Is there a video that goes through the proper way to set up instruments for playback (and deleting anything that has been set up for a song)? I am new to Dorico and wanted to try playback and ended up with a mess that I can’t undo and can’t figure out how to change instruments assigned to voices. I’m working with barbershop, so I’ve figured out how to split voices on each staff (typically one staff has tenor and lead and the bass staff has baritone and bass), but whatever Dorico assigned does not appear to be something I can change. I went back to setup and assigned 4 different singers as available for use, but they just show up on the playback graph as new parts and do not seem to be usable. I probably went about this backwards, but there must be an easy way to undo everything or at least assign these sounds where I need them.
Here’s a useful YouTube playlist about Dorico’s Play mode.
Interesting video but it doesn’t address my concerns. I’m including a screen shot of the playback screen. In the music there are two staffs, “tenor/lead” and “baritone/bass”. On the screenshot you can see I have defined (elsewhere) four voices tenor, lead, baritone, bass. I need to separate the two voices in each staff and assign the appropriate instrument to each voice. How do I separate the voices on each staff and how do I assign the desired instrument to each voice? I didn’t see any icons or text that seemed to perform those funcations.
I just found the independent voice playback option, so that problem is solved. But still don’t see how I can assign desired instruments to tracks.
If you click on one of the tracks with an Up-Stem Voice (for example), in the left panel you should see some options to choose a VST. There will also be an “e” which, if you select it, will open up the VST.
Does this work?
Actually, no it doesn’t work. On setup I selected solo players, selecting singers, then one of the voice parts listed (tenor, lead, baritone, bass), but when I click on a track none of these are listed in drop downs or if I click on the “e”. This has what has frustrated me that the singer parts I had selected in setup are not listed at all.
I experimented a bit more and found that after selecting a track and then clicking on the gear logo (setup wheel?), the list of the instruments I selected in setup was displayed and if I clicked on part of the row of the instrument (singer part) I wanted it seemed to work.
Hi there,
At this point you really must get familiar with Playback Templates, Instrument Editor, End Points, Expression Maps and Percussion Maps, in order to get at least a general notion of how things work together… It’s a rather daunting task in itself but very rewarding in the end.
Hopefully it’s not really too daunting – at least choosing new sounds from the default set that comes with Dorico is not too bad. The basic procedure is:
- Select the track corresponding to the instrument, or if independent voice playback is active, the voice, in the track overview in Play mode.
- Look at the Routing section of the Track Inspector on the left-hand side.
- Take note of which channel in HALion Sonic is being used for that instrument or voice.
- Click the e button to show the HALion Sonic window.
- Load the desired sound into the slot that corresponds to the channel being used by that instrument or voice.
- Back in the Routing section, check that the Ex. Map drop-down is set to an appropriate value – if in doubt, start with Default.
That should be all there is to it. If you later on want to make the choices you’ve made in one project the default for new ones, that’s a bit more involved, but we can help you through that too.
I found that I can assign different instruments (singing voices in my case) to different play tracks, but the mixer doesn’t seem to want to work that way. For example, I split the two voices in the tenor/lead staff, but for playback could not set the levels independently. In fact, when entering the notes in write mode, the tenor notes were voice 1 (stems up) and the lead notes were voice 2 (stems down), but when I split the voices they both show stems up. Not sure how to handle this so I could change the level of one voice in the mixer relative to the other voice.
And I found that just using the settings gear (next to the e button lets me select the instrument I need for each voice without going to the confusing Sonic window.
After trying some things I managed to get instruments assigned (HALion Sonic) with the window that shows after clicking on the italic e and then found in tracks on the play window I could select from the instruments I had set up in the HALionSonic window. But I still have no idea how to place a label in each track displayed with the independent voice track selection (rather than just the 1 or 2, for example). For example, the treble staff in my music might be labeled tenor lead, so I would like the two independent tracks be labeled “tenor” and “lead” but I see no way to enter these labels in the play wiindow.
Also, if I select Garritan and the Aria player it doesn’t let me go back to the HalSonic set of instruments. The only place I can then see a list of what I think are HalSonic instruments is in the default exmay. Confusing, but I will play around with it some more as I get a chance to experiment some more.
Here’s an example of the indepeneent track labeling I’ d like to do. If you look as the tenor/lead track and the two independent tracks that are under it, I’d like to label the first track “tenor” and the second one “lead”, but I can’t figure out any way to put those descriptions on the those tracks in the playback window. Is there a way?
Not that I know. (You cannot name ‘voices’)
It’s disappointing that voices cannot be labeled in the playback window, but thank you for confirming what I suspected might be the case so I don’t have to try to figure out other ways ofr labeling.