Assigning a different sound (VST instrument) to a voice

[bellist]

I tried something and think I got lost in a tangle. The goal is to assign a different sound (a different VST instrument) for one voice. I want it to simulate a singing bell (running a dowel around the lip of a bell to produce a steady sound rather than a sound with a strike and decay) and the closest might be a flute or clarinet.

Here’s what my Play screen looks like now. Questions to follow.

I think I got the HALion Sonic instrument when I clicked on “Enable Independent Voice Playback” – am I right?

I have no idea what happened to VST instrument “01” – do I not get one? Why might it have disappeared?

I started with the first four voices, each numbered “1”. Back in write I moved notes from the bass clef upstem to bass clef second downstem so I could distinguish what notes are to get the sustain sound. That change was made in bar 431. That added a track to this display. Please explain how the staves and voices are labeled. I was surprised when that track showed up.

While I have that last voice selected. I tried changing sounds in the Aria player. It changed sounds for all voices. I didn’t see in the manual how to change sounds for just one voice. Or maybe each voice gets its own channel? If so, how do I identify and change it? Does Dorico have different names for things? Yes, this is the central question.

Along the bottom I ended up with a lot of sliders. I think some were added when I experimented with hiding and displaying the chord and marker tracks (maybe cool, but not needed for this piece). I clicked on the tracks trying to get some to disappear but all that the clicking did was change the designation at the top – the “R53” and “L18” were not something I entered. How do I get rid of some of them and for the rest identify what staff and voice it corresponds to?

I seem to have lost the button for “Disable Independent Voice Playback” – not that I want to right now.

Thanks for all your help with this question and all the others I’ve asked over the last year.

[Derrek]

VST 01 is the metronome beep; it is never assigned to a Player.

Your illustration is of the VST & MIDI Tab. To assign instruments from these VST’s, you would need to choose the other Tab, the Track Inspector, where one sends different sounds via different MIDI channels to Aria or HALion MIDI slots holding instruments.

Once you do that, you would want to check that each track uses an appropriate Expression Map for the instrument and VST selected.

When one assigns instruments in SETUP mode, Dorico takes care of a lot of this housekeeping for one.

[bellist]

Thank you. I’m getting closer and gaining understanding. But there are still a few issues.

The image shows the number of sliders is reduced. That’s good. I’m still not sure which goes to where, though right now that’s a minor issue.

In this image “Staff (b) upstem 1” is highlighted. It shows the Ex. Map as none. I specify it, go to another track, come back to this one, and it is again at none.

Another image:

For “Staff (b) downstem 2” I understand that to be the Aria player channel 5. I set that to horn (I want the constant sound) but I still get the handbell sound.

And I see this staff and all but the first one have lost the expression maps I set.