the manual seems lacking in this regard… hence this post.
using the directions given by NotePerformer i’ve expanded the automation section within the ‘play’ tab and fiddled with changing the stops for the instrument ‘organ’ in Dorico (NotePerformer is the active VST). there is no discernible change in sound output (from default settings). curious what could be going wrong.
also, the NotePerformer organ stop calculator suggests that the sections of the organ (manuals, swell and pedal) can be independently controlled. the automation section in Dorico suggests this isn’t possible.
can anyone give guidance here? it would be very helpful.
ok. in exploring further it looks like what the automation section in Dorico takes is the sum of the values from the NotePerformer organ stop calculator. so if i want full organ the value for cc is 103 and the value in the automation lane is 0. if i want the Great to be Principal 8’, the Swell to be Oboe 8’ and the Pedal to be Sub bass 16’ then the value for cc is 103 and the in the automation lane the value is 5 (or as close as possible… the number 5 doesn’t seem selectable).
Are you supposed to use the pencil and drag up and down in the automation lane to set the value?
I can hardly read the values as you drag. Seems very fiddly or am I doing something wrong?
The values which you calculate with our “stops calculator” page give you a unique value, producing a certain combination of stops.
You don’t need to add anything together yourself, as the script does everything for you. If you select a few different stops in the script, and it suggests a value of e.g. “67”, then simply setting CC103 in Dorico to a value of “67” should produce that exact combination of stops.
How or if the values are selectable in Dorico is not something I’m qualified to answer unfortunately. I’ve only had the chance to test this briefly, and that time I was able to set the value I wanted and it worked. It was a bit fiddly to get the exact value I was after, admittedly, but I’m certain Dorico will allow you magnify the Play mode lanes at some point (unless it’s possible already and that I’m missing something).
You really need the exact value to get the right registration. A value of 66 rather than 67 won’t do.
But how do you set registration separately for each staff of the organ? If you want the upper staff to be Swell and the next lower Great and then Pedal…you only get one automation line in Dorico Play mode. So does whatever choice apply to all three staves? Tom was suggesting that you added the results of the Swell, Great and Pedal choices up and that somehow the separate choices get distributed to the separate staves but I don’t think that happens.
It’s a mystery to me.
You can’t at the moment, Robert, because all two or three staves of the organ will be played by the same channel. In the future it will be possible to specify that different staves, and even different voices within the same staff, should be played by separate channels.
As Daniel said, NotePerformer would require Great, Swell and Pedal to use three different channels. Each channel would have its own unique CC103 setting, for the registration.
The NP mixer will show which sound is currently assigned, e.g. Organ (G) means Great.
"The values which you calculate with our “stops calculator” page give you a unique value, producing a certain combination of stops.
You don’t need to add anything together yourself, as the script does everything for you. If you select a few different stops in the script, and it suggests a value of e.g. “67”, then simply setting CC103 in Dorico to a value of “67” should produce that exact combination of stops."
thanks Arne. but it doesn’t really seem to be that simple. as an example, here’s a screen shot of two sets of organ stop choices:
so on the left of the image all stops are selected and for each rank the CC is 103 and for the values all are 0.
for the right side of the image each rank has two stops selected. for the first rank (Great), the value is 65, for the second rank (Swell), the value is 33, for the third rank (Pedal), the value is 17 and for the super strange rank (Accordion?..really?), the value is 2. each rank has a different value. to me, this means that i sum all the values to get the value i put into the automation lane of Dorico. BUT maybe this means i should have as many instances of the instrument ‘organ’ in the mixer as ranks so that i can assign different midi channels to each rank? this is where a comprehensive manual (something Dorico users have been asking for since… forever… would be useful…
As discussed earlier in the thread, instruments in Dorico that provide multiple staves currently play back on a single channel, so it’s not possible to set up the registration for the great, swell and pedals independently in Dorico.
no. unclear which key (or key combination) would work. this needs to be improved. it would be nice to be able to enter values directly. this should always be an option when designing a user interface.
Tbabcock,
Look at the NP mixer and both slots have an “g” indicating that they are Great stops. So only the calculated Great registration is going to be applied to all three staves. Currently you can ignore the Swell and Pedal registrations. They aren’t available yet because Dorico is only using one channel for all staves.
As I think others explained, the confusion is due to the fact that you can only access the first rank (Great) from Dorico right now, as it uses the same patch for all three staves in an organ instrument. The day this changes in Dorico, I’m expecting you will have three tracks with different automation lanes, where you can configure Great, Swell and Pedal in isolation.
If you’re interested in the details of the number, the value is a binary number where each stop represents a 1 or a 0.
The value 0 is a special case, because it’s the default initial value of that MIDI CC, so we’ve defined it as resetting the instrument to full stops.
But in actual practice there’s no need to worry about the actual value. You’re supposed to only copy-and-paste the value into Dorico.
If it feels a bit convoluted, it may be comforting to know that our NotePerformer 2 users had to construct that binary value by hand, by adding numbers together from a table in our older user docs. In other words, this was practically a feature for organists with an engineering degree until NP3.
I’m using Dorico 4.3.11.1117. It’s quite easy now to choose any number for your organ stops.
Draw any value into the lane using the pencil tool.
Then change to the pointer tool and click the value point you just made, and it turns orange. You will see the value of your choice in the small “stepper”, currently set at number 66. (see attached screen shot)
Then you can use the up and down arrow buttons to change your setting to any number or enter the number directly in the box.
Many thanks to all the experienced users whose posts here have enabled me to discover how much more flexible the NP organ is than I’d known before - I wasn’t aware of the facility to select manuals, let alone stops. There’s one thing that I haven’t so far found mention of, and that’s tremulant. Is it available on any rank or stop on the NP organ? Or can it be faked in some way?
I was getting along nicely a few weeks ago in setting CC103 values for the various stops (and getting the various sounds available), but I had to save and set aside the project to work on something else. Now that I’ve reopened the file, the choice of CC103 in the dropdown menu of the editor is missing - the list only goes as far as CC64. I certainly found CC103 last time - why can’t I access it now?
In other words, this was practically a feature for organists with an engineering degree until NP3.