All instruments are Sections and each has it’s own VST.
The Endpoints for each instrument were saved and in Playback Templates a new one was created including all 5 Endpoints.
So now we have a template ready to go. I now create a new project with the same 5 instruments as Sections. Just the Players have been entered–not the VST’s. Now my understanding of what should happen when I run the template on this New Project is that the VST’s and Xmaps should be populated by running the template.Here’s what I get:
I think it might be helpful to share a screenshot of your actual endpoint configuration dialogue window. Perhaps Vn2 is still pointing to Vn1 within those settings?
In the old days, this used to be because Dorico created initial endpoint routing based only on instrument definitions. If I recall correctly, the logic was that since there is only one violin defined in Dorico’s database then every time a violin is invoked, the same endpoint would be activated.
At some point, Daniel wrote a post about this and an update was released according to which any user-based custom routing would be saved in the endpoint and recalled in the future, as a kind of an override.
I had been using only MIDI-out for a very long time and the trick in that case was to route both violins within the same endpoint (channel 1 and 2), rather than creating another instance as your photos show. It worked perfectly and I never had any issues. But I’m dividing time between Cubase and Dorico now and not sure if anything has changed.
Add several violin section and player staves (as many as you want extra players/sections) in score order. I’d go with 6 to 8 staves/instances (in case you also decide to have multiple ‘voices’ on the same stave(s). At first it’s fine if you just use many copies of the same instrument (some libraries don’t come with many); but, go ahead and make a few more than you think you might need. In many cases as you make adjustments to endpoints in the future you can simply ‘overwrite’ the old ones, and pick up where you left off in future projects.
Do NOT expand any staves to ‘Enable Independent Voice Playback’ at this point (I.E. Organ 3 staff systems). Instead, on systems like this, pretend that each grand system can only talk to ONE instrument/instance, but stack systems in the proper order for other ranks and such that you might require. Later if you start a new organ stave, and then tap the option to expand the organ stave into multiple voices, it’ll automatically go down and attach the next two organ sounds you’d set up in the same order.
Connect each stave to your plugin(s) exactly as you want it, in the score order you want (from top to bottom).
For strings I do recommend giving each stave his own unique plugin instance! Why? At some point you might want to load more articulations and variations of arco and whatnot, and have a Dorico expression map be able to easily ‘channel bounce’ among them. Key switches can be nice, but with channel bounces you can set up more ‘static’ options, and go into the plugin and ‘shape them up’ in real time as the score plays. With key switches, it can be a royal pain trying to sort out a zillion CCs and manipulate stuff in real time (like ADSR, filters, etc). If you spread options across channels and ‘bounce’ among them, all of your ‘tweaking options’ of the plugin are right there in front of you. They stay where you left them. And you can still automate them as needed with CCs in the expression map, or from a CC lane in the piano scroll editor.
Back to a strings example (One player/section per plugin instance)
I.E. Start player and section staves for:
Violin 1
Violin 2
Violin 3
Violin 4
Violin 5
Violins I
Violins II
Violins III
Violins IV
Violins V
etc…
And so on. Pile those staves on there, along with whatever ‘instrument variations’ you might want for each player/section. Go ahead and clone your expression map templates so each stave gets his own copy. I’d give each stave his own just in case at some point you’d like to have slightly different versions for each stave at some point in the future. Of course, in future projects you can consolidate and have shared expression maps if that’s easy/convenient for you. Still, from experience, I recommend giving each stave/instance his own unique copy of an expression map (future flexibility, as it’s not terribly uncommon to want to make independent adjustments to the exp. map for a given player/section/stave/voice).
Do the same thing for your other string sections (section staves), soloists (player staves), etc. You don’t necessarily have to do every possible instrument in the same session. You could do it one family of instruments at a time in a fresh score if you like. I.E. set up strings today, and do winds later in a brand new project.
Name and Save the End Point for each stave/instance.
Stack your new stave Endpoints at the top of a new Playback template in the exact order that you’d Prefer Dorico choose them. Put your choice of ‘factory’ templates at the very bottom. I.E.
(Custom Endpoints in priority order)
My Custom Grand Piano
Vln. 1
Vln. 2
Vln. 3
Vln. 4
Vln. 5
Vlns. I
Vlns. II
Vlns. III
Vlns. VI
Vlns. V
HSO
Micro Choirs
Groove Agent
Sonic Selections
Dorico does this…
When asked to start a new stave it goes through your Playback template in order from the top down, hunting the best match. If it sees that a section stave for Violin I is already loaded, it’ll hop to the next sound down the list (Violin II), and so forth, until it runs out of options (I think it starts over again from the top if you use that many). If for some reason you decide to expand a stave to use ‘multiple voices’, again, it will hop down to the next section or player that hasn’t been used yet, and so on.
