I am trying to create a marching band template where I can have band instruments playing through HALion and still have my drumline template (Eric Kruse template) work with the virtual drumline sounds through kontakt. I can get them to work individually it seems, but not together. I think I may be lacking some knowledge on setting up VST playback in general. Any help is much appreciated.
To be more specific, the HALion plugin sounds will not sustain any notes, and it seems like I am unable to access the correct expression maps for the instruments. All I hear is an initial staccato attack for any of the wind instruments.
That definitely sounds like the wrong expression maps are being chosen for the wind instruments.
If you have a playback template that combines VDL sounds with Dorico’s regular sounds, then in theory everything should work as normal: you add new instruments to your project, and Dorico loads either an instance of Kontakt for VDL or adds sounds to HALion as needed.
So I suspect the problem is that your project is only set up to use VDL sounds, and Dorico doesn’t know what to load for the wind instruments.
I don’t know enough about how Eric’s template works to be able to advise you exactly what to do. But in Play mode, select a wind instrument’s track in the track overview, then look at the Track Inspector panel on the left-hand side. What plug-in is the instrument routed to, which channel? What expression map is chosen? Does it all look as you expect?
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Hi Daniel, it makes sense that the template I started with was only setup to use VDL2 sounds. Ideally I’d love to create a template where it has Dorico’s regular sounds and the VDL2 sounds. I have taken some screenshots from two different projects. The first is from a project with only Dorico’s sounds, and all the winds are playing back great with the correct expression maps.
In this project I am working on, I have been adding all the sounds manually. When I added a player/section for Flute for example, I had to add the HALion plugin and find “Flute 1” under Iconica Sketch. I can’t however seem to find a way to add the correct expression map to it.
Here is the list when I click the dropdown menu.
I don’t understand why the expression maps that load aren’t the same. I had the same issue when trying to import a VDL2 kit into the project with the working wind instruments. I couldn’t find the correct VDL2 perc maps. I’m sure my issue is stemming from my unfamiliarity with VST’s. I’ve used Sibelius since 3 and I am so used to not having to deal so much with that side of things…But I am determined to learn the Dorico system and completely migrate over.
I too struggle with this sometimes.
Try this. Create an empty project. In setup add the instruments/kits that will use VDL. Set their percussion maps and expression maps. (Check it all works as expected).
In Play, save all this as an Endpoint…
Next in Play>Playback Template create a new Playback Template. Add your new saved Endpoint for VDL, followed by one of the Dorico automatic defaults. Save it.
Now you should have your own playback template that will load all your VDL settings for percussion and the normal settings for any other instruments you add.
(There are video tutorials on this - I just can’t locate them)