For GuitarâŚI 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 âlearnedâ 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 âSonic Selectionâ content that ships with all the major Steinberg Hosts, but itâs packed with some pretty good stuff (Think Yamaha MOTIF style/quality). Itâs very tweakable, and Sonic is packed with automatable effectsâŚacross 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 MixerâŚ
Play TabâŚ
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 youâll have an isolated instance of Note Performer of which you can run effect plugins of your choice in the Dorico Mixer.
Unfortunately, thereâs no way in Dorico (natively) to âautomateâ such an effect plugin (Dorico doesnât 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 itâs 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.
Hereâs a thread where I attempt to offer some tips and tricks with NP.
NotePerformer 4 Banks and Effects - Dorico - Steinberg Forums