I have a multi-staff instrument that uses different MIDI channels for each staff. When I put in a MIDI trigger region it seems to be going onto all the staves… and is there currently no way to specify MIDI channel? Instead I’m triggering something on various instruments in a Kontakt multi. Awkward!
Indeed, at the present time there’s no way to specify the MIDI channel for MIDI trigger regions: they will always be output to the same channel used for the playback of that staff.
That’s what I thought. am I also correct that the MIDI trigger applies to all staves of a multi-staff instrument?
Yes, inasmuch as typically all of the staves of the same instrument are routed to the same channel.
That may be typically true, but there are many cases where it makes sense to have different staves (or even different voices) on different channels. In this chamber score alone, I have organ on 4 MIDI channels to one VST (one channel per manual, and one for pedal), and hurdy-gurdy on 3 channels because no one VST is doing a great job of playing the melody, drone and trompette.
In any case, if each staves and voice within an instrument can be assigned to different MIDI channels, and even different VSTs, I feel that MIDI messages should be able to do the same. Program changes are specific to one channel usually.
Are there any plans in the future to make it possible that organs can have different MIDI channels assigned to the different manuals and pedals?
For example, in the VSL Rieger organ (which is magnificent by the way), there are four manuals and pedal, so you need 5 channels to access them precisely, with the following organ peculiarities:
- If you are writing for one organ player, your three staves must be able to be switching between the channels (exactly as we are doing in real life).
- And if you are playing four-handed and four-footed, you will need six staves. for the score, and the same channel may receive notes from different staves.
- You need commands to create the coupling of the manuals and pedal (= have Dorico send the notes of one staff to different specific channels).
- There are also organs in the real world that have split keyboards (or half keyboards for some stops, because it was/is cheaper to fabricate the upper half of the tubes with smaller pipes than the lower half.)
Currently I made the following work-around:
- Create six different instruments of 1 staff.
- The first three are Organist 1, RH, LH, Pedal
- The other three are Organist 2, RH, LH, Pedal
- in Engrave mode, I group these staves so they look as a conventional organ score. In the Vertical spacing options, I can arrange spacing between staves and the two organ players in a realistic way.
- I create an expression map to switch from one manual to the other
- That way, when the score says “Swell”, then “Great”, these are playing techniques that generate the command to switch to the new manual in the attached VST.
- I have no solution yet for the coupling problem in Dorico. But with the VSL Rieger Organ, there are commands to that, so I can include them in the expression map.
Should anyone have other solutions: I’m most interested to learn them. (Or if there is another post on this subject, please let me know, I searched for it, but may have missed it.)
You could perhaps use independent voice playback, and route each voice to a different channel?
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That is an interesting idea, I tested it out with Dorico 2.x (I think) , and it failed. Maybe because I was too inexperienced, coming from Finale (and the current VSL Rieger organ player did not yet exist in those times).
I’ll look at it with fresh eyes, and give feedback if I find something nice :).
I did some further experiments. Here are a few findings:
Solution one: working with fake string sections
- Create a new section player for example Violins, and rename it to Organ RH.
- [Modify the playable range of this instrument, from C2 to G6, extended range to C7.] This corresponds to the typical range of organ manuals.
- Duplicate it, and rename it to Organ LH
- In Engrave mode, you can brace them together.
- Create another player, for example from Violoncello, and rename it to Pedal. The range is typically C2-G4 on many organs.
- In the manual staffs, you can now create divis, that you give appropriate names, for example:
- You can now write your score for different organ sections on the same manual:
After condensing, you get this:
I did not find a good solution to display the proper manual on the score at the exact places.
Solution two: working with identical single-staff instruments that are condensed.
Example:
- I created 8 identical instruments (from the Flute, and I renamed them, and adapted the playable range).
- In Engrave mode, I brace the 8 staffs.
- I enable condensing manually, like this:
I get this in Write mode::
And in condensed mode:
Of course, in the Layout options you can make the Player names disappear at the left of the staff.
Different voices: I did not find a satisfying solution working with different voices. As organ music is frequently written in different voices, very typically two voices in each hand and one voice in the pedal (thank you, Johann Sebastian!), the voices of one hand are typically played on the same manual. Even this is not always true: there are quite some organ acrobats who play with one hand on different manuals simultaneously.
Therefore, writing in different voices for different manual seems to me quite unpracticable: all the time you must make sure you are writing in the correct voice with the correct colour, and if you decide to change the manual that you want to play on, changes are cumbersome.
I hope this can help some fellow organists… Further ideas are welcome!
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I think your first solution is kinda clever - I can find other uses for that.
Thank you!
Another use case could be the following. When using VSL brass instruments (and probably other libraries as well), the unmuted and muted instruments are two different libraries. Up to now, I solved the problem by assigning two different instruments to the same player. A more elegant solution might be to create a trumpet section, with divisi (unmuted and muted). I did not try it yet.
But in order to get it working, I need to find a way to display correctly which “divisi section” is playing, in the score and instrument parts, without too much tricks and cheating. 
I quite like Solution Two! The manual changes get labeled automatically, and you can use multiple voices freely when needed. I wonder if you can display the player name to get “Manual” but still have “Pedal” labeled? (Not so important.)
If you use Keyboard or Scratch single-staves you won’t have to modify the range.
To omit RH and LH markings – but also avoid automatic numbering – I suppose you’d have to use an invisible space or something to make the names unique?
Hello Mark,
Thanks for your reaction.
Yes, I tried it, and it works. But I did not include it in my example above for explanation purposes: you don’t see a blank in discussions as these.
I tried to put all the manual staves in one group, called “Rieger Organ”, then hiding the instrument names on the first system, and showing the group name. It works, but the group name is displayed in 90° rotation. I have not explored further yet.