Effect Plugins in NotePerformer + Automation

Hi all,

I have another question regarding playback in NotePerformer.
For the Guitar part, I want at some points lower Distortion, on other points higher Distortion.

I wanted to do this by adding a Distortion Effect Plugin in the Play Mode. However, since all instruments are loaded in at the same instance of NotePerformer, the Distortion affects all instruments, not only the guitar.

I want this plugin only to affect the Guitar.

And I want to have an automation line, so I can turn on / off the effect plugin at some points, or turn another one on!

Thank you very much!

For Guitar…I recommend using HALion Sonic. It comes with Dorico, and has some pretty nice/advanced guitar sounds (certainly better guitars and other rock/pop/jazz instruments than NP). It also has a stack of amp-simulators and built in effects, and most if not all of the controls in Sonic can be ‘learned’ and automated from Dorico CC lanes (I.E. learn a CC to punch effects on/off, modulate knobs/faders/etc).

People underestimate Sonic, and the base “Sonic Selection” content that ships with all the major Steinberg Hosts, but it’s packed with some pretty good stuff (Think Yamaha MOTIF style/quality). It’s very tweakable, and Sonic is packed with automatable effects…across 4 AUX buses, plus the mains of each audio output you wish to activate.

If you insist on going through NP > External VST effects hosted in the Dorico Mixer…

Play Tab…

Start a new instance of NP in an instrument Slot. Open it, and IGNORE the graphic shown about reinitializing with the Note Performer playback template.

Change your guitar stave to use the new instance.

Set the expression map to the Note Performer expression map.

Click/Select the lane of your guitar part in the Play Tab.

Send any MIDI Program Change to the instance. If you have a MIDI Keyboard-Controller connected you can use that to send it. If not, you can temporarily use an expression map that sends a PC event on init, then swap back to your Note Performer expression map.

You should see that the NP instance now shows some kind of instrument on the mixer. Now you can use the menus in NP to change the instrument to the guitar of your choice.

Now you’ll have an isolated instance of Note Performer of which you can run effect plugins of your choice in the Dorico Mixer.

Unfortunately, there’s no way in Dorico (natively) to ‘automate’ such an effect plugin (Dorico doesn’t support VST automation lanes, nor MIDI side-chaining features at this time).

I know of some ways to do it with third party plugins like bidule (fully registered version running in an instrument slot forwarding MIDI over OSC to another instance in an effect slot), but it’s complicated. Using Sonic (or some other plugin that can host its own effect chains) is a good bit simpler than jumping through these hoops.

What you can do without third party stuff to swap effects, is have different instances of NP with different guitar settings. Have multiple guitar staves, and move to the stave you need for the desired effect.

In Write and Engrave modes, empty staves get hidden, so unless your effect change is in the middle of a measure, you should be able to get a clean looking score.

Here’s a thread where I attempt to offer some tips and tricks with NP.
NotePerformer 4 Banks and Effects - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

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So if I use HALion Sonic, I can automate Distortion On / Off for example?

Yes…

Manually set up an instance of Sonic 7. Point a guitar stave to it. Set the stave to use the Default expression map (at least to begin with).

Dail in some different guitar sounds while your score plays. Just play around a bit and sample some of the existing presets.

Play around with the effects tab, check out the Sonic Manual…

You’ll discover that you can right click pretty much any control in Sonic, choose ‘learn’, and then send it a CC to use to automate that control.

You can also stack several guitar sounds in different channels, and use a channel bouncing technique in the expression map to simply ‘change instrument slots’ as needed.

It’s also possible to put Sonic in a special mode that allows it to respond to MIDI Program Changes (A General MIDI soundset by default).

I’d do a tutorial for you with screen shots and all, but it’ll have to wait until later.

Meanwhile, have a look at it. You might even enjoy just opening up a stand alone instance of HALion Sonic 7 and playing it with a MIDI keyboard/controller for a bit. Get an idea of how it works on its own…without the complications of a host.

It’s packed with some great stage sounds when it comes to Rock/Pop/Jazz/Fusion/Techno/Blues, etc. There’s a good bit of stuff you can ‘adjust’ about all the sounds as well.

The built in effects are nice, and pretty powerful.
I.E. You can dial up a ‘clean’ guitar sound; then, run it through a series of effects, then through a virtual amp, etc.

It’s worth checking out.

Ah thank you, I’m currently checking it out and it works fine!

The question now is just:
I do not find the Automation Line.
So if I click Learn Midi CC, I don’t see an automation line anywhere nor does it automate anything!

Are you using a MIDI Controller that can send a CC? If so, send something, and you should notice the control locking on to it.

If not, you can use an Expression Map to send one. It has an audition button built in to send a switch.

For now, I recommend cycling through the included guitar presets, that’ll give you some ideas…

When I get a chance, I’ll come back and do you a tutorial for some Indepth goodies.

One idea to keep in mind, is that it’s often quicker/easier to have 16 guitar sounds all setup in those 16 channels. I’ll show you how to make score directions and expression maps where you can quickly/easily just jump among the instrument slots.

