The purpose of this post is to provide Dorico users with everything they need to prepare pipe organ projects with smoothly functioning Organteq 2 playback. This is an updated version of my post at Organteq with Dorico - #36 by Mike_Philcox that is no longer editable and this revision gives me, a lover of organ music, the opportunity to incorporate additional information on using Organteq’s couplers, combinations and expression pedals within Dorico, to make small adjustments reflecting minor changes in Dorico, the Organteq template and my own understanding, and to correct an earlier mis-statement that could lead to confusion. In particular, for anybody who encountered difficulties following the dictates of my earlier post, if either one of the two upper staves contains more than one voice, it is not sufficient to simply identify the appropriate organ manual just once for the stave in question as suggested there—you must separately identify the appropriate manual for each voice in each of the two upper (manual) staves.
As before, I send huge thanks to @JesterMusician who prepared the necessary playback template for Organteq 2 and has repeatedly helped myself and others.
A. Getting Started
The first step is to download and install the Organteq 2 playback template attached to JesterMusician’s post at Organteq with Dorico - #35 by JesterMusician. Then, opening the playback template in Dorico the first time will automatically initiate the installation into Organteq 2 of the midimapping file included in the download (Dorico.otm). The download also includes JesterMusician’s project file for Bach’s BWV 542 and although not strictly necessary, I recommend downloading it. This project is a useful example of Dorico and Organteq 2 working together and can be particularly helpful in identifying functional differences between it and other projects in which Dorico and Organteq 2 are working together less effectively.
B. In Dorico
—Add a 3-stave organ player to your Dorico project. (The playback template requires the third, pedal stave for opening and closing stops, even if they relate to one of the manuals.)
—In Playback Templates, select “Organteq 2” and click Apply.
—Enter at least one note of each voice of your project into Dorico and then go to the left zone in Play Mode and activate Independent Voice Playback. This will generate unwanted extra instances of Organteq 2 which can be removed by switching from the “Track Inspector” to the “VST and Midi” rack and deleting the extra instances, leaving just one.
—In the Track Inspector, route each voice of each staff of Organteq to a separate channel of port 1. Check that both the VST name and expression map now show “Organteq 2” for each channel.
—In Write Mode use the Playing Techniques popup (shift P) to separately identify the manual for each voice of the two upper staves. There may be some confusion re names that is traceable to Organteq’s shift in focus from only French Romantic era stops in the original version to the inclusion of German Baroque era stops in Organteq 2. For example, for the middle manual enter “go” (short for the French name, Grand Orgue) to display HW (for Hauptwerk, the comparable German name); for the lower manual enter “pos” (short for the French name, Positif) to display RP (for Rückpositiv, the comparable German name); and for the upper manual enter “rec” (short for the French name, Récit) to display SW (for Schwellwerk, the comparable German name). The bottom stave is reserved for the pedalboard and doesn’t need to be expressly identified.
NOTE: You are not limited to these names for the manuals. They can be changed to anything you want in Library—> Playing Techniques—> Keyboards. This location also allows you to review the different organ functions that can be triggered by adding playing techniques to the pedal stave of your project.
C. In Organteq 2
Open the Organteq plug-in window and select the desired organ (for example, Romantic: Church, or Baroque Cathedral I) by clicking the preset button. This will allow you to view the available stops for your project on the Organteq window. Then, click the button to the immediate right and set the Organteq midi mapping to “Dorico”. In the unlikely event “Dorico” fails to appear as one of the options, go to your playback template download and follow these steps to install the included Dorico.otm file into Organteq:
- Click on the midi/keyboard icon located on the wide middle button near the top of Organteq’s interface to open the midi mapping window;
- At the top of this window hold down the large button for “current mapping preset” and choose “browse”;
- Select the “Dorico.otm” file you downloaded with the playback template and then press return.
