How to setup 3-organ staves for playback w noteperformer

Dorico
1

Hi all,

Forgive me if this has been explained, but I’ve not been able to find it. I simply want to connect the two different manuals and pedals to separate stops in note performer. (which I am demoing) When I open Organ in the play editor I’m not seeing how to make a distinction for the 3 different staves. Is it related to voices?

thanks for any help you can give.

2
  1. Go to Play mode.
  2. Click the disclosure arrow to the left hand side of “Organ”, on the left.
  3. Click the override toggle to the left of “All Voices”, just underneath. This will give you a separate mixer channel per voice.
  4. Click the “e” to the left of the NotePerformer VST Instrument, on the right hand side.
  5. Click each of the "Church Organ"s at the top of the mixer channels that appear, in order to bring up an “Override Sound” menu. Then select the sound you want that voice to play.
3

First enter the music, because you can only assign different voices to different playback channels when the voices actually exist in the score!

Then in Play mode, assign the voices to the MIDI channels you want (see attachment).

Then open the NotePerformer mixer and set the sounds for the Swell, Great and Pedal divisions.

You also need to select the correct stops for each division by setting a CC value in the MIDI automation data (or by creating a playing technique and adding a new entry in the NotePerformer expression map). Go to NotePerformer 3: Artificial Intelligence-based Playback of Musical Notation to find the values you want.

I would disagree with Leo’s “severely limited” comment. It is certainly a small instrument, but it’s well designed for its size. The worst feature (IMO) is the lack of a 16ft pedal flue stop that will balance the manuals, though Arne Wallander says the samples are an accurate imitation of the real instrument. The obvious way to make up for that on the real instrument would to be couple the pedal to one or both manuals, but you can’t do that with Dorico and NP except by duplicating the notes - you can’t send one Dorico voice to several MIDI channels simultaneously.
organ voices.png

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4

Sorry - I retract that statement. I’d not actually looked into how NotePerformer accesses organ stops. I have, now - it looks reasonably well-organised. (And thank you Rob for drawing that to my attention; it likely won’t factor into my work any time soon but it might be useful one day)

5

FWIW, the one time I used the NP organ and wanted to make registration changes in mid-piece, I made a separate expression map for it with a selection of registrations, with playing techniques to match. Since it doesn’t make sense for the organ to respond to any of the “orchestral” playing techniques, that way I could assign my own expression map to the organ channels, without editing the (huge) existing NP expression map and the risk of accidentally screwing something up.

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6

argh, Dorico keeps locking up with Noteperformer. It worked fine until the demo timed out. I restarted Dorico - even restarted my MacBook. It works fine with simple projects with 4 players, but when I open the original project (full orch) that I wanted to test it on it keeps locking up.

But thanks for the great information. Hopefully, I’ll be able to try it soon.

7

The trial version of NP crashing Dorico if it times out while playing is a known issue.

AFAIK the only work round is to quit Dorico before NP times out. Set a 15 minute timer on your cellphone, or whatever!

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8

Thanks Rob. I finally realized it had corrupted the project file. I restored a backup and all is good. Still trying to decide if I want to purchase it. In some respects it sounds better than the Halion SO, in other ways not so much. It’s just for mock-ups so i dunno.

10

Or one could send Arne $10.75 (or the equivalent in one’s own currency) for a month’s license. That would solve the time limitation in any one sitting, and if one kept up the monthly license long enough (a year?) one would own NP outright.