From there, if you really want/need to do complicated automations, it’s certainly doable, but with added work drawing things into the CC automation lanes of Dorico.

Sonic has several CCs that are locked in via defualt…for the 8 QC controls, volume, pan, sustain, and some others. Those are listed in the Sonic 7 User Manual. Avoid using those for ‘learned’ stuff.

Ah yes, that seems like the easiest way to do (and the way I probably want it). I’m so far to be able to create those different instrument slots. How can I change the channel to switch between the instrument slots in the score?

If you have Dorico Pro (Not sure about the little brother versions, I’d have to check)

I’ll have to come back later to get very deep into this (step by step examples).

For now…
The short version:
Make a new “Player Technique” of the type ‘direction’ in the Guitar Category.
Custom playing techniques • Dorico Pro Help • Reader • Steinberg

You’ll link that with a “Playback technique”.

Then in an expression map, you’ll associate the Playback technique with the desired MIDI channel (Sonic Slot).

Once you’ve got some Techniques built, it’s just a matter of dropping them on your score where they are needed.

Note, some of the guitar sounds included in Sonic Selection have key-switches, and might even support some of the Guitar Techniques that are already set up in Dorico (You’ll need to make expression maps to get them to ‘play back’).

P.S.
There might be some good guitar expression maps for Sonic already included with Dorico. I can’t get to it right now to see where they are hiding, but as soon as I can, I’ll take a close look and help you find it, understand it, and more.

I’ll walk you through setting up 16 effect chains and getting directions for those in Dorico. You’ll be able to use that same expression map with multiple instances and extra staves to get way more sounds at your fingertips.

Again, Sonic can accept program changes too if you set a mode, and number/rate sounds a certain way.

And there’s more you can do…a lot more, but baby steps :slight_smile:

I’m not at a worthy workstation right now…until I can get to one, maybe some others will drop in some tips.

I’m currently missing one thing I guess.
So here is my documentation:

I have HALion Sonic 7 loaded in here. And I have two different channels with different instruments (currently working this out for the synthesizer).

I have created an expression map which is called “Synthesizer” and selected as the expression map.

In the expression map I have a control change that says “Buzz Sound”. It should do an absolute Control Change to Channel 1 (which is the Zoomorphia).

I created a Playback Technique that is called “Buzz Sound”:

It also uses the playing technique “Buzz Sound”.

However, Dorico is just always playing back Channel 1, but not switching to Channel 2 if I do another playing technique for Channel 2.

Did I miss something?

Fixed it.

The problem was, that the second channel was set to “Out 2” instead of “Main”, so my sound was just not happening for some reason. Set it to Main and now works as it should.

Now it would be cool, if I had some possibilities, to change the synth / create my own patches for the HALion Flux.

EDIT:

I just realized, I need to switch from the “Mix” Panel to the “Edit” Panel, to access the Synth!

Did you select the expression map?

Have a look at this example project…
ChannelBouncingSynths.dorico (617.6 KB)

There is quite a bit you can do indeed. You can use the FLUX macro screen to build your own programs and layers. You can save programs, and layers.
Here’s the manual for the FLUX synth itself:
Flux

Sonic will allow you to have up to 4 layers per instrument slot (program).
See the EDIT tab. Notice the L1, L2, L3, L4 sub-tabs. INSERTS, etc.

You also get an Arp engine (FLEXP).

It’s a pretty deep instrument!

At some point you might want to have a peek at the Demo for Full HALion 7. That would let you see all the libraries that come with Sonic 7 “Collections”, and also get a peek at the heavy duty sound design features of HALion 7.

I’m not sure if FLUX in Sonic allows you to enter your own custom wave-tables, but if you have full HALion you most certainly can. You can even mix/match different synth types in the same program. You get several. Additive, Subtractive, FM, Wavetable, Granular, Spectral, plus extensive sampling.

Here’s a short walk in Sonic demonstrating some Sonic sound design concepts. In this case, adding some articulations to some string staves and layering up some stuff.

Here’s one showing how to forge a 12 string guitar out of two 6 strings. Note, that’s before the free Sonic SE allowed us to edit the 4 layers. Now you don’t have to use multiple channels/slots, but could it get to fit on multiple layers in a single slot. Still, it gets around an older version of Sonic and demonstrates how you can layer up slots, transpose, keyboard spit, etc.

Hi Chris. Brian is giving you some great advice here. In addition to that, it would be good to note that NotePerformer does have guitar effects, which can be turned on or off by CC changes. They include distortion, fuzz box, heavy distortion, chorus, flanger, phaser, wah-wah.

For more details, you can see this thread:

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I didn’t realize it, but NP might have some different guitars and effects that can be called up via CC. Just ran across this thread…

Here’s a script that’ll tell you what messages to send, either via expression maps or controller lanes.
NotePerformer 4: Artificial Intelligence-based Playback of Musical Notation

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