Maybe this has already been discussed, but I can’t find the right key to find it.
I have a playback template including more that one Entries (or Endpoint Configurations). I want to manually select one of them in the VST Instruments panel.
After having applied the playback template, my score has the instruments of a group (say, Vni I) linked to the channels of the first Entry/Endpoint Configuration (corresponding to a VEPRO instance in my setup).
When I have to link another group of instruments (say, Vni II) to another VEPRO instance, I would like to assign a different Entry/Endpoint Configuration in the VST Instruments panel.
However, I can’t see how to do. After adding a VST Instrument, I can select “Vienna Ensemble Pro” as an instrument, but I can’t select the corresponding Entry in Dorico’s playback template. As you can see, Entries do not appear in the instrument’s menu.
How can I do? Is there a way to select Entries (“Vni II endpoint configuration”), and not the raw Instrument (“Vienna Ensemble Pro”) as the instrument?
OK, after reading more carefully the Dorico 3 Version History, I may have understood that I didn’t understand the idea of “preferred playback template” in the Entry table. I can’t understand what “preferred” means, when assigning sounds to instruments in a score.
When clicking the cog icon in the VST Instruments pane, you can link 16 MIDI channels for each MIDI port to each instrument in the score. If the virtual instrument can’t support multiple ports, your manual playback template is limited to 16 instruments/channels. Not enough for an orchestral score.
For example, take a VEPRO project made by several instances, each one with 16 channels. This may be a project made for exchange with Logic Pro, whose support for multiport VEPRO is not yet optimal. Or with other DAWs, where working with 16 channels per instance is in any case easier. Or you simply prefer to avoid huge mixer pages in VEPRO, and prefer to work with modules of 16 channels each, each one with an instrument section.
What to do, in this case? Manual playback templates can’t be used as separate modules in the VST Instruments pane, to be selected to match VEPRO instances. Is there a way to link manual playback templates to VEPRO, without using multiple MIDI ports? As far as I can see, it seems this is not possible.
Again on this subject. Let’s see if I’ve understood this matter a bit better.
I have a very big template in VEPRO. It’s about 70 instances x 16 channels. It’s very detailed, since I have separate instances for things like Solo Strings, Individual Violins (part of an ensemble), Violin Desks, Vni Ia (divisi), Vni Ib (divisi), Vni I Dimension, Vni I Orchestral, Vni I Appassionata, and so on.
The initial idea was to make separate playback templates (16 channels each) for each VEPRO instance. As far as I understand, this is not possible in Dorico, where playback templates are “preferred” settings, and not individual sections.
A global Endpoint Configuration can be saved from the VST Instruments panel. This one should include all the instruments, going over the 16 channels limitation of a single-port Endpoint Configuration saved from the Endpoint Setup window.
To be sure you have all the stave instruments linked to sounds, you have to first create all the staves corresponding to the sound template. A huge score, with all the links/endpoints to be saved in the global Endpoint Configuration.
Testing this hypothesis is not exactly easy, since I first have to create this ~1000 staves score, and do all the individual instrument’s programming. Understanding in advance if this would work would be great. Having a more modular approach would be even better, so that one can work one instance a-time.
So, since I don’t get how Playback Templates work, and why the change the MIDI channel settings of my tracks, I think the best strategy, for me, when building a “template” for my scores, is this:
Do not use Dorico’s Playback Templates.
Add VST Instruments as needed. In the case of VEPRO instruments, each VST Instrument in Dorico corresponds to a VEPRO instances. I have a table showing how VEPRO instances correspond to individual instruments/sections, so I can always link Dorico tracks/instruments to the right instrument/section in VEPRO.
Open the Endpoint Setup dialog, and assign an expression map to each of the VST Instruments.
Program MIDI channels for the Dorico tracks/instruments.
Save your score, and NEVER select a Playback Template to avoid your programming to be scrambled.
Save you score as a score template to be reused for other projects.
Now, an older question resurfaces: by not using Playback templates, will any change I make to the expression maps be available in other scores? I fear they can only be updated if choosing a Playback Template containing them.
If you make a change to the expression maps in one project, you can export them via the button at the bottom of the Expression Maps dialog, and then import them manually into another project. Be sure to increment the version number field in the top section of the Expression Maps dialog (it doesn’t matter what value you choose, provided it’s higher than the previous value) before you re-export the expression maps.
If you don’t want to import them manually, then you can take the .doricolib file you export and put it in a folder called DefaultLibraryAdditions inside /Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 3. This folder will not exist by default (though it will exist if you have installed NotePerformer). Create your own folder in there, called whatever you want, and then put the .doricolib file in there. When Dorico starts up, it will add the contents of the .doricolib files in the DefaultLibraryAdditions folder to the factory library, so that its contents are available in new projects. If the version number of the expression map in a project you open is lower than the one in the DefaultLibraryAdditions folder, the expression map in the project will automatically be updated.
Maybe I’ve finally found how to configure my template. It was just a matter of trying it (and spend some nights without wasting time in sleeping).
Create all the parts of the score that have to be associated to the virtual instruments.
Create as many VST Instruments as needed. Each VST Instrument corresponding to a VEPRO instance, if you plan to use it. Connect each VST Instrument to the corresponding VEPRO instance.
Link each part of the score with the VST Instrument and MIDI channel corresponding to your VEPRO template.
In the Endpoint Setup of each VST Instrument, assign the needed expression map to each part of the score.
When done for all VST Instruments, save an Endpoint Configuration from the VST Instruments panel.
This global endpoint configuration will match the VEPRO template. One can update it by adding other VST Instruments later. Be careful to make VST Instruments and VEPRO instances always match. Plan your template very carefully.
I am brand new to Dorico. I’ve noticed that the channel assignment in dorico has to match that of EWQL in PLAY (I saw a guy from dorico loading a custom set of only the instruments he needed). I however like to have my entire EWQL loaded and manually assigned channel numbers, and which works fine. Now, I did download a playback template someone posted in the forum and it was missing percussion from EWQL. I did add them manually, but some of them did not play at all? I also tried to add more instances of VST for my division strings and could not save them by pressing ‘save endpoint configurations’. Any idea how to trouble shoot that? thanks
jakub
