I am tired of endless random switch flipping and setting twisting to make play back work consistently and so I want to learn it from scratch. I tried the first video which begins: “The first thing you’ll notice about Play Mode is that it does not show the notation- Instead it shows a piano roll.”
Stop. No it doesn’t. Mine looks completely different:
You can see the piano roll by clicking on the icon to the right of the Mixer one (three vertical bars) towards the left bottom of the screen. Above the ‘Dorico beep’ channel (grey).
Search for Anthony Hughes ‘Discover Dorico’ tutorials - all on You Tube.
@rayates56 Take heart! I was a 30 year Finale user who switched “cold turkey” and actually found the Play Mode (a basic DAW) a lot easier to work with than Finale’s playback system. It also nicely uses Garritan’s libraries. I use Garritan’s Personal Orchestra 5 library daily with Dorico. If you are familiar with controlling the instruments in a Garritan library, I would highly recommend using it with Dorico.
Yes, I found that by trial and error. My point, not well expressed, is that the video does not mention that, or much of anything else about the whole page layout.
The Youtube search is not helpful. You get many, many that are irrelevant, plus mixed in are ‘Play Mode in Dorico - How to’ and ‘Introduction to Play Mode in Dorico’ and one more that are identical and seven years old. Much further down is ‘The New Play Mode in Dorico 4’. (Is Dorico 5 different?) Why is there no up-to-date list of these IN Dorico documentation? There is no definition of terms or overall description of the page and its sections and controls. It is more a tour through selected features where everything works.
Trying to use Dorico Help to learn it means endless paths through piecemeal hyperlinks (good luck finding a definition of VST). None of these videos or Help files are a from-the-ground-up tutorial.
I have no need for complex audio output, just basic playback for proof-listening. But I often get instruments that just stop working for no reason, and so I fiddle with channels, Ex. map., Port, Routing, Enable Independent Voice Playback, etc, mostly at random, and eventually hit something fixes it. I finally fixed it yesterday with this method, but it’s not reasonable to have to do it this way because of the lack of good documentation.
If you’re just doing basic playback and not otherwise changing play settings, then the first thing to try when you have issues is reapplying the playback template, in Play > Playback Templates. (This will delete any customizations you have made in Play mode, which is why it’s not a great solution if you have customized things.)
To be fair, VST is a concept which exists outside of Dorico. Having it in the manual would be a little like having “printer” there.
Hi @rayates56 - tutorial advice I will leave to others; with the Online Help, if you haven’t read them already, I found these pages (Dorico 5.1) useful in identifying the various components of the Project Window in ‘Play Mode’:-
Play mode • Dorico Pro Help • Reader • Steinberg
And then moving onto the Key Editor specifically:-
Key Editor panel • Dorico Pro Help • Reader • Steinberg - which shows/displays the button to open the Key Editor panel, within the body of the text.
Also, the ‘First Steps Guide’ (Dorico 5.1) is definitely worth running through; here’s a chunk explaining about ‘Playing Back Music’:-
Playing back music • Dorico First Steps • Reader • Steinberg
Hope that all helps.
Bob
But…VST was developed by Steinberg in 1996 so it is certainly “in the family.”
@rayates56 VST is the abbreviation for Virtual Studio Technology that Dorico’s mother company, Steinberg, developed nearly 30 years ago. It simply is a format that sampled instrument sounds (or created synthesized sounds) can be plugged into a DAW (digital audio work station of which Dorico’s PLAY Mode is a simplied version). You might also run across AU which is Audio Units specific to Apple devices - unimportant unless you use their products - which can also be used by the PLAY Mode just like a VST.
So, the fundamentals from my perspective of:
Learning this stuff is not made easy by Dorico or Steinberg if one does not have a fundamental knowledge of DAWs. I have a fair amount of pipe organ notational work and I use Hauptwerk that has a very different type of VST interface that took hours upon hours to learn how to interface it appropriately with Dorico. Most VSTs, however, are much simply to use with Dorico. I, for example, continued using my Garritan VST libraries that I had with Finale before switching and they work beautifully. I’m not overly impressed with the supplied VST library (Halion, Ionica and a couple of others) but I produce near performance quality audio with my work.
