Hi all - for fun, I’d reproduced a section of the Blue Danube into Dorico, and it sounded great with playback in Spitfire BBC SO. However, I heard amazing things about NotePerformer and I’ve tried switching to that.
It sounds great, except where I had written a French Horn (in F) part - when I copied the score, I needed to add a -5 pitch change in the spitfire instrument to have the horns pitch sound correct. But in Noteperfomer of course, it sounds wrong (5 pitches too high). I understand NP will do this automatically for me, but it isn’t working. Dorico is set to Concern Pitch, and I’ve transposed the horns exactly as per the score.
What do I need to do to have the Horns sounds correct using Noteperfomer now I’m not adjusting the pitch in the Spitifre instrument UI?
See images of my Dorico notation and the same bars of the Blue Danbube.
There is no difference between how BBSO and NP interpret the pitches in Dorico, so you should not have changed the pitches…
The Score is notated at Transposed Pitch, not Concert Pitch (It’s confusing because the only transposing instruments in score are Horns and Trumpets and these are notated without any key signatures!)
So the score should look correct if you view it at Transposed Pitch…
So the Horns now sound very high (too high - first note is a b), and the Horns key has changed on the staff. So…it sounds like I need to re-enter the horn parts in transposed pitch with the first note as the “E” - as per the music notation in the score. Is that correct?
So, it looks like you need to transpose all the horn notes by a 5th down. Don’t worry, you don’t need to re-enter all the music!
What I would do is open Galley View, filter the 4 horns, select all, then type Shift+I, and in the popover t-p5, then Enter.
It also looks like you have entered C major as (local) Key Signature for your horns, which is probably not intentional. If it was to avoid accidentals in the key signature, you might prefer to change the instruments to F Horns without Key Signature, or to change the instrument definition of the current horns.
Of course it does, because you initially entered the notes on a Concert Pitch view and now they show as a Transposed Score would show them. That’s the source of your original problem!
The published Strauss original score is notated at Transposed Pitch, so, to sound right, it should look the same as Dorico’s Transposed View.
You can fix this very simply. Select all the notes in Horns and Trumpets and do shift-I t-p5 (this will transpose all notes down a perfect 5th)
sounds much better now