Is there way to tell a kit map to use black key notes (F#, Bb) as triggers for sounds? I’m trying to do this with NotePerformer orchestral percussion sounds. If I reassign their pitches in the NP percussion map, they won’t play properly. And there’s no way I can see to tell a kit map to use an F# instead of an F to trigger a particular sound.
I suspect this may all be possible when NOT using NotePerformer. Yes?
It’s not clear to me exactly what you’re trying to accomplish. Why do you need to remap a sound to a different key? NP is pretty self-contained. I’m not sure it matters, but are you using NP default sounds or an NPPE?
You don’t really need to do any mapping for NP percussion. If for example you have a woodblock staff, and add notes, it will play the woodblock regardless of what key you play live or use to insert (assuming you are using a midi keyboard controller). So you could play an F or an F# from your keyboard, it’s still going to play the same sound on that staff for actual playback. Not sure what you would gain by reassigning these values.
The original General Midi mapping for drums is set up so the whole drum kit is within the grasp of one octave. This makes note entry quicker. I want the same for percussion entry.
I really don’t want to go searching over some 2 or 3 octave range for the orchestral percussion sounds I use the most. For faster entry I want them organized like a drum set, within close range of each other. I want the orchestral bass drum and the piatti to be in the same place as the drum’s kick and crash.
I also work on a 5 lined staff for a percussion part - I orchestrate music for the theater where a single percussionist is playing many instruments within the same song, some pitched, some not. It all needs to be on a 5 line staff as a drummer uses. Even in a film session, I like to assign staves to players, not instruments to better keep track of the choreography of who can get to what instrument in time.
Sorry - what is an NPPE? If it’s something to replace NotePerformer drum and percussion sounds (it’s weakest element) I’d be interested.
But my main gripe is why won’t Dorico’s kit maps allow me to assign notes to black key pitches.
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AFAIK the NP orchestral percussion isn’t designed to work that way. They have their whole thing very dialed in under the hood in a specific way with the maps. You could always reach out to Wallander support with tech questions, I’ve always found them to be very helpful and they can give you advice or confirm whether or not it is possible.
That said, if I wanted an orchestral bass drum and piatti (and others) on a 5-line percussion kit, I would simply create those as separate instruments and then consolidate them into a kit set to 5-line view. In the percussion kit editor you can arrange where they live on the 5-line staff (as well as for grid view), so you can easily set them to live in a 5-line staff under an octave. I created this project for you which has a bass drum, snare, and piatti, set up similar to a drum kit, and the notes can be played from the keyboard from G-B-D, thus within the same octave. You could move these to any arrangement you want, and on different voices/stem directions, it wouldn’t matter for NP’s map as it would see it all the same.
NP orch perc kit.dorico (463.4 KB)
So in this project, while they are not set on black keys, that really doesn’t make a difference when you’re not playing in live from a keyboard (NP doesn’t care what line or space you put them on). Hope that helps set you in the right direction, but if not like I said Wallander support is very helpful. Good luck.
I look for something that is described as ‘custom’ to be just that - open to my getting under the engine and setting it up the way I want it to be.
I’m not looking to do this all the time - but I want to set up my streamlined percussion kit the way I want it not the way someone else wants it. The Dorico kit map takes me 80% of the way. I just want the last 20% by assigning triggers to ALL the chromatic keys.
NP kind of goes around Dorico. I’m still guessing a bit at what you’re trying to do. If I understand correctly, you’re trying to condense percussion to a 5-line staff? You could probably make that work with Halion and a custom Playback Template. But I’m not sure you can make a custom template that would work with NP. As @wing says, you’d need to contact Wallander about that.
In other words, most other libraries are general use, but NP is a “black box”. But other libraries don’t come with the humanization NP does.
I’m still guessing a bit at what you’re trying to do. If I understand correctly, you’re trying to condense percussion to a 5-line staff?
Yes.
In other words, most other libraries are general use, but NP is a “black box”. But other libraries don’t come with the humanization NP does.
Exactly. But the solution around the black box problem would be to have the Dorico kit mapping be just a bit more flexible. Then I could remap NP’s percussion map (or any other plugin’s perc map) without having to actually change the perc map itself.
If I sound frustrated, it’s because on the switch from Finale to Sibelius a few years I banged my head against the wall trying get the drum mapping to happen there. And I was so looking forward to putting every sound under the finger and on the line that I chose. I’m really liking my journey into Dorico (and trying to customize it so my occasional return trips to Sibelius and Finale for a gig are not too difficult.) But part of my learning curve is to always push against the boundaries.
I wrote scores by hand before 2005 and I got used to placing things where I wanted them. If only the ink (pencil really) could play back itself …
I think the problem is NP doesn’t care about anything Dorico is mapping. The custom kit mapping may well work for other libraries, but not NP in particular. You might give Halion a try.
Edit: If I may ask, is there a particular reason the percussion needs to be condensed, rather than separate staves?
In the theater (I orchestrate for Broadway mostly) one player is playing numerous instruments. He’ll hit a note on the timp, grab maracas for 8 bars, take two bars to get to the xylophone for a figure, take 3 beats to retune the timp and play a hit. So the one player doesn’t want to be looking at 4 lines of instruments, or a staff that keeps switching from 1 line to five and then back.
Me? I loved the original General MIDI setup for drum entry. It was all under my hand in little over an octave - I could almost play the drum pattern with one hand in time. That made note entry much faster.
So I want the same thing for percussion. Most orchestral percussion maps are spread over numerous octaves. Where was that ratchet?A5? A6? I want to put my essentials (about 15-20 instruments) all packed together so I can ‘learn’ where they are and make my note entry faster. Yes, of course I’ll have to edit that map when I finally find a use for guiro I left out. But the majority of the time I’ll be fine.
Thanks for the explanation. I learn so much about notation outside my needs on this forum.
Did you look at the project I bothered to create? While yes you apparently cannot map to the black keys, it does give you -7 through +7 meaning 15 possible instruments can be mapped across the keyboard. You can place the most frequently used ones nearby within an octave as you wish, and you can save this kit as a template so you don’t have to try to remember where that ratchet is - you can always have it on the same key every time. It’s a bit of a workaround but I think it should solve at least most of what you’re looking to do.
NP is a special case in how it works, kind of a closed ecosystem different from all other playback systems, so hopefully Wallander support can take you the rest of the way.
Thanks for this - I’ll give it a try.