Anyway, hopefully this helps a little. Best of luck!
Thanks, kasky for the effort. Currently everything works. Yesterday it all worked, until one instrument just went silent during playback. No settings had changed, hence the random pecking to find something. Any idea what could be doing that?
Also, I would really like to try my Garritan Library, but I hesitate to switch anything in case it breaks something else and I can’t get it back.
The only thing that comes to mind is if you have Enable Independent Voice Playback selected, it could be that at some point one accidentally entered notation in a voice that does not have an associated instrument. I have done this inadvertently more than once.
I would disable Independent Voice Playback. Then everything on that staff will play to the assigned voice. Just for accuracy, I would also go back to that staff, and make sure that notation is, indeed, reflecting the proper voice. If it’s a single voice then I would select all, right click the selection and change all to upstem voice 1. If independent voices, you may need to filter one voice at a time to figure out which one may be in error.
Otherwise, I cannot think of a reason for playback just to stop for one instrument / voice.
As for using your Garritan instruments, save your file as another filename then you can explore. You can go to VST and MIDI settings and where you have, for example, “Halion” selected, click on the down arrow beside it, select Garritan then whatever Garritan library you have installed. Go back to your first instrument, change it in the drop down to the Garritan library and enter the channel you will use. The Aria interface pops up automatically for when clicking on the “e” to the right of the port and channel numbers. The rest (assigning instruments to numbered channels on the Aria interface) should be familiar to you.
I did some other things in another program and came back to Dorico. Now all voices play but the output is fortissimo piano pounding out the lowest notes on the keyboard. It never got this bad before. All I can do is post the screen shots and .mp3
and hope someone has a suggestion:
Here is SETUP:
Here is the first chord in WRITE:
PLAY VST and MIDI
TRACK INSPECTOR:
Halion Sonic: (Why are all the slots now Piano? They used to show the right instruments.)
ENDPOINT SETUP:
Try reapplying the playback template, in Play > Playback Templates.
How do I know which of those Playback Templates is the right one?
The highlighted one is the default in Dorico 6. When you open the dialog, the one that you’re currently using is highlighted; If you’re using a different one, you can just reapply it by hitting Apply and Close.
Thanks, that worked! although I had to do it twice. The first time the Ex. map: settings changed to defaults and I got normal piano. I reassigned the Ex. map: settings to the right instruments and the awful pounding piano returned. Did it again the same way and this time the Ex. map: settings did not revert to default and the sounds are correct.
Thanks, kasky. “and whatever Garritan library you have installed.” How do I a select a Garritan library? Does the Garritan library have to installed specifically for Dorico? I have a Garritan folder in Programs/. Does Dorico find it there?
All I can select in VST And MIDI is Aria Player, and then the Ex.map options are still all HSO…
I click the slanted E and ARIA Player opens. I can assign instruments there to slots but nothing changes in the Ex.map options and there is no sound.
I have a Garritan folder in Program Files/ and it contains a ‘ARIA Player’ folder and a ‘Instruments for Finale’ folder.
First, if your original file was an imported XML, use the Change Instrument option (SETUP mode) for each instrument to make sure Dorico recognizes the correct instrument for each staff. With imported files, the instrument name may look correct but not jive with Dorico’s instrument definition.
At that point (re)apply the correct Playback Template for the instruments you wish to use. There is at least one Garritan Expression Map set already written you can download and use.
There should be no need to change any Expression Map settings after one applies a Playback Template; the Playback Template’s function is to take care of that itself.
Thanks, Derrek. None of these are imported XML. I found the time to cleanup, proof-check and correct Imported Finale XML to be more time consuming than just reentering.
I found Garritan/Finale files on the playback-templates page but no instructions about what to do with them. And I do have a /Garritan folder that presumably has sounds but, again, no info about how to get Dorico to use them.
