Is it possible to have two seperate VSTs playing back the same stave simultaneously?
For example, you want to have a violin section that is a few vsts combined. For example, Iconia and NotePerformer simultaneously.
Not looking for them to switch based on playback technique, just having them doubling the whole time.
The obvious solution is just to set up a second staves and copy everything, which is easy enough. But was just wondering if there was something I didn’t know about.
Cheers!
Chris
I can do it, but I use 3rd party software to make it happen. Note, my solutions can NOT host Note Performer (NP).
NP, as far as I know, can only be hosted directly in Dorico, Sibelius, or Finale. If NP is involved it’s best to give players and sections their own unique individual stave for a number of reasons. Mainly because it needs access to its own unique expression maps, and the stuff such a stave sends specifically for controlling NP could make other plugins sound rather bizarre. Also, NP staves get ‘buffered’ a second or so by NP so it can look ahead and make predictions on how to best interpret the score. Other instrument plugins don’t do this that I know of.
So, with NP in the picture, copy and paste a new stave is probably going to be the better option. Hide the ones you don’t want showing in your scores and parts.
For stuff other than Note Performer, I use the plugin version of a commercial product called bidule. It’s a great plugin that I use all the time, with all of my DAWs, for a long list of reasons beyond bridging and chaining plugins. It allows me to mix and match as many plugins as I like, and also build logic to bounce and mix among them using Dorico’s expression maps and/or the controller lanes.
It’s not a simple plug and play option mind you. I have to make my own expression maps and controller lanes with enough logic involved to work properly with whatever plugins I’m hosting in bidule.
Kushview Element is a free plugin that might work for you. It can host multiple instruments at once in a similar way as bidule. I haven’t tested it much in Dorico personally, but it’s worth a try.
Other products exist that can bridge and chain plugins too. One I can think of, but have never tried is Blue Cat’s Patchwork.
PS, with HALion Sonic…
You can easily layer instruments by loading up extra instrument slots and setting them to the MIDI same channel. You could also ‘learn’ various mute/solo controls to get some independent control of the two layers using controller lanes, or expression maps. Expression maps in Dorico also provide the ability to ‘channel bounce’ among the various HALion slots as required.
I.E. Layering 4 clarinet sounds to build a section…
I load 4 slots, click the MIDI tab, and set them all to the same MIDI channel.
Sonic also provides up to 4 ‘layers’ per instrument slot. So here’s another example of a way to build my clarinet section.
In this case I click the EDIT tab, then the PROGRAM sub-tab. I right clicked the first layer and copied it, then pasted the clarinet layer in the next 3 layer slots.
Brian already said this, but I also would suggest accomplishing this for now by having a duplicate staff with the same notes playing back to the other VST, and simply not showing that extra staff in your score.
I would like to see some kind of built in support in Dorico for handling different libraries on one staff. It can already do this somewhat by having independent voice playback. You can IVP to play back passages on a single staff to your choice of one of several libraries (by allocating them to certain voices and keeping track of which voice number is which library), but no way to have it play back to multiple simultaneously without involving third party shim tools like bidule. I would like to see some official way in Dorico for handling this without needing duplicate staves - something that would work similarly to IVP, but allow choosing the library by name (as opposed to having to use “voice numbers”) and allow choosing multiple libraries simultaneously for layering purposes.
It’d be quite a challenge since different plugins can require unique expression maps to get the best interpretation. Scaling the dynamics, and the best methods of doing (CC vs Velocity, or both), can also be a challenge.
When I use bidule to layer sounds from different plugins, in most cases I need a combination of a custom expression map, creative work in the controller lanes, AND custom logic inside bidule itself to route events to the various plugins/channels at the right time. Usually I’ll go with a simple program changes and CC1 style of dynamic control in the Stave’s expression map, but inside bidule itself, I’m building all sorts of logical bidule-groups to ‘transform’ things in proper scale and format to best suit the wide variety of hosted plugins. Legato/Slur implementation is one of the bigger challenges, since all the various libraries like to deal with that in very different ways!
Right, but you’ve already got support for this with independent voice playback.
Right now, for instance, you can define two upstem voices in a flute stave. Upstem voice 1 could go to flute library 1 using expression map 1, and upstem voice 2 could go to flute library 2 using expression map 2. You could have successive bars play back with different flute libraries by having the first bar assigned to upstem voice 1 and the second one to upstem voice 2. Because both voices don’t appear in the same bar, as long as the “ends voice” property was properly set, you shouldn’t end up with multiple voices in the notation. The printed score would still look the same. You can do this today, and each library has its own expression map so it isn’t a big deal.
The problem is getting it to play two at once would require multiple voices simultaneously, and that would begin to affect the notation so that it no longer looks how you would want, as you would have double stems to a unison.
