NotePerformer and Steinberg’s Retrologue respond to Tonality Systems as always, but suddenly Pianoteq does not. MIDI tuning is on (‘Yes’) in Pianoteq. Tuning method is set to Auto in the Expression map, although I tried the VST Tuning and Detune options, too. I even tried Pitch Bend but as the Note Editor does not show any lines in the pitch bend view, I’m noy sure if any pitch bends were created. Pianoteq keeps playing in 12-equal. I have tried several Playback Templates. This could be another Playback template problem but I don’t know how to solve this. Similar things happened in 2023 and I just read that thread on this forum but since then, when it was Dorico 4 or 5 and Pianoteq 5 or 6, Pianoteq has replaced the VST2 tuning parameter with the VT3 expression parameter (I think), and in any case there have been no problems in Dorico and Pianoteq until now. Is this problem something that has appeared in the very latest updates of either software or is there a cure?
Don’t you have to load a scala file to specify the microtones?
No, apart from NotePerformer, Pianoteq is the only third-party software instrument on the market that supports Dorico’s VST tuning parameter. So as a VSTi in Dorico, it plays back the microtonal notation (Tonality System) of Dorico, and has since Dorico 2 or 3 and Pianoteq 6 (or even 5, I forget).
Thanks, good to know! I tried every trick I know, re-opening the playback template, changing the tuning method in Expression maps etc. but couldn’t be 100% sure if I’ve not missed something.
I thought the last version (from last week) would solve the problem but no. If I choose Pitch bend as microtonal thing in the Expression map (first part of it) I can have some results, but it’s not convincing, since it doesn’t work reliably. I’m quite baffled by this regression. Anyone at @modartt ?
I was in contact with modartt support and they were not able to replicate the problem. It seems that the Pianoteq/Dorico combo has simply become unreliable; I later noticed the same problems with Pianoteq 8. If you start a project with a piano part that uses microtonal notation, and Dorico automatically assigns the part to a Halion piano (those, very annoyingly, do not respond to Dorico’s Tonality Systems at all), and then change the instrument to Pianoteq, it won’t play the microtones. This happens (usually? always?) with both ptq 8 and 9. You have to remove the Atonal key signature signpost, and set the Tonality System back to the correct one and insert the Atonal key signature, and then it works. Both Pianoteq support and I believe these are problems in Dorico rather than Pianoteq.
Last week I happened to read your post about the microtonality playback switch from February because I was trying to do midi export with pitch bend and encountered strange behaviour. Once I had changed it to Pitch Bend in one test score, even my previous documents would not play correctly until I switched it explicitly to VST Note Expression. I did not save the test document, and I may have had to quit and relaunch Dorico before it worked normally again (with the switch set to Auto).
Ok, that is weird. I’ve been testing the 24 divisions per octave with three simple chords and found that only pitch bend would give me results (providing I was using parallel chords and not any more complicated music…) which was not satisfying. VST Note Expression would not work, but I see it finally worked for you, so I should investigate a little bit more.
I’ve received the perfect answer from Julien in the Modartt forum :
It works with the ‘detune’ method, you also have to remember to have ‘midi tuning’ enabled in options / midi.
Once I’ve enabled that option>Midi setting, and put the microtonal method to Detune, Pianoteq 9 (9.2.1 since yesterday) works flawlessly. Hope it helps!
It looks like the MIDI mapping can be saved which I discovered after I edited the screen capture. In any case, this is where you change the MIDI Tuning option.
If you read my OP, you can see that the first thing I wrote is the I have MIDI Tuning On. (It’s saved and always on.) The problem is that it’s somewhat random if Pianoteq gets retuned or not. That setting the tuning method to ‘Detune’ fixes the problem is due to the fact that even though Pianoteq is a VST3 instrument, it doesn’t use the VST3 Expression parameter for retuning but rather the VST2 Detune parameter. Now, it used to be the case that the '‘Auto’ setting in Expression Maps would not detect PIanoteq’s method and it had to be set manually, as instructed to you by Julien. But in 2023, Daniel wrote: “The point of the Auto setting is that it will automatically choose the appropriate microtonal playback method for known plug-ins, which includes NotePerformer, HALion, other Steinberg plug-ins, and (soon) Pianoteq, precisely for the reason that if Dorico knows how to achieve microtonal playback with those devices, you don’t need to.” So auto detection was supposed to be implemented for Pianoteq (“soon”). I think it was; in any case, I’ve had the setting on Auto for a long time without ever touching it, and Pianoteq has worked. I have in on Auto right now, and Pianoteq 9.2.1. is correctly retuned. But sometimes it isn’t and there are these problems.
