Instrument Pitch Shift Mystery

EDIT: Actual .dorico file attached instead of the XML file. Whoops!

I am struggling to troubleshoot an odd pitch error in a score. I am transcribing a marching band arrangement and, inexplicably, my horn part has randomly decided to tranpose itself upon playback at a specific point. Playback sounds just fine during note entry, but when playing the part back proper, either by itself or with the rest of the parts, the pitch sounds somewhere around a very-out-of-tune tri-tone off and shifts slowly on longer notes. Never had a problem with the horn part with the first four flows of my document, but on this particular piece, 60 measures in, it goes from playing back flawlessly to sounding like a complete nightmare, always at the same spot (measure 60). I am using NotePerformer 4 with VDL loaded as well (although the latter isn’t currently playing anything back as I have not gotten that far in the score yet).

I’ve checked the sample rate - it appears to be the same (44100) across all devices. Changed to 48k and back, no luck. No conflicts with channels or ports in the mixer (at least, not any that have caused problems before).

I’ve seen MIDI information from a controller as a possible cause; however I’m not using a controller on my current device and have never touched this portion of the music on my home machine which does have one connected (but seldom used…grew up on QWERTY and usually default to it). I’ve also cleared all automation data via Play > Automation. I initially had copied most of the part from the existing alto sax part, so I tried deleting and re-entering in case that did something; no dice. It certainly SOUNDS like it could be an issue of pitch-shift information being sent…but I have no MIDI device to have ever given the part that information, and I’m not entirely sure how to triple-check that I’ve eliminated any attached MIDI data that might exist.

Offending file is attached…can someone please enlighten me as to what stupid thing I’ve managed to do? I’d chalk it off to being on a garbage work laptop, but I haven’t had this issue whatsoever before in my couple months getting my feet wet with Dorico.

Horn Troubleshooting.dorico (2.1 MB)

Welcome to the forum, @TigerBandGuy !

When I import your MusicXML file, the horn part plays back just fine for me. (I’m also using NotePerformer.)

Do you have the same issue if you apply a different playback template? Or if you just reapply the NotePerformer template? If so, could you upload the actual Dorico project file?

Whoops…meant to attach the project file itself right off the bat!
Horn Troubleshooting.dorico (2.1 MB)

By replacing the gliss in bar 59 it works ok.

Jesper

Horn Troubleshooting-2.dorico (2.0 MB)

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Yes, I hear the issue with NP – but not if I change to the default Iconica/HSO playback template.

I’m not sure what’s causing this, but there are other folks here who know much more about playback than I do.

Edit: And @jesele already jumped in while I was typing!

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I’ve answered my own question; however, I’m going to leave this here as it was an odd little hitch that I only discovered the solution to by a fluke, and I suspect if I made this mistake others might as well…

The problem was with the glissando in the measure prior. I accidentally discovered the problem when I went on to add the trombone part next while I wait. The part proceded to do the same thing but much earlier. I disregarded the issue to back up and fix a gliss that hadn’t triggered like I wanted to. I realized that my number pad’s ā€˜.’ had failed me, and I had input 75 instead of .75 (converting to 3/4) in the delay field. Fixed that so it would trigger and suddenly the following pitches that were shifted weirdly were back to normal - which made something click. Discovered I’d made the same error in the horn gliss and hadn’t noticed. Oddly enough, it doesn’t seem to affect the Alto part, which had the same gliss error (which was probably copied to the Horn). At any rate, voila - Dorico is no longer trying to apply a weird pitch shift (not sure that it was truly "glissing; but stretched out over 75 beats I’m sure anything can happen). Sneaky little bugger. Not sure I’d have figured it out if I didn’t accidently re-create it.

Good catch! I stumbled upon the same thing (see my other comment for details). I suspect it’s a ā€œglitchā€ in NP’s playback (not sure if you can call it a glitch…I wouldn’t expect any library to handle a 75-beat gliss on a one- or two-beat pitch correctly).