Now in the future when you start new staves with your Custom Playback Template, Dorico will create them in the order you built them until it runs out.
Once you’ve done this you can ditch that base score you used to ‘pile on staves’. When and if you want to make full custom ‘Score Templates’, start with an empty score and build it while your Playback Template is active. You should find that as new staves are created, it goes down the line adding new variations in the order that you’ve set up in your Playback Template.
You may also make adjustments to your endpoints and overwrite the current ones in the future, and it should still maintain the order that you’ve set up in your Playback Templates when starting new staves.
If your end points are based on single dedicated plugin instances, It’s easy to add news ones at will, and I ‘think’ you can even alter the order of priority in your Playback template.
If you are trying to change/update more complicated setups involving several instruments set up in a single plugin instance, you might need to be a bit more careful. If it all still fits in the same instance as before, in the same order, then you can probably just overwrite your old endpoint and be good to go. If you change the order of anything that requires invoking more/new plugin instances, then go back to a fresh project, establish the proper order for everything and save your revamped end-points there.
It took me a few tries to figure this out, but here’s an example where someone wanted some forced Organ options (including expression maps that force MIDI channels for SMF renderings compatible with a target console). In this case he just needed to ‘force’ some specific channels for multi-voice organ staves, so I set it all up to go into a single instance of Sonic, but the same concept applies if you want to a lot of single plugin instance instruments. Build staves in the order you want…save end points, put them in the top of the Playback Template.
Note, this will also work if you want to stack several player/sections into a single instance of a Multi-Timbral plugin. I.E. With Garritan’s Concert and Marching Band library, I put all of my piccolo and flute soloists and flute sections in the same ARIA instance. Attached staves to them in the order I wanted, and saved the end point. I did the same thing for clarinets, oboes, bassons, saxes, horns, etc…
Recap…stack those staves up for as many unique instrument variations as you want (maybe a few extras for good measure, even if they are simply clones of instruments you’ve already used higher in the score order), in the order you want Dorico to choose new players/sections when creating a new stave.
I believe I’ve tried what was suggested. 8 Violins were created along with 8 VST’s and 8 individual Endpoints were saved. All are Section Players. A new Playback Template was created to include the newly created 8 saved Endpoints. A new project was started and 8 Section Violin players were created. No VST’s were created. Now the new Playback Template was run.
I have tried this scenario with many instruments besides Violins and the only the 1st of each instrument is created while the others are duplicates of the first. During initial project Setup when entering the Players one has to choose an Instrument and I chose Strings → Violin each time. This results in when running the template in a new project is that each of the VSTs being the same as the 1st. As long as different instruments are chosen during player setup, the correct VST’s show as expected, i.e., all different.
This is the problem. You have to go back to your original template that has the string orchestra set up in the correct way (from your first post). Instead of saving 5 endpoint configurations, you need to save one endpoint configuration that contains all 5 endpoints:
You have to click on that circled icon instead of saving them the normal way, because the normal way saves them as individual endpoint configurations. Name this combined endpoint configuration something like “OTBS String Orchestra Special”.
THANK YOU THANK YOU,[mducharme . I was totally unfamiliar with that circled icon. Made a new template after creating the “collective” Endpoint which I used in a new Template. And it works as expected and I got this:
This is exactly what I wanted! I’ve been pulling my hair out for weeks trying to come to a solution, and THIS is it! This leaves only one remaining question: When would one use the individual Endpoints?
I am very grateful mducharme for taking the time. Thank you ever so much!
The individual endpoints can be handy if you want to save an endpoint for a single instrument in a file that may have other instruments loaded unrelated to what you are working on. Whereas if you are doing a combined endpoint config, you’ll want to make sure that the file is clean of endpoints aside from the ones you want to be included.
If the library only has one choice for each instrument, like a woodwind library that has one flute soloist, one oboe soloist, etc., then there’s no disadvantage to saving an endpoint config for each endpoint. If there is more than one choice, like a woodwind library that has an oboe 1 soloist and oboe 2 soloist, or a strings library that has violins I and violins II, you want to make sure that both endpoints are in the same endpoint config so that it knows it has to assign them in order instead of simply adding many copies of the oboe 1 soloist or violins I section (which is what it was doing in your case).
