BBCSO instruments

I have loaded the BBCSO instruments. I have chosen them (BBCSO Discover) as my Playback Template. When I start a new project and want to use an instrument, only a few seem to show up. For example, I’ll choose Violin and when I go to the playback screen there is the sideways “e” and when I click it, I can choose the violins from the BBCSO. However, when I try to choose other instruments, e.g. Alpenhorn, and go to Play, there is no “e” and therefore, I cannot choose anything to assign. If I choose violin again, and hit the “e” I can assign any of the BBCSO instruments, say bassoon, to that instrument, but it will still show up as violin. Does this make sense? Am I doing something wrong? I cannot seem to figure out what I have to do aside from having a bunch of violin instruments appearing on the screen and assigning different instruments from BBCSO to each different violin.

First of all, it might be helpful to understand that the point of a playback template is to automatically load instruments (with their maps) when you need them, connecting an instrument in your score to the relevant library patch.

Therefore with the BBSCO playback template, if you add a Violin to your score, that’s all you have to do. There is no need to fuss around with the ‘e’ icon or choose patches manually - you would only do this if for some reason you want to override the playback template. But in your case, it sounds like you want to just play, so you can leave the playback template to do the work for you.

A library needs to have the relevant instrument patch to connect. BBCSO does not have an Alpenhorn, so it won’t connect to anything for you.

Yes, this is wrong. I would start from scratch in this case. All you need to do, with your playback template loaded, is go to the Setup tab, and add instruments (which you know are supported by BBCSO, which is most of the standard orchestra). Then go to your write page, select any staff, and start adding notes or playing from a midi keyboard. It should all correctly connect for you, again without having to go to the plugin itself and manually configure anything.

Hope that helps.

Thanks for responding. I tried to do exactly what you said, and apparently some instruments, even the ones in the BBCSO just don’t show up from setup. For example, when I try to add a piano, the staff shows up but the piano doesn’t. All I get is the Dorico beep. However I experimented and added Celesta, which gave me a piano staff. And then I hit the “e” (which was available for celesta but not piano), went to the BBCSO template on the screen, chose piano, and I was able to have the piano playing on the Celesta line. Then I went to the setup, edited the celesta, changed it to piano, and it worked fine. That has been my workaround. I am new to Dorico so this is all part of the learning curve. The problem is that some things that one would think WOULD work, don’t - like the piano. So I have to figure out how to make them work.

I don’t use the BBCSO template, however you should be able to duplicate the BBCSO template and add one of the Dorico default templates as a fallback to create your own custom template. Then whenever you add an instrument that is not in the BBCSO set, Dorico will choose a default for you.

There are a number of tutorial videos on Playback Templates, and you might find this Discover Dorico session interesting (around 40 mins in)

Edit: I previously posted that BBCSO Discover doesn’t support a piano, because when I originally got into BBC they didn’t! The piano was added a couple years after the library was released, and it was a separate purchase, but according to Spitfire’s website apparently Discover now has a piano. So I wonder maybe if the map doesn’t include it, since the map might be a few years old. I’ll have to test and get back.

In the meantime have you tried other common orchestral instruments? Like a violin, clarinet, flute, trumpet?

Yes. I’ve tried many. For some, I have to go to the “e” to choose the instrument from the BBCSO template, but for others it works fine. As an example, neither of the string basses or the upright basses work when I choose them from the original template, but when I hit the “e”, I can choose them. However, one of them is a little idiosyncratic - the BBCSO has an upright bass and along with it one can choose pizzicato, which works when choosing it but doesn’t work when playing it in a score. It just turns into a bowed bass in both write mode and play mode. Maybe it’s just a quirk, and I haven’t gotten up to the lesson to convert a bowed bass to pizzicato. I’m still in the very early learning stage. To reiterate, some of them don’t need me to go to the “e.” As an example, the bassoon , clarinet and violin work just fine. Piano doesn’t work at all, but celesta does (and then I can edit that one to be a piano from the “e” and template.)

To be honest, I am wondering why you are frequently having the need to go to ‘e’. If all is set up and connected and running correctly, the idea behind playback templates is that you would actually never even have to do that, unless for custom manual advanced overrides for example. But in the case of simply loading up a basic orchestra and playing, it shouldn’t be necessary.

For the bass, again the idea with playback templates is that they will automatically select patches for you based on what you write in your score. So if you use playing techniques such as pizz. or arco, it will select the right patch automatically for you. Have you tried adding these playing techniques in your score directly rather than selecting the patches?

I am curious what is the original template you are referring to? I feel like I might understand better what you are seeing if I am able to open it too, since I own BBCSO, and then perhaps I can provide more useful advice.

This sounds like something is wrong somewhere. There should be no need to edit the VST patches. They should load automatically, as long as they covered in BBCSO discover, and you should be able to just write the playing techniques in the score.

Try re-applying the playback template and making the celesta / piano switch again.