When adding instruments in Setup mode, I don’t see any differentiation in the labelling of solo and section players – for example, both solo and section violin players are labelled “violin”. However, these and further categories are differentiated by the icons (one head, two heads, etc) that are attached to the labels.
In Play mode, however, I can’t find any differentiation between these, in either the VST panel (on the right) or the instruments/tracks panel (on the left) – both solo and section violin players are labelled “violin”. I’m guessing that if one were using a unique VST player instance for each instrument, one could save each VST player’s endpoint configuration, name it accordingly, and have those new names show up on both the right and left panels (e.g., “kontakt vn solo” and “kontakt vns 1”). But if one is loading both solo and section player violins via the same VST (e.g., HSSE), renaming the endpoint configuration will have no effect on the instrument labels, because the new name will automatically apply to both tracks in the VST, with no differentiation between “solo” and “section”.
If I’ve understood this correctly, is there any way of doing things in Play mode that will allow for instrument label differentiation?
Play mode shows instruments rather than players, so the icons that appear in Setup mode don’t appear in Play mode. However, whether or not the instrument is held by a single or section player is taken into account when you save an endpoint configuration, so Dorico will correctly apply the appropriate sound for the type of player in future projects.
I’m wondering about how to easily differentiate between the solo and section players when working with their individual track lanes and/or piano roll durations, in Play mode.
[Later . . . ] Now I see that by changing instrument names by using the “edit names” feature in the Players panel, one can not only differentiate as one wishes (“Vn solo”, “Vns 1” , etc) there, but that these edited names then also appear in the track list (i.e., left panel) in Play mode – which is exactly what I was trying to do – as well as in the score. (I also see that one can then save these edited names as defaults, for future projects.)
However, if anyone knows whether such edits can produce unintended negative consequences, please let me know!
Renaming instruments changes their staff labels. If I remember correctly, you’re still using Dorico 3.5? If so, you don’t have the option that was introduced in Dorico 4 to use player names in staff labels, rather than instrument names. Just something to be aware of, perhaps.
I had somehow missed or forgotten about this setting in Dorico 4 which is hugely useful if you want to have multiple players with the same name (for instance when using multiple virtual instruments) so it just appears as one name in the score but in the Play window you can nevertheless more easily distinguish between the instruments as that will still use the instrument name. Thanks for the tip!