I’m pretty new to Dorico and I have to say I like it a lot, mainly the engraving function.
So far I’ve encountered one issue (the rest is my lack of knowledge with the program…): the play range of the viola is totally incorrect. As it is presented in Dorico, it would be an extremely limited instrument. I solved the problem by switching of the colors of the unplayable notes, but that would have consequences on playback of course. Fortunately, I don’t need Dorico for playback, since I do that carefully and detailed in Studio One Pro.
Is there a way to correct the play range of an instrument? (I’ve seen similar topics for other instruments on the forum here.)
The colours for the range are ‘advice’ only. They don’t affect the printed page or exported graphics. If you don’t need playback, then just turn off the colours for instrument range. (View > Note And Rest Colors.)
But I’m interested to know how you think the viola range is limited. Not high enough?
Good advice…
Actually it would be nice to set up the playback range in the corresponding Expression Map, since ranges vary between different products – e.g. some piccolos go down to D, others to C.
You can specify the standard and advanced ranges by modifying your instruments.xml file. I don’t think this is officially supported so make a backup of the file first, but it works fine.
I hadn’t thought about this before, but you could set up several instruments.xml files with ranges set for different configurations, then copy and rename whichever one you wanted to use be the actual instruments.xml file before starting Dorico. That way the colored out of range notes could reflect the range of your VST instruments, and not of actual performers.
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LOL! I’ve hacked mine a bunch for various purposes. Make a backup first just in case and it seems to work well. It’s not in the user folder so there’s no guarantee an update at some point won’t overwrite your modified file, but I’ve made a lot of edits to mine. Obviously a fully featured instrument designer would be very useful in a future version, but for now we are stuck with these sort of edits, or just turning off the colors for out of range notes.
What do you use for editing XML?
There are a bunch of free text editors out there, but I’ve been using Sublime Text. It seems pretty straightforward and easy to use anyway.
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@benwiggy
Now that I’ve advanced a bit more and understand the principles of Dorico better, the issue only has todo with the so called transposition within the used keys (alto key, G-8-key…). I could solve the problem myself with the options menu for the keys.
To answer your question: what I saw were red notes that normally (with common tuning) are playable on the viola in the lowest register. The same for the flute (highest register). But as I said, problem solved.
Many shown instrument ranges are not practical. The bass clarinet and contrabass clarinets don’t go low enough. Even the samples are not low enough in halion sonic which makes it useless for me. It’s a very “amateur” range also in the high register.
The Halion sample range is not a Dorico problem, it is a Halion problem.
That said, I would welcome the ability to customise the “playable range” (perhaps in Setup?), in particular to formalise scordatura (similar to the current ability to change tunings of fretted strings)
True it‘s a Hallion problem and in order to change the range I bought Halion 6 but ended up using NotePerformer. A big problem with the free Halion is also high string harmonics. They are not played at all.
However, I love Dorico and I can’t recommend a different notation software anymore.
Thanks again to the team for the great work!