Of likely trivial interest to all but a niche subset of Dorico users, I thought I’d share that I found it extremely easy to automatically place notes on multiple staves with the aid of Scaler 2 software. This is a crude operation compared to the achievement of the Dorico team that can generate notes from chord symbols in the latest release. My approach is done by setting up a virtual midi device and adding it as an additional midi controller in Dorico, enabling it to be used for note input in real time. Scaler supports multi-voice output and divisi for the transfer of automatically generated chords and note patterns. The notes play with the sounds of the virtual instruments that are loaded in Dorico. Scaler is run inside a plug-in host. I use Element (free or donation), which is similar to Blue Cat Patchwork or Plogue Bidule. For those unfamiliar with Scaler 2, it is a tool that generates many different scales, patterns, chords, arpeggios, etc from just a few basic parameters or selected presets.
This was a fun activity to show the potential of auto-notation, but lacks the power of dragging midi files into Dorico from Scaler. i.e. real time midi transfer does not yet have the ability to alter note durations (that I could find). I am just scratching the surface and I’m looking forward to future developments in this area (for fun, not for serious composing). As a next step, it would be interesting to input full chords from Scaler (also easy) then use Dorico’s chord conversion to generate a “score”.
A short video is attached.