NotePerformer & piano sustain pedal

Dorico
1

Dorico 6 Pro / Windows 11

In a large score, NotePerformer has for no apparent reason turned on something that sounds like reverb or sustain in the middle of a measure and will not turn it off. The sustain persists even to subsequent flows.

Even stranger, this occurs only in the treble staff of a piano grand staff. And stranger than that, it doesn’t seem to occur at a specific location in that measure. If I enter a string of 16th notes, no matter how many, sustain turns on with the last note and then never stops.

I’ve spent all night trying to figure this out. No CC64 events in that passage. I’ve changed instruments, deleted the measures and reinserted them, copied different types of content from other parts of the score into the offending measures, played around with different NP instances, and on and on. All the normal stuff.

The Windows AI bot tells me that NP has had problems with sustenuto, but nothing it describes sounds like this. And I don’t really trust AI bots anyway.

To be clear: In a specific measure in the middle of a large piece for many instruments, something that sounds like sustenuto is enabled by itself and stays on for the remainder of the piece – another 10 or 15 minutes. It happens only in the treble staff of a piano part and begins with the last note of the measure, no matter which beat of the measure that note falls on.

I’ve been working on this piece for months and have not made any changes in Setup mode to MIDI assignments, track mappings, expression maps, nor have I added, deleted, or changed instruments or players. This happened suddenly, in the middle of a copy/paste edit.

Because of the complexity of this piece – dozens of flows, layouts, and players – I’m hesitant to start adding or deleting players, or to make any kind of global setting changes. This does not appear to be related to some incorrect setting.

ANybody ever see anything like this? Ulf, if you’re online, please private-message me with any suggestions.

Thank you for your help.

2

Perhaps posting (or sending @Ulf) a Diagnostic Report or the offending portion of the Dorico file (with a link to this post) would help speed a response.

3

You can always make a copy, and start hacking away to see if it has any effect.

4

How have you confirmed that? Just underneath the Playing Techniques lane, open the drop down and check:

Screenshot 2026-08-02 at 09.28.39
Screenshot 2026-08-02 at 09.28.39500×590 27.9 KB

Sometimes the endpoint of the pedal overlaps with a repeat or coda etc. and “hangs” on.

5

Yes, that’s how I confirmed it.

6

@benwiggy That’s what I’ve been doing – resulting in starting this thread.

7

@Derrek
@Ulf

I think I’ve managed to successfully send a copy of the project to Ulf, after several “undeliverable” errors. Ulf, let me know if you receive my attachment

I’m beginning to think that this is a NotePerformer issue, not necessarily a Dorico problem. But I’ll wait for Ulf’s feedback. I’ve seen him work miracles in the past.

8

Keep us posted, please.

9

Ulf and Daniel came up with a diagnosis. There’s an obscure issue with Dorico related to the use of CC64 (sustenuto) within a repeated passage.

I’d used the piano sustain pedal in a repeated section 50 measures before the point where the problem occurred. (The problem did not occur within a repeated measure.) Somehow, this combination of factors resulted in sustenuto being permanently switched on in the treble staff of a grand staff.

Steinberg is now aware of the issue and it may be corrected in the next maintenance update. In the interim, I’ll unpack my repeated measures and eliminate the repeats. Ulf confirms that the problem also goes away if repeats playback is disabled in Playback Options.

Ulf or Daniel, please correct me if I’m misstating anything.

As usual, really great support from the Dorico team!! Thanks, guys!

10

That’s pretty much what I wrote above:

Sometimes the endpoint of the pedal overlaps with a repeat or coda etc. and “hangs” on.

11

@derAbgang

Hi David:

To put a fine point on it, that doesn’t seem to be exactly what’s going on. The sustenuto effect turns off properly within the repeated passages and is not audible afterward.

But 50 measures later, it turns on by itself in a specific measure; and it may do so on different beats of that offending measure, depending on the pattern of notes I insert into that measure. If the measure is empty, the sustenuto begins in the following measure. Even stranger, only the treble staff of the grand staff is affected, many measures away from any repeated section and dozens of measures after the sustenuto had been operating correctly (that is, pedal up).

I’m not aware of the MIDI spec allowing CC64 to be applied to only one half of a grand staff of a piano player assigned to a single MIDI channel. (I’d be surprised if Dorico allowed such a thing bc, obviously, that’s not how a physical piano works.) And, unlike the problem measures, the CC64 events within the repeated section are correctly applied to both halves of the grand staff. So this is new to me.

FOLLOW-UP: I duplicated the repeated passages, in order to remove all repeat bars, and disabled repeat playback in Playback Options. At first glance, that seems to have resolved the problem, but only after I relaunched Dorico.

So I think Daniel got it right.

D