Expression map, channel change, problems

Dorico
1

I have created playback techniques and expression maps to enable the use of playback techniques that are not available in the basic GM library I am using with an ARIA multi on channel one but are available in a different library on channel 3 of the same multi. So each expression involves a channel change and a transposition. I thought I had it working but each time I move to another instrument it breaks. I am working with congas, a quinto, conga, and tumba. (Haven’t reached the super tumba yet.) The odd thing is that when I add a measure that runs through all of the Quinto techniques, it works, but the previously entered Conga stops playing on channel 3 but plays on channel 1 instead (which I can see in the ARIA multi). If I add another measure of Conga notes I can see it playing as it should on channel 3 but the Quinto goes silent. The Tumba plays on channel 1 all of the time, even when I add another measure of it. I am using relative channels. On the on event I set the relative channel to 2 and on the off event I set the relative channel back to 0.

I am about ready to give up on being able to set up percussion as I need it for a full, sung-through musical.

Honest Men Percussion Test.dorico (1.8 MB)

2

I made a Dorico support request for this problem and their reply was to point me back to the forums. I hope that my return reply better describes my issues:

I have posted it on the forums and have received no help there.

Plus, something is wrong with Dorico. I believe that it must be a bug.

I set up playback techniques for a conga that do a channel change and a transposition. The channel change points to the instrument library on the ARIA multi with the conga techniques I need for playback. The transposition points to the correct MIDI note for the desired technique. I get those techniques to work.

Then I set up similar techniques for a quinto, but they have different names than the techniques I set up for the conga. The channel change is the same but the transpositions are different. I enter a test measure and I get those techniques to work. But, to my surprise, the previously entered conga notes testing its techniques no longer work. The channel change is ignored. I can see this by looking at the ARIA multi player as the notes are played.

So, I create a new measure and notes to again test all of the conga techniques. Now the previously entered conga notes work as well, but the quinto stops working.

If that’s not a bug, what is it?

Then there is another way that I might set up a percussion kit to use sounds from different percussion libraries. That would be to set endpoints for individual percussion notes. There are You Tube videos showing this. I did it myself last year. It doesn’t work anymore.

I can’t select an individual instrument in a percussion kit if the parent percussion kit is routed to an endpoint.

So I remove the routing. Then I can select an individual percussion instrument.

So, I route it to an endpoint. But as soon as I do that the parent percussion kit is routed as well and I can no longer select individual instruments in the kit.

If I delete the endpoint for the parent percussion kit and then select the instrument that I had previously routed, it is no longer routed to an endpoint.

What change has been made in Dorico that makes it impossible for me to select individual instruments in a percussion kit and apply different endpoints to them than the other instruments in the kit?

Neither way that I know of to shift to a different sound library for an individual instrument in a percussion kit works.

I can move forward for the time being without the playback, but at some point getting this playback right is something I absolutely need.

3

@Gregg_Butterfield , If you can please post something like your test measures someone may be able to diagnose the problem.
In the meantime, you might try searching the threads about using ARIA player with Dorico. IIRC, there have been a few… :wink:
— Jim

4

I remember reading on the forum just a couple of days ago that someone was successful by creating single instruments including the routing to the endpoints first, and only combining into a kit afterwards was a successful workaround.

Maybe you can try that?

5

Thank you. I could try it in a test project. But I’m halfway through converting a two and a quarter hour sung-through musical from Finale to Dorico, and I’m not confident that it would be simple to move the existing percussion to the new kits. (Note that I have four percussion kits and a couple of them have 20+ instrments.) Plus, I did try moving all of the instruments out of the kit, setting endpoints, and then moving them back into the kit. I don’t remember the details at this point as I was trying so many things to get it to work. But if it had worked I would likely be plugging away at it as a solution.

6

Thank you for your response.

A test project is posted in my first message in this topic. Since I had to use the silence template on it to make it small enough to upload to the forum, I’m not sure how much good it will be. But I don’t believe it’s an ARIA multi player problem. If a MIDI message comes in to play a note at a particular MIDI note number on a particular channel, it should play it. Coming from Finale and having made the decision to keep using the Garritan libraries and the ARIA player, I am not familiar with the VSTs that come with Dorico. If Halion can be set up to have multiple channels with a different library/percussion map on each channel, it might be possible to test this problem using it. I had thought of moving to the built in sound libraries, but I couldn’t find all of the percussion techniques that I need. Garritan’s Ethnic Percussion library does have those techniques so I went that direction.

The fact that I can get it to play all of the conga techniques correctly on channel 2 simply by entering more conga notes with the techniques into the score, and that the quinto, which was playing correctly before that stops working (no activity from it showing on channel 2), and vice-versa if I add a measure of quinto notes, leads me to believe that the most likely explanation is that there is a bug, or that there is some quirk with setting playback techniques that I don’t understand. I have created unique techniques for both conga and quinto. They are not sharing techniques because the transpositions to get to the correct note for the techniques from the base (normal) note are different. I would expect playing techniques should be independent from one another if you are only applying one technique at a time, which is what I am doing. In other words, a technique playing on my conga should not affect a technique playing on my quinto. But it’s weirder than that because it’s not like a quinto technique played prior in the score to a conga technique affects the conga------simply entering quinto notes after a measure with conga techniques stops the conga notes from play correctly everywhere in the score. Again, same thing vice-versa.

7

I created a test project. A added an individual percussion player and gave the player a name then added three percussion instruments and routed their endpoints to channels 1, 2 and 3 of an ARIA multi respectively, with different percussion libraries on each channel. Then I combined them into a kit. Playing the music back, I can see that each instrument is being routed to the correct channel. I can also make changes to the endpoint routing of each instrument.

So, that does work as you suggested.

My big project now includes 17 flows/songs with 13 more to go, so I will be doing some more testing to gage how hard it will be to create new percussion players using this method and then transferring all of the music over from my current players. I will also have to test to make sure that the instruments routed to channel 3, which in my ARIA multi setup is the one with the Ethnic percussion library, can all play the various drum techniques in the library. I expect they will, but I’ve been unpleasantly surprised on other occasions when I expected something to work.

Percussion Endpoints Test all on same multi.dorico (1.4 MB)