Percussion routing midi note input to another midi note output

Can somebody point me to a easy method to do this, because it’s allways for me a nightmare.
The scenario:
I create for exemple a cowbell rythm entered with a middle B—ok with the right symbol, but when I hear in the mix I don’t like the sound of Halion Sonic so I open Kontakt with a patch that contains a lot of cowbell’s sound , and route the track to it: no problem
But now I want to hear the cowbell witch is on midi note C#5 for exemple.
I can’t find something as easy as in Cubase:
in_out_note
best regards

I’m still new to Dorico myself, but I have been working quite extensively with unpitched percussion the past few weeks, so I’m hoping I can help you through this problem.

In Dorico, you have an instrument (e.g. the cowbell). It might exist on its own, or it might be part of a percussion kit. On its own, the instrument has a single line in the score. Given that you mention entering “middle B” notes, I am guessing that your cowbell is part of a percussion kit, and that it is mapped to the “middle B” line of a 5-line staff? (forgive me if I’m wrong, it just sounds like that’s the case here).

What’s important to understand, with unpitched percussion, is that the line it is assigned to on a 5-line staff, in a percussion kit, has absolutely no influence over what sound plays back. This is purely a notational device, to allow you to notate multiple unpitched percussion instruments, in a kit, on the same staff.

What Dorico sees, when it plays back the notes assigned to a cowbell, is simply that: notes assigned to your cowbell instrument. Those notes will have playing techniques (by default, only the “natural” playing technique, I believe). Thus, during playback, Dorico sees instrument (cowbell) and playing technique (“natural”, most likely) for each note that is being played.

Now, the instrument (cowbell) in Play mode, will be pointed at a specific channel of a specific VST. You likely have pointed the cowbell at an appropriate channel of Kontakt, which is hosting your cowbell sample.
instrumentVSTAssignment

Also in Play mode, each channel of each VST is assigned two important maps that control how unpitched percussion notes are played back: an expression map, and a percussion map. You can access this configuration by clicking on the “endpoint setup” cog, in Play mode, for your Kontakt instance:
endpointSetup

Here, you will see which expression and percussion map is assigned to the channel:

For unpitched percussion, the expression map controls things such as the velocity change for normal vs accent vs marcato. Unless you need to override the defaults, you can use the default map.

The percussion map is the all important missing link you were looking for - it controls how the combination of instrument + playing technique map to MIDI note number in your Kontakt patch (a bit like the screenshot you showed from Cubase).

To setup your cowbell sound, we’ll need to create a custom percussion map, and then assign it to the channel of Kontakt that you are using for your cowbell sound.

In Play mode, click “Play” from the menu bar, then click “Percussion Maps”. This will open the percussion maps GUI.

From the bottom left corner, click the + button to add a new percussion map. Give it a name (e.g. “Kontakt Cowbell”), and then on the right hand side, make sure to select the “show all” button, so that you see all MIDI notes (not just the notes in use - which is currently no notes):

Now you’ll see a spreadsheet of MIDI notes. Find the note that represents the desired cowbell sound (note: the note naming might not match that used in your library, as each program address Middle C (MIDI note 60) by different names (C3, C4 etc))

Select the line for the note you want to edit, then under “Edit Drum Kit Note”:

  • enter a name (e.g. cowbell),
  • select the same instrument you assigned to your Player/Percussion Kit (it must be the exact same instrument: if you selected “Cowbell (high)” then it must be that, vs “Cowbells” or “Cowbell (low)” - the exact same instrument.
  • Select the appropriate playing technique from the techniques section (most likely “natural”)
  • Click “Apply” to assign that config to the selected MIDI note.

You can now click “OK” to confirm the changes to that percussion map.

Note: If your library uses keyswitches to select a given instrument, or if your Dorico instrument is configured for multiple playing techniques, these steps might need to be altered slightly (but I’m hoping that’s not the case here).

Finally, we can revisit the endpoint setup (for your Kontakt instance). Assign your new percussion map as the percussion map used by the appropriate channel of your Kontakt instance.

With all of those steps in place, I’m hoping you’ll hear your cowbell sound.

Steve

Hello stevetwist,
great thanks for the time you took to make this tuto.
Yes it works as workaround but not very convenient for me, because I don’t want to do this for each patch (create a lot of percussion maps) and mostly not to associate a name to it, because if I change the patch in kontakt to trigger a noise or something else in place of thecowbell as in previous example:
it would quickly become confused!!
I wanted something more global and very easy.

  • I have another solution but not great for the moment: I created a lot of “playing technique” with a number of midi note (not name note because middle C is sometimes C3 and sometimes C4) and use it on the sheet music ( see the picture).
    number_note_route
    After that in just put a alpha of zero to it to not see on the screen. With this method I can use everywhere in the score these playing technique to route notes.

I hope that in a next version of dorico, we will have the possibility of creating our own categories of playing technique and add it to the list of wind,Brass, Unpitched Percussionn…and create a category like “midi note output routing”.

  • The other method finally the most rapid is to edit in the vst itself like Kontakt and move sound to the notes written on the sheet music.
    Best regards and thanks agains
    Dup