely enthusiastic!)

[@diogorodrigues989]

@@dorico Thanks for considering, looking forward to it!

[@diogorodrigues989]

@@dorico It was joke, you can tell he was genuinely excited about it!

[@digitig]

The tip about playing the rhythm on any notes then going back to the start, hitting return L, and entering the pitches, is gold dust. Even allowing for the time I spend fixing the quantisation problems due to latency (probably between my brain and the keyboard), that's doubled, maybe tripled, the speed at which I can enter music.

[@mac88104]

I agree. Is it eq to the step input un Cubase ?

[@aldoarechar]

Pure class

[@olhardesperto6346]

Just great stuff from Alan...fantastic, thanks for posting

[@gurumajuindonesia]

it would be nice also if Dorico provide an excerpt of his orchestration :) so we can learn from the master, i love his orchestration starting from Yanni era too

[@dorico]

That is unfortunately very tricky for copyright reasons, but we'll see what we can do.

[@FreakieFan]

Alan doesn't orchestrate his own music.

[@gcruishank9663]

Wow, what a reference to have on your product. I've been listening to his scores for 20 years at least, so many of them are great. Back to the Future series, Forest Gump, Contact, Judge Dredd, The Abyss, just to name a few. Being a Cubase user I've been siting on the fence about making the leap from Sibelius to Dorica and I think I'm going to do it now.

[@WilliamCamilleri]

Good Composer

[@tall261]

Now... Please have Alan Silvestri do a Master Class where he is scoring an actual movie on Cubase and Dorico. Wouldn't THAT be worth the yearly subscription!

[@dorico]

You'd have to talk to him about that!

[@tall261]

@@dorico how do I do that?

[@maximuswilliam318]

Hello There! :) I am a Fan of Dorico Music Notation Software and I like the style and design of application it helps me to engrave and create scores much faster, the part that I don't like it is when you install Dorico, it has additional softwares like the "E-Licenser" and "Steinberg Download Assistant Manager" and Dorico needs playback configuration in order to here the sound of your score and lastly the most I hated is Dorico is automatically install fonts that you can use in your music project which I don't need it much BTW I like Dorico much than the other music notation softwares for me Dorico is Unique and intuitive software and most is the way Dorico changes the music I wish it can be purchased here in the Philippines! :)

[@dorico]

Unfortunately, we have to have a way of controlling licenses for Steinberg software and at the moment the eLicenser control center does this. The Steinberg Download Assistant can be uninstalled if you don't want it, but for most people it is the easiest way for them to get installers and updates for Steinberg software. We also include fonts so that Dorico can display your music and text properly. I'm glad you are otherwise liking using Dorico - thank you for your comments.

[@maximuswilliam318]

@@dorico Thank You! :)

[@Primagency]

Dorico has come a long way, but not quite there on the integration. Bouncing out of Cubase and importing each time is a big pain. When it's fully integrated I think there will be a stampede from Sibelius.......just saying

[@beabesadaestudios]

I'm with you...

[@Simongain]

Just a matter of time...

[@dorico]

'Integration' is a big word and means different things to different people. For Alan's workflow it's pretty much there already, as he proves!

[@JashandeepReehalMusic]

Would really love if there was a integration between cubase and dorico just like there is in studio one and notion. Would be a lot better

[@RickBalentineMusic]

The clock = $$ ... hahaha so true

[@EPICSOUNDTRAX]

in Hollywood, they have a special orchestra clock. If you are a composer you have a certain time to use the musicians and there is a guy who is responsible to look after them. For example, that person will look at that clock and call for rest time and so on so you cannot abuse the musicians like slaves. It costs a lot. So you have to use the musicians wisely and on time and you cannot take advantage of them. I think it is a union work so the studio and the composer have to follow their regulations.

[@unknownfilmmaker777]

What is he saying at 4:30? You can input the rhythm of the melody in real time and then work out the notes after?

[@dorico]

Yes, actually you can input the pitches and then change the rhythms, or vice versa - there are options for both.

[@MissaMelodica]

Teach me all your secretes!

[@mrconcept]

Still a bit unsure how Cubase and Dorico work with each other.. If i'm working in Cubase and have a mockup with all kontakt libraries etc loaded do you need to load them all again in the Dorico template ?

[@dorico]

At the moment Alan is using MIDI (although you can use MusicXML) files to move data across. He then has templates already set up in Dorico. With HALion and NotePerformer Dorico can then load samples for you, but with Kontakt you could have a the libraries already set up in your template, yes.

[@mrconcept]

@@dorico Thanks. Any chance we could get some video demonstrations specifically related to switching between cubase and dorico like how Alan describes his workflow?

[@peterbajetta]

@@mrconcept would be great!

[@user-vl7ip8cg3l]

Had anybody recognized the Alan's keyboard?)

[@NaiKongLee]

Nektar Panorama P6

[@user-vl7ip8cg3l]

@@NaiKongLee Thank you!