I was recommended TDR Nova as a VST EQ plugin. It’s free, has graphical EQ, high and low pass filters, and I find really excellent instead of the EQ faders that come with Dorico.
Hi Daniel … regarding the issue brought up by witold - access to VST instruments, inability to scroll down list. Has this been sorted? I am having the same problem in Dorico 4 on a Mac. The scrolling list works fine on a single screen, but when you are using Dorico 4 on 2 screens, it’s impossible to scroll down to the bottom of the VST instrument list.
(this issue seemed to get completely lost in subsequent comments here …)
As far as I see, no. In multi-screen setup the problem persists.
Witold
Indeed, unfortunately there’s no improvement in that area as yet.
hi, can we revisit this topic please? i am having frustrating times with dorico trying to compose in the program directly with all of my vsts running. i have finally gone back to “all halion” by re-applying the playback template. now, for starters, i would like to replace the upright bass with my vi pro acoustic bass. how do i accomplish this? i need to understand how to work with expression maps, it seems, and understand endpoint configuration. in dorico pro 4. thanks in advance for any help.
Good @mrphyzz - those are big topics, and I can’t think of a great way to help you just in a forum post. Have you been through any of the videos? Or do you have some specific questions we can answer?
thanks for your response. the problem is indeed that any of this is a big topic. i have watched several videos, but am not confident they address dorico 4; everything seems to be about 3.5 and before, or too general to really be helpful, or i have to hunt through a livestream and find complex explanations that may not apply to my situation.
as for the vi bass, i understand how to go to the play page, select “vst rack”, hit the plus and add an instrument, then go to inspector and set the channel (correct?). what is not clear to me is what the exact function of the expression map would be here, and what i would enter therein. it would be nice to for example be able to set sounds so that when i enter “arco” it plays sustained notes, while a text entry in the score of “pizz.” would cause plucked notes to be heard. how about achieving this as a modest, immediate goal? 
and then moving on to other things, such as “endpoint configuration”.
Just as a start, and on the chance that vi Acoustic Bass follows a standard format at least for elementary techniques such as arco and pizz., I would find out what expression setting Dorico uses for the HALion string bass and try applying that.
If the vi Acoustic Bass has special settings, you will need to have its manual handy to decipher the specific key codes in order to even begin an expression map.
The VSL VI instruments use a combination of keyswitches and CC1 controller to select an articulation in the Matrix, so you’ll need to know what those values are to create an expression map. The 3.5 documentation should be fine for learning this process.
Right… An expression map does what you are asking - An expression map says "When you see pizz, I need you to switch to this MIDI channel or play that keyswitch (whatever a specific kind of VST needs. ) While the PLAY tab has enhancements in Dorico 4, Expression maps are the same so you will be good to look at those.
It is because VST’s are so different (not Dorico’s fault) that you need to have different maps in the first place - so you can’t rely at all that a map meant for Halion will work correctly with something else. Making one from scratch isn’t that hard - but can be a fair bit of work especially for the better libraries. So do look on the forum for maps someone might have already made for a given VST.
The effort to do less work is (I think) one reason that you first map a Playing Technique in the score to a Playback Technique - and it is the Playback technique will you use to map to something you want a VST to do. Sounds complicated, but its really just a way to be lazy and gives you the ability say certain things in the score mean the same thing so your actual expression map stays smaller.
Lots of things to learn, but it is straight forward I think after you’ve used them a bit.
Hello,
This is a situation when Daniel and one of Steinberg tech guys could help me out of a serious showstopper in D4.1. As I have created a large and complete template in Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 I had to write some new expression maps in Dorico. And here I stepped on a mine: adding a new playback or playing technique works till the moment when any of them is set as a global (clicking on the white star). Immediately after clicking OK D4.1 crashes. I have tried at least 20 different ways to cheat this situation, but all of them ended by crash, so by now Steinberg should have received a pile of crash reports. Interesting is that a) in D4.031 it was not happening, b) it does happen only on my Mac Pro 2020 with Big Sur, but not on my Macbook Pro 2013 also with Big Sur.
So, guys, any help here will be very much appreciated, because putting it simply I am completely stuck.
Witold
Global? You mean click the Star to save a new playback technique as the default? Someone else will have to explain why that would be useful… but mostly for expression maps what you do is assign to the “normal” playback technique, the sound you want for a given instrument by default, right?