The way I would see it would be a feature that worked similarly to independent voice playback, but allow choosing library based on name for a passage, or multiple libraries for a given passage. It would still work with different expression maps, as IVP works with this already.
True. As it is now, attempting it on a single stave all the way through could get rather tedious, and might also have adverse effects on how the stave is displayed/engraved.
NP is unique for a lot of reasons. The way it calls up sounds. Dynamic control. The way it buffers and ‘looks ahead’, and more. If you want NP sounds, I’d recommend always giving each NP player/section a stave of their own. If you want to layer up different sounds, just duplicate the stave…
bidule is worth it for me, but I like to mix and match stuff from no less than 4 different libraries, and they all work differently in terms of changing articulation, dynamics, slurs/legato, portamento, etc.
I also like to use Zenology a good bit, and that one has no way of changing patches remotely. To build and stack different ‘articulations’ for a single stave with this one, I can host multiple instances in bidule and bounce among them. Without bidule in this case (at least if it needs more articulations than Dorcio has ‘independent voices’ for a stave), I’d need several staves for a single player/section…and spread all those different articulations over many instances in the Dorico rack 
bidule to the rescue…
Thanks so much for the replies and info - Bummer about NotePerformer, but I wonder if they might not build this feature in at somepoint anyway, allowing you to stack libraries from within their Performance Engines App.
But definitely cool that there as some other options for handling this as well.
@Brian_Roland - Are you getting what you would consider DAW-quality playback from Dorico? I’m a bit odd in that I prefer to just notate thing than to record them into a DAW, or manually add them to a midi roll etc. I don’t like that I can’t see all the notes easily in a DAW. But the final stages of making something sound properly good are usually hard to get in a notation program.
But Dorico basically has a DAW built in to it, so it seems like theoretically I could just do entire projects in Dorico, which would be pretty rad!
I’ve been using NP4 with BBCSO core for some string pieces, and I think the playback is now very good. I won’t be transferring them to Cubase any more.
Sometimes, but it is a gradual process. I build as a go…and sometimes the results are ‘reusable’ in new projects. Every score can be very different, and have different needs.
Really, it depends on the end goal. For composing comfortably, base collaboration, and teaching, Dorico mixes are fine most of the time.
If one needs a highly polished translation and mix, it goes into a DAW. Cubase simply has more/better tools for MIXING and forced precision adjustments in tempo, phrasing, expressiveness, etc. Thing with the DAW, is it doesn’t ‘guess or make choices for me’. I have full control and loads of tools to make fine adjustments, but ‘I’ have to ‘envision the changes’ and ‘do the work’ to shape up my vision.
One thing that makes using a secondary host like bidule a great tool, is that it’s easy export a complete instrument setup from one host to another with fewer steps. I.E. I can export a score from Dorico, import it into Cubase, load a copy of the bidule instance(s), connect the tracks, and I start out with exact same sound and mix as I had over in Dorico (or very close). I can fine tune it from there.
Vice verse…I’ve been working in Cubase first, it’s a good bit easier to duplicate my instrument rack over in Dorico/Sibelius/Finale with far fewer steps.
As for Note Performer, I treat that one as a special case. It’s often where I START a notation based project. Playback isn’t perfect, but it’s pleasant enough to sit there for hours at a time ‘just composing’. I forget about the engineering aspects of computer music, and just WRITE MUSIC. I let NP do its job, and just use it out of the box (maybe cut back on the reverb a bit).
NP doesn’t work in tracking DAWs at all. So it’s out of the picture if I leave Dorico/Finale/Sibelius environments.
I worry about better sounds, score translations, and mixes later…and in the end, it’s pretty rare I’m still using NP sounds much if a project needs that much attention on what it sounds like.
Depending on the mix style, and level of playing detail I’m shooting for…I mix and match libraries in bidule from there.
As for hooking NP to third party libraries (only one I’ve tried so far is EW Hollywood). I’ve tried it some. It’s brilliant for some scores (lush, simple ones going for a simplistic cinematic orchestra feel), and nowhere close for others (articulate, detailed work, jazz, pop, wind bands, etc). It doesn’t take long to load it up and try…sometimes it’s great, sometimes it misses the mark.
As for scores built to ‘share’…
That all depends on who I’ll be sharing it with, and what they have on their system…
If a project partner has a similar setup, we’ll work together for compatibility, so we’re seeing and hearing close to the exact same things.
At it’s base…I find it’s usually acceptable to just use NP from start to finish, and share the base score. From there the people who use my score can set up their own sounds as they like. In some cases I might also provide a nice rendered track of a nice mock up…they can load it in the video player, or just play it on its own.
