I need some very basic advice regarding Play Mode. I’m not at all familiar with DAWs, and perhaps most Dorico users are better acquainted than I with the basic concepts behind DAWs, but I can’t find anything on the forum that gives a basic overview of Play Mode. To give you an idea of how basic I mean, here are some questions I have:
What is a VST?
Why do I need one?
Is there a reason I would ever want to select “Symphonic Orchestra” instead of “HALion Sonic SE”?
Play Mode’s main “piano roll” is scary enough for a notation wonk like me. What’s that even scarier thing that pops up when I click the lopsided lowercase “e” under VST Instruments?
What does it do?
Why is it accessed via a lopsided lowercase “e”?
But what I really need Play Mode to do is allow me to select a different sound for vocal staves. Whatever the default vocal sound is in Dorico has a rather slow onset. When playing back vocal/instrumental music, the vocal lines sound as if they’re perpetually behind the instrumental lines, and very fast notes (i.e. sixteenth notes in Monteverdi) hardly sound at all because the note doesn’t last long enough for the sound to get going. How can I change the vocal sound to something else (even a piano would be preferable!), or even alter the onset characteristics of the vocal sound?
It is a common issue for us who write vocal music… The “Aah” or “Ooh” sounds in Halion are just unusable !
When in Play mode, in the right panel, you will notice a little “e” between the on/off button and “HALion Sonic SE”. Click on that “e” (edit ?), it will open HALion window.
In that new window, the left panel is the different channels (instruments). You will easily find those with “Aah”, you click on them and then select a piano or a clarinet and that’s it !
Hope it helps !
Here’s the Wikipedia page on VST. You can think of a VST instrument as a virtual instrument, i.e. something like a real instrument that a human can play, but in software.
Why do I need one?
You need one so that Dorico can make sound on your computer.
Is there a reason I would ever want to select “Symphonic Orchestra” instead of “HALion Sonic SE”?
No. In fact you don’t even need to choose ‘HALion Sonic SE’ yourself as Dorico will load instances of the HALion plug-in necessary to fit all the sounds you need automatically.
Play Mode’s main “piano roll” is scary enough for a notation wonk like me. What’s that even scarier thing that pops up when I click the lopsided lowercase “e” under VST Instruments?
That is the user interface for the HALion Sonic SE plug-in.
What does it do?
It allows you to change parameters, load sounds, adjust settings, etc. for the HALion Sonic SE plug-in. The only thing you actually need to know is how to change the sound loaded into one of its slots. On the left-hand side you will see a list of 16 slots, some of which will have sounds loaded into by the program, including the ones that say ‘Choir Ooh to Aah’ or whatever they are exactly called. To change the sound used, click where it says ‘Choir Ooh to Aah’ in the left-hand side, and then you will see a little search box pop up, into which you can type e.g. “Clarinet” or whatever you like, and when you finally choose a sound, it will be loaded into that slot, replacing the existing ‘Choir Ooh to Aah’ patch.
Why is it accessed via a lopsided lowercase “e”?
That lower case “e” is the symbol used in Cubase (and probably other DAWs) to stand for “editor” and shows the interface of the plug-in when it is clicked.
Daniel,
Currently, the online ‘Help’ documentation plainly omits ‘Play mode’.
With upcoming update, are there plans for including at least some guidance on using ‘Play mode’?
Thanks,
IB
We are in the final stages of interviewing for a new full-time writer to join our team, and as soon as he or she is on-board we will put him or her to work on improving and expanding the documentation in every area. We can publish updates to the documentation any time we please – updates to documentation do not have to be tied to updates to the software itself – so the plan is to publish updates as often as possible once the new writer has his or her feet under the table.
When the dust has settled on v1.1, might it be possible to get a glimpse - maybe a blog entry - of where, how and when the Dorico team see Play Mode developing? I fully understand that there will be other priorities elsewhere in the program and, for what it’s worth, I’ve always thought development in this area likely to be V2 or even V3, but as it stands Play Mode is pretty rudimentary and only just scratching the surface of what it could potentially be.
It would interesting to hear what ideas the team have and where all this ranks in terms of priority.
Plenty of attention has been paid to Play mode in Dorico 1.1, for which you won’t have to wait too much longer to get a look at it. But we are indeed still just scratching the surface of what it will eventually become.
Now that’s just teasing me… 
When the time is right, It’d be great to hear more about that.