Happy cake day @dko22
Jesper
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I appreciate your concern for our business, but I assure you it’s unfounded.
Our primary business is not audio production, but to enable users to produce better printed scores for live musicians through proof-listening. Our software provides educational value and a more effective workflow, with the printed score serving as the final product. Our software was made to prevent score creators from being misled by computer playback into under- or overnotating scores, or degrading them by misplaced slurs, accents, or staccato dots.
While today’s sample libraries sound aesthetically better than they did ten years ago, they are not much better for making notation choices. The day our software is superseded by something better, equally affordable, and accessible, by our accounts, could be ten years away, or never. If or when that day comes, you didn’t lose our software, but you gained something better.
My bottom line is, we are not concerned about our business, and neither should our users be.
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We have no plans to implement generative AI. Our general users want immediate audio feedback that doesn’t require an Internet connection or use up the computer’s entire resources.
Although NotePerformer’s technologies might be considered old-school, they are well-suited for notation playback, and we will instead try to improve them gradually rather than find a replacement.
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ok, thanks for the clarification! And best of luck in continuing to improve things. I’ve made no secret of my disappointment at the discontinuation of NPPE but of course will continue to hope and believe that NotePerfomer will find new ways to move forward.
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Speaking for me (and maybe a lot of composers) this is all I need. I want immediate feedback on my scores without having to futz around with expression maps, DAWs, and sample libraries. I’m (with apologies to DeForest Kelley) a composer and arranger, not an engineer.
I would also, though, like an easy way to generate useable mockups to help sell my works. It’s nearly impossible for an unknown like me to get decent recordings from live ensembles for these purposes without spending a lot of money, and I appreciate the ability to do this on my computer without the use of AI.
Looking forward to hearing what you are able to do with this in the future!
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Arne,
Thank you! Noteperformer is great, and getting better all the time.
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Marc,
Well, you certainly brought this to my attention. 5.1 is a nice improvement to an already impressive product. Thanks for posting about it.
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That is exactly how I use it. And I’m almost never surprised when it is played by real musicians so NP is doing an incredible job for me. Thanks!
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Ditto.
Jesper
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Me, too!
@Wallander I’m posting this here because I can’t find anything about this in other places, but since the 5.1 upgrade my scores sound distorted, as if I blew my speakers (which I didn’t). The example below includes Flute, Oboe, Trumpet and Flugelhorn in that order:
I did not touch any audio/playback settings in Dorico. I’m on Windows 10 using Dorico 6.1.10.6078. Is this a known issue? Is there a way to roll back to 5.0.1? Thanks in advance!
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Hi Arne,
Thank you for your reply! 
I’m aware about the initial purpose of NotePerformer and it’s idea to provide a proper audio feedback to the composers, orchestrators and arrangers, who work with score editor in order to prepare their works to be performed live. I’m using NP as a primary tool in such situations, and it works perfectly well.
Here I will go in a more philosophical way… “The life and the time are flowing like a river. As we know the river shapes and changes it’s bed by the time”. What I mean by saying this? NP started as an amazing Playback Engine for software like Dorico, Sibelius and Finale, and it was the first of it’s kind (now we are having MuseSounds, too). Obviously, with the advancement of the AI in the area of music, the business is going to change (exactly as it happened with the music business when MTV started and the appearance of the internet music platforms. In the past concert were organized to promote and sell the albums. Nowadays is the opposite the musicians record albums in order to sell their live performances). I would like to see NP evolving into a tool that could provide a source material which can be used in an end audio product. This would be an amazing addition to it’s initial purpose. Many of those who are using notation software are also a DAW users, like me, and relate on virtual instruments for many projects. And I’m also one of those who don’t like to spend much time on tweaking MIDI parameters.
Currently NP has two advantages over MuseSounds:
- Much better Playback performance.
- Availability as VST3. While MuseSounds is locked to MuseScore.
About the generative AI, well I agree that it shouldn’t be internet dependent, or to be computer resource greedy.
Cantai seems to be an online + offline generative AI solution for vocals, that is not resource greedy.
Once again I will mention MuseSounds as an engine that does partial AI generation out of small libraries that comes from the companies, produced for MuseSounds.
Are there any legal reasons that doesn’t allow NotePerformer to implement the very same, third-party, libraries available for MuseSounds? I don’t mind to pay for them separately as they are available for purchase in the MuseHub.
We need small amount of control over the sound and the performance of NP:
- To layer libraries from different companies.
- To choose the preferred performance model (or combination of models).
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NP is able to mimic Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, John Williams… more could be added - Johann Sebastian Bach, George Handel, Wolfgang Mozart, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler, Anton Bruckner, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, Camile Saint-Saens, Maurice Ravel, Sergey Prokofiev, Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Shoenberg, Bella Bartok, Josef Hauer, Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Hermann, Henry Manchini, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong.
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In the future it could taught to mimic an orchestra conducted by Valeriy Gergiev, Karl Richter, Herbert von Karajan…
This the idea I am proposing about the future of NP. To serve not only the needs for those who prepare scores for live performance, but also those who relate on virtual instruments for end products.
Best regards,
Thurisaz
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I had a similar problem. Check the sample rate of Dorico 6 and your soundcard, if they are the same. (Mine weren’t anymore).
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That was it, thank you very much! Curious why this would happen but I’m glad it was easy to fix.
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How easy it is to pop in and tell someone else how to run their business, no matter the great success they have had in the past and all the risks they have taken to get there.
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Agreed. In all honesty, I use NP a lot for my albums, and much of it has worked very well and to my ears, sounds very close to the real thing. String harmonics in particular have always been amazing with Noteperformer. Hoping some of the oddities I’ve encountered with some string realizations will be much fewer as this progresses, but for the past few years of using NotePerformer it’s made a huge difference for my audio files on Bandcamp, Spotify, etc. Recently realized a work for string trio and I think the audio came out very realistic, at least to my ears.
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A handful of users have reported the same thing. It sounds like an internal error, and I will investigate.
Meanwhile, it sounds to me like the problem occurs before the reverb? Still, can you please try to see if the problem is resolved by removing reverb or panning? I’m also interested in your sample rate and buffer size settings in Dorico, because those directly change NotePerformer’s processing window.
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I respect your described vision, but unfortunately, it doesn’t align with ours.
Legally speaking, we could become a distributor of samples from other companies and target the audio production market, but that’s just not a business we want to run, regardless of the compensation.
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Thanks for the reply @Wallander! Actually @HeiPet’s tip solved the issue. It turned out that Dorico’s sample rate after the update was somehow different from my soundcard’s. Fixing that also solved the issue!
That’s great to know, thank you! Still, it sounds like there’s a potential issue in our software. I would rather expect playback to be incorrectly pitched.
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