How do I have 2 VST instruments in one staff

Hello Everyone, I’m slowly forcing myself to move to Dorico and abandon Sibelius. But one thing that is soooooooooooooooooooo easy in Sibelius with Noteperformer is the instrument count. So a french Horn stave can go from playing a solo instrument to 8 with one command. BUT…it doesn’t sound half as good as using my Spitfire BBC library !

So , is it possible to have both the “solo french horn” and the “4 French Horn” BBC player attached to the same staff in the Play page. So it switches from Divis to Full ?..these are separate patches and bbc only allows a single instrument loaded in the player at one time. So this would mean 2 VST instances assigned to one staff and some way of deciding which one played .

possible ?

any tips most gratefully received

best

e

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You can’t send the same music to two endpoints simultaneously, I’m afraid, and you would only be able to send the same material to two instances of a VST instrument if you use something like Vienna Ensemble Pro so that you can address those two VST instruments on separate MIDI channels. Then they can be presented to Dorico as a single instrument with multiple channels, and you can use MIDI channel changes in your expression map to cause VE Pro to switch between them.

Hello @dspreadbury,
Well, on this topic I already presented few ideas for the Expression Maps improvements:

  1. Expression Maps Improvements. For more information (there are links to other topics in the link):
    [FIR] Expression Maps Improvements for Dorico 4
    Playing Techniques Expression Map setup - #4 by Thurisaz

In these two topics, linked above, you could check for more details.
I hope this is possible to happen! :slight_smile: It would pretty nice if you are able to realize such serious E.M. improvement. :slight_smile:
Thank you in advance! :slight_smile:

Best wishes,
Thurisaz

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thank you. Ok so this is doable through VSL Ensemble Pro. Which I have but don’t use…time to dust it off

best

ed

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If I’m understanding you correctly, this is easy to do using 2 different Voices on the same staff. Turning View/Voice Colors on can help keep the voices straight. Make sure all the solo horn music is in one voice, and move the music for the section horns to another voice. Once configured, the below image will play back as BBC Horn in the first bar and BBC Horns a4 in the third bar. Is that what you are trying to do?

In Play, create 2 VST Instruments, one for the BBC solo Horn and one for the Horns a4. Load the correct expression map for each. Click the little arrow to the left of the horn staff to expand the options. Instead of the default “All Voices” you now want to specify different assignments for different voices. Specify your Horn VST for the appropriate voice, and your Horns a4 VST for the other.

horn

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oh fantastic

yes so I go from 4 note chords (4 solo horns ) to a tutti melody all on the same stave ?

I do this by switching voices for the tutti section ?

best

ed

Oh My it WORKS !!!

Thanks so much. easy fix.Most grateful

best

ed

2 Likes

Great, glad you got it working. BTW, VEPro does work really great with Dorico too, and I use it by default now to load VSTs, but you don’t need to use it to accomplish what you wanted to do here.

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here is a link if anybody needs to do this:

best

ed

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One of my favorite Dorico features!! This function is high on the list of Features That Set Dorico Apart From Sibelius!

Ok

so Kontakt now works, but still no server visible in VSL:


any ideas ?

best

ed

I think when they have the Cubase/Nuendo integration/livelink whatever-it-is will solve this problem. Frankly I think multi-tambral instruments a bit advanced of a DAW feature? Certainly these kinds of things could be added here and there to Dorico, but if I was a developer I’d much rather have Dorico firmly be a notation program with good basic playback, then leave the DAW heavy lifting to Cubase. Just 2 cents.

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Perhaps the answer would be on the Vienna forum. It does work–with Kontakt as well as HALion.

You need to be running Vienna Ensemble Pro Server:
VEPRo

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ah…that is odd…I thought it was. New machine and I can’t find the server version anywhere.

very strange. I re-downloaded the software and it’s missing

best

e

Was your VEPro bundled with a sound library? Or a standalone purchase? I’m not sure the bundled package includes the Server version, but I might be wrong about that.

No it was a stand alone purchase. Very weird if launch a saved VSL custom data file with a template from another project it works fine…and get’s connected in Dorico. But it won’t launch stand alone

bizzare

thanks everyone

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It is possible to have two samples playing the same notes on a staff, if your player can hold more than one channel/sample, e.g. like Kontakt or ARIA Player. You just put both samples on the same channel.

The limitation is that you can only have one Expression Map for the channel, so they need to be similar in terms of CCs and KSs.

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I just got straight ahead samples horns. The trumpet, for example, has a few different instruments, one for mute, one for solo. Etc. is there a tutorial on loading those into different midi channels in the same instrument as you mention here? Then I guess I need an expression map to change midi channels during playback on trumpet part?
Thank you

You can either use a separate voice for each technique and use independent voice playback for the instrument, with each voice routed to a separate channel, or you can create an expression map that uses MIDI channel changes to switch between the channels.