Just checking on your understanding 'cause we want to help a new brother… Its not that likely that you need to create a bunch of new Playback techniques. Occasionally sure, or for unusual instruments. But for the vast majority of the time there is already what you need in the (I dunno hundreds? ) existing Playback techniques. You just map them to a CC or keyswitch or MIDI channel in the map.
To put the problem in a proper perspective: no matter our opinion on necessity of adding new techniques as “global” this function should work correctly. And in this particular case on my Mac Pro with Big Sur it does not. For me it is crucial because I do all projects on this machine and now I waste hours to overcome something that should naturally work and worked in previous versions.
To further address gdball’s concerns, “global” or “default” means that the techniques are not project-specific and once set up stay available for any project, new or old. And that is very useful. Let me give an example: some of brass libraries have a “Brass Ensemble” instance that, besides of having basic techniques like legato or staccato, have particular controls for size and type of the ensemble and “regular” or “cluster” playback. There are no ready-for-use techniques in core set in Dorico that can be used for such purpose. Of course one can try to use theoretically unused available techniques (like f.e. Ga (open)) but this would create a meaningless link between what library does and what you write on a staff. So setting up a new, meaningful playing/playback technique and making it global makes it usable in most cases where such options appear. In this particular example I wanted to create “cluster” playing technique that would be linked to “cluster” playback technique that would be used in expression map as a control of CC#4, i.e. cluster->CC04=127. But if another library controls clusters by a keyswitch I could reuse this playing/playback technique and assign it to a keyswitch used in a given library (f.e. SAM brass uses a keyswitch to activate clusters). Since I began using Dorico I had to create several dozens of specific playing/playback techniques or I wouldn’t be able to fully use my libraries. Another example would be more and more popular ready runs (for brass, strings and woods). These runs can be of different scales, lengths and directions. In Dorico there is no technique that allows for activating a “5th major up” run in flute. So, believe me, using the core set of Dorico techniques is not sufficient, unless you use very basic options of a contemporary library.
So, back to my core problem: using in my setup Vienna Synchron Orchestra libraries, BBC SO Pro, Berlin Woodwinds, a big set of EWQL vocal libraries, LASS and Komplete libraries requires creating at least 20 new techniques and I want them available every time I use these libraries. And this can be done ONLY when these techniques are set up as global. But then Dorico explodes…
Witold
PS Like everything this problem can be cheated, but this is just a workaround, not a professional solution. The cheat would be to add all these required new techniques, keep them as project-specific and save an empty project as your private “template”, what would mean that until this problem is solved you’d need to begin your new project by using this “template”, no matter what and how many instruments you would need in reality in this project.
PPS To better understand the need of creating so many new techniques it would be suggested to have a look at at f.e. VST synchron player with brass, woods, strings or even tam-tams loaded.
LATEST DEVELOPMENT in this subject
I have just found another thread with a similar problem about user-defined techniques. I have read the posts there and following the advice I copied the userlibrary.xml file from crashing machine to the other machine with the same OS (Big Sur) and D4. Once I replaced the original file with the copied one, Dorico 4 would not even start. It was continuously crashing on boot. So obviously there is something wrong with the userlibrary.xml file.
Daniel,
Would you be interested in having a look at this file? There must be something that will explain crashes in it.
Witold
1 Like
Does global then, in this case, mean the same thing as default (clicking the star)?
(I think of something defined as global as affecting all layouts of a given file, but then in some languages, perhaps, the terms are interchangeable.)
By “global” doesn’t he mean “save to make it available in future projects?” That’s what the star does, otherwise an expression map won’t appear in the list the next time you start a new project. Or am I missing something?
Gentlemen,
Let’s use the term “default”. It will still mean the same: available for all projects.
Witold
“Default” is the term that Dorico uses - Global and Local generally mean something else in Dorico.
I only cared because I was trying to understand what you were doing for sure, and maybe help. The feature is explosion free for me. I’m out.
Now the situation got worse. D4 on my Mac Pro crashes on its own userlibrary.xml. Hours of work went to wind. My only options are: restore all these techniques manually (i.e. spend many many hours on it), hopefully have the file repaired by someone from Steinberg (I looked at the file, there is a gigantic part of absolute mess of lines containing garbage data), get help from Steinberg in transferring D3.5 techniques to D4.
Daniel?
Witold
It’s the middle of the night on a weekend. You might just have to be patient.
I know, sorry. Just imagine my “happiness” when I found this situation.
I will very much appreciate your help after weekend.
Witold