D. In Dorico
—We need to arrange for the opening and closing of organ stops. For our purposes each stop is identified by a letter representing the manual or pedalboard to which it relates (starting with ‘a’ for the topmost manual through ‘d’ for the pedalboard), followed by a number representing its relative position on the Organteq interface starting from the left. Thus, ‘b4’ identifies the fourth stop from the left on the middle manual and ‘d7’ identifies the seventh stop from the left on the pedalboard. The number of stops for each keyboard varies according to the Organteq preset selected but ranges up to 20 for the middle manual and up to 10 for the other manuals and pedalboard.
—Playing Techniques to open and close stops are comprised of automatically-generated parentheses enclosing these stop identifications, preceded by a “+” or “-” depending on whether the stop is being opened or closed. Thus, enter +a4 in the popup to open the fourth stop on the top manual or -a4 to later close the same stop. These will then appear as (+a4) and (-a4) above the pedalboard staff.
—All Playing Techniques to open or close stops must be entered on the pedalboard staff regardless of the keyboard or pedalboard to which they relate.
—It is probably faster to enter Playing Techniques using the popup activated with shift P, but stops can also be opened and closed via the Playing Techniques tool box under the Keyboard heading (except for Combinations 1-10: see below).
E. Replace playing technique text with staff and system text
Text identifying your added playing techniques defaults to an appearance above the relevant stave (here, mostly the pedal stave) and results in increased vertical spacing between the staves. The extra spacing can be removed by selecting all playing techniques and then hiding them in the “Properties” panel in Dorico’s bottom zone. So long as the playing technique signpost under View—> Signposts is ticked, you will still be able to see the added playing techniques in smaller, shaded text but they will no longer impact vertical spacing and will not print out. You can then add staff and system text to clarify selected stops, or add hairpins to reflect volume changes initiated by the expression pedals (discussed in the next section).
The information included above in sections A through E should enable you to prepare many organ scores with Organteq playback. However, in case they are needed, two concluding sections cover (i) the use of combinations, couplers and pedals, and (ii) multiple voices in the pedal stave.
F. Combinations, Couplers and Pedals
The Organteq plug-in includes controls for combinations, couplers and pedals that are visible between the lowest manual and the pedalboard on the interface and each of these can also be activated for use in Dorico projects:
COMBINATIONS can be activated by entering “comb 1” or “comb 2”, etc. up to “comb 10” in the pedal stave playing techniques popup or by using the circled number playing techniques under the “Guitar” heading in the Playing Techniques toolbox. In either case, the relevant combination will appear on your score as a small circled number. To set the stops included in each combination, click the Settings button at the top right of the Organteq window followed by the Combinations tab at the top of the newly-opened screen.
COUPLERS and MONOPHONIC COUPLERS are numbered from left to right. “Simple” couplers are activated by entering +x1, +x2, etc. up to +x6 in the pedal stave playing techniques popup while the “monophonic” couplers use +x7 to +x10 in the same manner. As you might guess, both types of coupler are de-activated by instead entering -x1, -x2, etc.
The 3 EXPRESSION PEDALS and CRESCENDO PEDAL are controlled by automation entered on CCs 11-14, respectively, on the pedal stave. Of course, this requires you to start by adding the necessary automation track (or tracks) in Dorico’s key editor.
G. Multiple voices in the pedal stave
It has effectively been an unwritten assumption so far that the organ project will have only one voice in the pedal stave and by default any music entered in voices other than “upstem 1” will not generate sound in playback. However, functional additional voices can be added to the pedal stave as follows:
- open Organteq’s midi mapping window;
- click on the Keyboard mapping button at the top of the screen and then the Insert button at the bottom right to add a new manual;
- Press the buttons above the keys of the new manual to set it to “Pédal” and then match the channel setting to that chosen for the voice in section C, above, and also showing in Play Mode’s Track Inspector.
That completes this guide to using the Organteq 2 plug-in in Dorico. Good luck and may you discover many great stops along the way…
I hope somewhere in there are some stops I was fond of using.