I’d been awaiting the scheduled release of the Cantai Dorico beta for today, which at least would give about two weeks to test it out before committing to purchasing at the reduced rate. I’ve not heard anything yet nor is the Web site mentioning a beta. I get the Cantai marketing emails so I am on their mailing list, but just wanted to make sure there isn’t some other box to check off so that one receives the beta. I’m assuming it’s a bit delayed if I don’t hear otherwise.
From the Cantai Discord server this morning:
(Haven’t watched, so don’t know if it says anything you don’t already know)
Wow thank you. No, I had not received that through their mailing list, so I’ll try to get it now. Much appreciated. I have a recent work I would love to test out…
OK just downloaded it. Looks like it only supports English (my work is in Spanish) and it is not clear how soon Spanish will be supported. I at least made sure my piece doesn’t have repeats indicated (it originally did but I had changed it based on what I had read regarding uploading files to their server to test, which didn’t work for my piece). Will see how it goes. I’m leery of spending even $150 on this without testing the language I’m using in my piece, given how I got a bit burned by what was a pricey Finale plug-in some time ago, but let’s see how this goes. Thanks!
Fortunately it does interpret the Spanish, at least mostly. But I’m suspecting it has to render for a longer period since it’s still “Rendering…” and a lot of sections only play the piano part (in Pianoteq). I also have to play with balance, but right now it’s more a matter of getting the soprano to play back after initially playing some measures decently but then not at all. Again, I suspect it needs to render the entire thing (it’s a 25-minute work). I’m running a M2 MBA from two years ago, and have already cleared Cantai’s cache to see if that would help.
I honestly know next to nothing about it (yet). I was one of the early supporters, but have tucked it safely on a mental back burner until it’s out and I’m getting back to work on a song cycle.
Are you willing to consider becoming a member of their Discord? From what I can see it’s where much of the announcing and discussion is focused.
Haven’t used Discord in years but I might do it for this. Thanks-good suggestion.
So I did some additional testing, with the piano muted and unmuted, and two different voices, one of which had been fully rendered when I hit Play. While impressive in many ways, and I realize Spanish isn’t yet supported, it did not do a passable job on my score. The high notes, depending on the voice chosen, were either ok or came out garbled. I’m next going to try it on a wordless choral work I wrote last year that sounded great using NotePerformer, interestingly.
It would be nice if this worked out in the end. The piece for soprano and piano was something where I ended up substituting a solo violinf or the soprano part, since the soprano solo didn’t work for me in Noteperformer (choral voices seem better from what I’ve experienced). Will keep trying. Thanks!
I have the email for Cantai beta, but the only links are to pre-purchase it. I was one of the early investors, so I don’t intend to pay again for it.
There’s no link to any sort of beta version. Does anyone know where I might find this?
Never mind, I found the link on the Discord server.
However now I have absolutely NO idea how to get the Cantai voice to play instead of the instrument I had chosen from Noteperformer.
I need the piano from NP, and the voice from Cantai.
Go to Cantai.app/Beta. Scroll down. You should see the downloadlinks for Mac and Windows as well as necessary info. You go into Play/Vst & Midi, assign Turing Opera/Synth/Cantai, then go to Track Inspector, select the vocal part and assign it to Cantai in the drop down menu. It will give you options of voices or choir to select from. That’s how I did it, anyway.
Here is my 1st attempt with it: I had to add the ‘h’ to all of the ‘As’ to avoid Ay-men, and used a bit of reverb and compression. Otherwise this is ‘out of the box.’ Still not sure about the vibrato, but the pop ‘scooping’ seems to be gone. I used the Choir Male and Female voices.
Cantai Example.pdf (1.3 MB)
thanks, yeah you responded while I was editing my original post. 
Now I have to figure out how to get Cantai to play in Dorico.
There’s no help file or anything.
And I’ve never been able to get two different VSTs to play at the same time,
it’s always been all Noteperformer, or all whatever else.
So how do I go about changing channel 1 (the voice) to Cantai, while leaving channel 4 in Noteperformer for the piano?
Select Piano and assign it to NP in the Track inspector. You can apply the NP playback template, add the Cantai VST (Turing Opera) in Play/Vst & Midi, then assign whichVST the piano and voice use by assigning the Vst in the Track Inspector dropdown menu.
I’m going to need slightly more detailed and simpler explanations than that.
This piece already has Noteperformer assigned to two instruments: vocal ahhs, and a piano.
I clicked - lord knows where - and suddenly I got an “insert activation token” message. Which of course I do not have an activation token that I know of.
Sorry, just seeing this now.
There are instructions at their Cantai.app page. I did follow them and got it working but agree more detail would be helpful, especially as to which voices are perhaps better for specific things and also whether one has to wait for a full rendering to occur.
I do mix Noteperformer with, say, Pianoteq or the Reason rack, so I’m used to running more than one VST.
My initial results (with a score that is in a text language that isn’t yet fully supported) were not great. I’m going to keep trying but as I’m not generally composing for voices with text (my few vocal works typically are wordless), I don’t have a major need right now for Cantai.
That said, I’d love to have a recording of my latest work for soprano and piano that uses a Chilean protest text from the Allende era since I had to resort to a violin with piano (Noteperformer and Pianoteq) for a recording that is online. Voice with text would be amazing. But I’m thinking I might still have to wait for an actual soprano and a pianist to show up on my doorstep (one short section for piano is beyond my skills, given my having taken one rampant lesson as a teenager).
Register at Cantai.app then go to your profile. There is a registration code there. At first it wouldn’t paste into the field but after re-clicking the VST circle settings icon in Dorico to reopen it, it pasted in.
well, I got it to work… halfway.
at least Cantai is showing up as a usable VST.
the only problem is, there are no voices available.
does it take a long time to load the voices? is this why I’m not seeing anything in the “voice” drop down?
The drop down says “loading voices”, and my cursor shows a little circle with a diagonal line through it. Nothing’s there for now.
I’m wondering if I have to tell it where the cantai voices are saved… I keep all my VSTs on a different partition of my hard disk.
Still not sure about the vibrato…
As I’ve said so often (even on the Cantai Discord) the moment a vocal synthesis app comes out that DOESN’T drench the vocal sound in pop scooping and operatic vibrato, there will be a HUGE number of users in the choral world who will be delighted.
I’m honestly not sure why this seems so difficult to find. Is it just that the makers of these libraries don’t listen to much choral music? Think Voces8 or Eric Whitacre sorta sound. It’s what so many church- and school-choir directors actually need.
Fingers remain crossed this will happen some fine day.
It can take a bit for the voices to load and render. I’ve been waiting for a few minutes on a work now.
does it have to play something back before the voices appear?
I can’t select which voice I’d like to have sing.
I don’t think so. The selected voice should (eventually) be available for choosing who you want to sing it once you’ve assigned it in the Track inspector. I had a syncing issue with Cantai on one of my pieces, and in another it only rendered the 2nd verse. I’m still waiting for my current rendering to finish. I may save and close the work and reopen it. Maybe that’ll help.
This made me laugh. Supposed to be “Oohs”, but sounds like an out of tune choir of ghosts.