I’m beginning to think that my brain isn’t wired to understand VSTs, but I’m hoping for an eventual comprehension breakthrough. In the meantime, I thought I’d try something simple like this church organ plug-in: Download Free Pipe organ plugin: Church Organ 2nd by C Hackl
I thought I’d done all the right things; because, as you can see from the attached material, I chose a suitable file path for its installation (Church Organ.dll) and whitelisted it, then restarted Dorico (I tried this more than once), but it doesn’t appear where I would have expected in Dorico Play (the video clip shows me opening the dropdown).
Could somebody tell me what I’ve missed out?
Hi @Gareth_Glyn , that’s a 32 bit vst, which is not supported in Dorico. You’ll need a 64 bit vst. Folks here might have a suggestion for a free or inexpensive pipe organ vst, but I can’t help you there.
Aaaah - I hadn’t clocked that. Thanks! How do I check whether a VST is 64 or 32 bit?
(Other readers - I would like to find a usable church organ VST, but I’m only likely to need it for one particular piece, and that’s why I’d prefer something really inexpensive!)
Usually x86 = 32-bit and x64 = 64-bit. On that plugin they use Win32 as the platform which is 32-bit Windows.
You may want to look into a VST hosting program. They load up VST plugins and then provide a plugin for your Application. I’m not that familiar with them so can’t advise. VEPro seems the popular one but I don’t believe it’s free.
I actually have a copy of the original GPO from the days of CD ROMs! I can’t remember ever having been able to use it. However, it seems that it required Kontakt Player, and it does have (on paper) an impressive number of organ stops. But I’m finding it extremely difficult to get it into Kontakt Player at the moment, so I don’t know whether it’s worth the trouble to keep trying, given that the product is nearly 20 years old. Actually GPO5 seems quite reasonable priced for a multi-instrument library, and it seems to have quite a few Dorico users, so I might well take the plunge in that direction at some point.
That early version of GPO didn’t include the organ which was added with version 5, IIRC. It is quite long in the tooth these days and there are much better options for the orchestra instruments, such as NotePerformer. The custom console organ patch was taken from the Garritan Organ vst and is a scaled down version. I find it the only patch that I still use from GPO. The product hasn’t been updated in many years. The Concert D patch is ok too. I wouldn’t make a special purchase of it since it is likely at the end of its product life cycle. NotePerformer has an organ patch that also has some control of the registration and stops. This may be a better option.
Many thanks for your insights and advice, Chris. It’s a sign of my cluelessness regarding anything other than the purely notational aspects of Dorico that NotePerformer is the only playback engine I’ve used with the program ever since I started with Dorico, and also with Sibelius before that - the reason being that I don’t need to know anything about what’s going on under the bonnet/hood: NP just responds beautifully to dynamics, articulations and slurring without any intervention required by the user.
But further on the cluelessness thing - I didn’t even know until you mentioned it now that I can control registration and stops of the organ patch in NP. The reason I haven’t used it for the project concerned is that I had had the impression - clearly wrong - that the default sound couldn’t be varied; and, because the piece I’m talking about is a gradual increase over a number of minutes from the quietest flute stops to the full organ, that a variety of tonal colours must be available.
The very next thing I’m going to do when I fire up Dorico is to experiment with its organ patch! Many thanks again.
If you’re going to experiment with different stops of the NotePerformer organ, you might want to read a topic on that subject beginning with this post.
Actually, the Organs in GPO5 are exactly the same as the Garritan Classic Pipe Organs instruments. The whole of CPO weighs in at 1.46Gb, and the organ samples in GPO5 are the same size, and there are the same number of stops (with slightly different names).
That having been said, I do think the organ sounds are pretty decent: I’ve created some lovely combinations for “Continuo Organ” and for various registers of “Church” Organ.
The other keyboards (Harp is just a naked piano, right?) are also very good: including Celeste, Glass Armonica, and a lot of the percussion.
But you’re right that MM seems to have no interest in it; other than keeping the player compatible with the latest OS. I wouldn’t encourage anyone to buy it necessarily; but there’s still use in it for anyone who already has it.
Thanks, John. Wow!- there’s a lot to digest in there, and thanks for the patient and thorough way in which you provided all the necessary information. Gareth
Thanks for the info! It is too bad that MM hasn’t continued development of the Garritan libraries. The were quite well done and very useful. I, too still use the organ (and other patches) on occasion.
LOL! Back in the 70’s I discovered why harpists tended to date large, strong fellows. I married a violinist.
I married a violinist.