Greetings Dorico Experts.
I posted the following question a few days ago and, for the first time in months, did not receive any responses so I am guessing this is a tough question.
“In Finale I would always create a “Playback File” of every score. This was a separate score with each Percussion instrument on a different staff which I would then balance the volumes of each individual instrument (Triangle, Tambourine, Crash Cymbals, etc.) in NotePerformer. The issues was always that Perc. instruments that shared a staff in the score did not play back at satisfactory levels so I could hear everything. This is happening in Dorico as well (I suppose it is an issue with NotePerformer not playing all Perc, instruments back at levels that could be heard). Should I continue to create a separate “Playback” score and break down each Perc. inst. and set individual levels as before, or is there a way in Dorico to set individual levels for a group if instruments in a given Drum Kit?
Thanks for any help.”
There must be a way to EQ the output of the various instruments in a Drum Kit so that those pesky little Triangle and Tambourine notes can actually be heard in NotePerformer.
Anyone?
In any layout, a percussion kit can have one of three presentation types: 5-line staff, Grid or Single-line instruments. Only the Single-line instruments presentation type allows you to independently control the dynamics of each instrument in a percussion kit. If you then change the presentation type to 5-line staff or Grid, the dynamics entered while in the Single-line instruments presentation type will disappear. I believe that dynamics entered in the 5-line staff or Grid presentation type apply equally to all instruments in the kit, so I would suggest that you enter the dynamics you want for playback in the Single-line instruments presentation type, enter the dynamics you want real musicians to see in the 5-line staff or Grid presentation type, and suppress playback of the dynamics you want real musicians to see.
Dynamics applied to instruments in single-line format persist but do not show when they are combined into a five-line presentation. How dynamics introduced in the five-line version affect performance I am not entirely sure.
John,
Thanks you so much for the response. I am fairly familiar with the three presentation types in the Drum Kits and have used them for various reasons so I followed your explanation up to the point where you said “enter the dynamics you want real musicians to see in the 5-line staff or Grid presentation type, and suppress playback of the dynamics you want real musicians to see.”.
I am not sure how to suppress the dynamics the players see. My hope was to be able to get each instrument in the kit to show up as a separate channel in the “VST and Midi” section of Play Mode and them be able to control each instruments level using the sliders in NotePerformer rather than actually change the dynamics visible on the screen if that makes any sense. Do either you or Derrek know if I do a “Save As” and then go into the new score and remove each instrument from the kit if they would then show up a separate instruments in the “VST and Midi” panel where I could use the sliders to adjust the overall level of each Percussion instrument? This may not be the best way to achieve my desired goal of being able to independently adjust the volume of each instrument currently within a kit. I know this would require having one score for the “visual” score that players see and a different score to be used for playback only.
If Derrek’s view on this is correct, I guess I could set the dynamics I want to “hear” in single line and leave the dynamics I want the players to “see” in the 5-line view.
Any further thoughts on this fine people?
Thanks.
Gary
@Derrek : When I said that the dynamics entered in the Single-line instruments presentation type would disappear when changing the presentation type, I meant that they would disappear visually but still affect playback.
@ghfagan51 : Instead of creating a “playback file” of a score, you could create a separate copy of each instrument in the percussion kit in setup mode, duplicate the notes from the kit to these copies in write mode, use manual staff visibility to hide these copies in page view, mute playback of the kit, and control the loudness of the copies by entering dynamics in galley view and by adjusting their sliders in the NotePerformer mixer.
This will put the removed kit item as a separate instrument outside the kit into the Player itself.
To gain individual fader control of each instrument, one would have to drag each of these instruments into a separate Empty Player and then likely re-apply the NP Playback Template to activate the separate Players as separate channels.
(If that doesn’t work as planned, one might have to activate separate NP instances for each percussion instrument: hope that is not hte case. I don’t have time to check that now.)
John and Derreck,
Thanks to both of you for your time trying to help me get this sorted out. It is much appreciated. I will need to read these responses over a few times so they sink in to my new “Dorico” brain and I can try them out.
Gary
@ghfagan51 do you really want to use noteperformer? If you you bring the drumset to groove agent you have an mixer in Groove agent. You can keep all other instruments in noteperformer.
Maarten,
I’m not sure. This piece is for Concert Band so I want the Percussion to be a Concert Percussion sound not a Drumset sound. Will Groove Agent give me that sound?
Thanks.
Marc says you are beter off with Iconia Sketch so maybe that is an solution. I’m not behind a computer now but iconica has maybe his own mixer. I give it a try tomorrow.
I’m not talking about mixers… only that the sounds of percussion instruments in Iconica Sketch are better suited to orchestral music than the ones available in Groove Agent (drum sounds). Unless there’s a specific orchestral library (as you have in Superior Drummer 3)?
Yes I understood that but I was wondering if there was kind of mixer in Halion what could do the the trick with the sounds of iconica. As far as I see now that is not an option.
So the answer to @ghfagan51 is: no groove agent will not give you that sound.
I’ve just tried, and yes, the different instruments you load in Iconica Sketch are in a HALion Sonic instance, and the mixer is there, so you should be able to tweak it to get a good balance without touching Dorico mixer.
A lot of times the mixer in a VST varies with the dynamics in the notation, so is unreliable to set base volume differences and balance instruments against each other.
In Finale, for example, the Finale mixer can set fixed base levels, but the Garritan/Aria mixer varies during playback to reflect dynamics in the notation.
My recollection is that (except for the NotePerformer Mixer) the relationship between the Dorico Mixer and mixers within VST’s acts the same as in Finale.
Wow! It seems my original post has generated some fairly sophisticated discussion on balancing percussion sounds. Quite a bit of it is “above my pay scale” which simply means I am too new at Dorico (and too old) to understand it all. I very much appreciate all the input on this. As a percussionist, the playback and balancing of Percussion instruments within a drum kit is very important to me. If I write a Triangle part into a score I want to be able to hear it and it seems that NotePerformer does not play back all Percussion sounds at the same amplitude and I am trying to figure out the best way to be able to balance all the Aux. Perc. instruments within a kit.
Thanks to all who have contributed to this discussion. As usual, the Dorico community of users is fantastic at being helpful and courteous to us Finale refugees. I think I may have enough input from some of the early responses to my problem to move forward and get the Aux. Perc. instruments to start to sound like I want them to.
Gary
