In the Halion Sonic 7 library, the top concert pitch horn note is the D a M9th above middle C. But notes up to the F, a minor third above, are not uncommon, certainly for the first horn player. How can I get those to play back in Dorico using the Halion and or Iconic libraries?
I don’t think you can, without choosing a different horn sample. I don’t believe Halion Sonic has on-screen stretching like a lot of sample players have as a feature (ex. VSL Synchron Player and Orchestral Tools SINE Player can both do this easily).
I don’t know if you’ve ever used NotePerformer but I might suggest that for better playback. I’ve never had any range issues with it.
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The HALion Symphonic Orchestra (HSO) is included with Dorico Pro, and the HSO horn goes up to the G an octave and a fifth above middle C.
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Thanks for the reply, John.
How do I force Dorico to use that instrument? Although my playback template shows HSO, Dorico always chooses the horn from the Halion Sonic library.
Michael
Assuming you have already used the Steinberg Download Assistant to download and install the HALion Symphonic Orchestra, the simplest way to use the HSO Horn is to execute Play > Playback Template and search for a template with a name beginning with HSO. If you can’t find one, click on the Show All Factory button. Then select a template that begins with HSO and click on Apply and Close.
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That would of course load all HSO instruments instead of Iconica Sketch and not just the horn (I assume that he means Iconica Sketch when he says Halion Sonic). I imagine it would be trickier to have it use Iconica Sketch for everything else and just use HSO for the horn. You’d probably need to make a custom playback template in that case as a copy of one of the factory ones. So it depends on what you want.
I don’t have to deal with this myself because I rarely deal with the built in bundled sounds between NotePerformer and my custom templates.
Hi @xenophon,
there are many ways (some of them would mentioned above). One easy one, in a project where you have some “out of range” notes on one specific horn, would be to load a HSO horn into the existing instance of Halion Sonic for the desired horn track channel. (Of course you need to check if the sound balance is acceptable, because you are mixing libraries for the same kind of instruments)
Here a 3 minutes video explaining the procedure:
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Christian:
This is so great. Thank you very much! I cannot find any mention of this technique anywhere in the documentation for either Dorico or HSO.
I really appreciate you taking the time to do this!
Michael
Here some links to the Manual, as reference (there are many other places where all the procedures are explained):
If you would like to learn deeply how playback in Dorico works, I recommend studying these videos (17 videos currently in the playlist! 
):
There are many more videos about playback Playback template etc…
One recent is this (starting from 1:33:00 for playback):
And here the most recent PDF manual for Halion Sonic SE I could find (this is for version 3, while now we have version 7, but the basic functionalities are the same). You find the explanation on how to load patches (programs) from page 23:
Or if you are adventurous you can have a glimpse at the big webhelp for the big Halion Sonic:
If you want to use just the HSO horn but have it be automatic loading (ex. if you might want to redo this in another file), instead of manual loading, you can do it like this:
- From the Play menu, choose Playback Template
- Click the + button to create a new playback template
- Give the playback template a name like “Iconica Sketch with HSO Horn”
- Set the space template to “Default”
- Click the “Add Automatic” button
-
The Add Automatic button will show a list of options for automatic loading. First choose one of the two options starting with HSO (it doesn’t matter too much which if you’re not planning on using Groove Agent SE Drums (GASE)).
-
Now, we only want it to use HSO for the Horn instead of for everything. First make sure the entry you just added is highlighted in blue (click on it if not) and then in the Instrument Overrides panel, add the horn (I don’t think it actually matters which subtype of horn you choose, but it seems to make you choose one regardless).
- After clicking OK you should now see the Horn in the list of instrument overrides, this tells it to only use HSO for the horn.
- Now, you need to tell it to load Iconica for everything else that isn’t the horn. To do this, click “Add Automatic” again and choose “Iconica Sketch, HSO, Halion Sonic Sel, Olympus, GASE”. (Edit: realized after the fact, you could probably alternatively choose “Auto” here, and this might be better if you want the Etude piano for any pianos that are loaded - this auto option is new in Dorico 6)
- After doing so it will look like this. When you click on the first entry (starting with “HSO”), Instrument Overrides will show “Horn”, showing that this first entry is only used for the Horn
- When clicking on the second entry, starting with “Iconica Sketch”, there should not be any overrides as you want it used for all other instruments and not filtered to just horn like the HSO one:
- Click the OK button to save your new playback template. Now you will see it in the list of playback templates with the name you gave it (ex. “Iconica with HSO Horn”). Make sure it is selected (select it if not) and click the Apply and Close button.
This will have the effect of unloading all instruments and then reloading everything from scratch but now with the HSO samples used for any horns and Iconica Sketch used for all other instruments (but falling back as before to HSO or Halion Sonic for anything Iconica Sketch doesn’t include).
The advantage of this compared to manual loading is if you want to use this particular combination in another piece, you can just apply this same playback template there as they get saved system-wide, and then you will get this same combination of the HSO for any horns and the default instruments for the rest.
The cases in which you still might want to use manual loading is if you only want to use HSO for one horn while using, say, Iconica Sketch for a second horn. In that case the manual loading suggested by @Christian_R would be better. The main danger in manual loading is with the potential to choose the wrong expression map for the particular sample you are loading. If you were to choose the wrong expression map for the instrument, there might be some malfunction in the behaviour (such as not triggering dynamics correctly, hearing extra unwanted very high or low notes, or the articulations not switching correctly).
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Christian,
Thank you so much. These videos are very helpful!
Michael
Thank you very much, Michael! This is really helpful.
Michael