Organ Pleno to Organ Flutes?

Creating and changing instruments is beautifully explained here (YouTube): Creating Instrument Changes in Dorico | Setup Mode in Dorico - YouTube

But how does one change for example from Organ Pleno to Organ Flutes only using Halion? When adding an instrument to the player with the ‘+’ sign it shows that Halion has only one keyboard instrument called ‘Organ’. That’s it?

If I want to use Garritan, which HAS all the organ registrations mostly needed (see the attached pic Garritan_Organ.png), do I really do it like it is described here (Dorico Forum): Garritan - #19 by dspreadbury - Dorico - Steinberg Forums

That is way too tedious. Is there an improvement coming? :slight_smile: Please.

Additionally, if one GOES the hard way (whitelist), would ALL those Garritan organ registrations be available as separate instruments to add to a player in Dorico?

Thank you. :slight_smile:
Garritan_Organ.png

Organ Pleno and Organ Flutes are not separate instruments, so changing instrument to change registration doesn’t really make conceptual sense. The way this is intended to work is using VST Expression Maps: you should be able to create an item in the music that will trigger the appropriate sound change in the virtual instrument you’re using. Unfortunately a few pieces of the puzzle are missing at the moment: a VST Expression Map cannot trigger a totally different patch, so in the case of the Garritan Organs library you can’t access a separate sound as yet; and there’s no good way to define your own e.g. text item that you can use to trigger a registration change mapped to the VST Expression Map.

We definitely intend to continue iterating on these playback features in order to make this possible, but as with all aspects of the application, it will take some time.

Sure. I only thought that maybe there is a “reason” to change instrument, because Halion Organ does not seem to have more than one registration.

The way this is intended to work is using VST Expression Maps: you should be able to create an item in the music that will trigger the appropriate sound change in the virtual instrument you’re using.

This, of course, is what I originally wanted.

We definitely intend to continue iterating on these playback features in order to make this possible, but as with all aspects of the application, it will take some time.

Thank you. Of course this is not important at all. For me, the Great Dorico is a beautiful music WRITING tool. I don’t care (much) about any playback things. I only got curious because I right now happen to be creating organ music. Thank you again! :slight_smile:

Yes, but it won’t happen automatically. You can certainly add as many organ instruments to the player, corresponding to the Garritan presets as you like (and (re)name them accordingly.) You will just have to ascertain that the corresponding Midi channels matches the midi channels in Aria player. The drawback is that you end up with one set of staves for each registration preset in Galley view, where you have to do your composing. Not elegant, but if you can live with some compromises, it does work :slight_smile:

That might be a workround for a fairly limited organ soundset like Garritan (which I don’t have, but I’ve read the documentation on how it’s intended to work) but if you want to get serious and have say 50 presets on thumb pistons plus another 50 on a general crescendo pedal, “Not elegant” doesn’t seem the right way to describe it!

Plus requirements like changing the “preset” in the middle of a note, playing on two manuals (and therefore two different presets) at the same time with one hand, dealing with couplers between manuals and/or pedals, etc., …

The solution is to play it, for real, with Hauptwerk :wink: I’m sure someone will figure out the right way (eventually) to also get Dorico to “talk” to Hauptwerk.

The OP was asking about Garritan. I’m both a long term Hauptwerk user and a professional concert organist, but I still enjoy keeping fact from fiction.

I understood that perfectly. I was just quipping that HW was the better solution for rendering pipe organ music (even using the free version as a VST). I know that Sibelius users have figured out how to use HW’s VST link. No doubt people will do the same with Dorico. The fact is the OP could, as previously mentioned, create a humongous score for performance within Dorico (using Garritan) and a normal score for publishing and get the desired results until Dorico is further developed. That’s what many people have done for many years with all the major programs. One for looks and one for sound. Not elegant, but it does work if you’re desperate.

The update that was introduced today by John Barron shows that Dorico will output MIDI, and will be able to drive any MIDI machine or synth, so I guess there will be some improvement for this kind of problem, right ?

I just watched the video. Terribly exciting! This might solve the OP’s problem. If your score isn’t too large and you have a VST that can run as stand-alone software you could assign individual midi channels to the VST. I know the expression maps is perhaps the better option in the long run but still a very interesting idea.

For anyone with deeper organ knowledge/interest, Hauptwerk is of course the natural choice. HW only runs standalone but comes with a VSTLink which can be used to transmit MIDI to it, so this works fine in Dorico already. Since all registrations can be managed within HW, one can simply set up a stepper system and invoke that from any Playing Technique in Dorico.
Audio can be returned (via the VSTLink) to D. in normal VST fashion, if one needs to combine it with other VSTs, OR output directly from HW.