If I select more than 1 note on a stave, then Dorico solos that stave for playback. Perfect, as mentioned here.
However, this doesn’t work with piano staves (because Dorico’s playback engine solos the instrument, rather than the stave specifically.)
So is there a way to playback a specific staff in a multi-stave instrument, like just the bass clef of a piano?
Enable independent voice playback for the piano?
I didn’t even know that existed! It doesn’t seem to work though. Hmmm. Am I doing something wrong?
Once you’ve enabled independent voice playback, you should find that if you e.g. click in an empty part of the RH staff or the LH staff and start playback (e.g. with P), only the voices on that staff will play back.
I tried that earlier but it didn’t work. I’m pushing P instead of spacebar, if that matters. I tried modifier keys, different staves, and I’m on the most recent version.
Here’s a video showing what’s happening:
I notice that you have not once released your very first selection, just extended it.
To make the software register your changes, you might have to click once outside your selection to deselect it and then try again. Thats just a guess from me… I would even do a Save in between, even if that might not be necessary.
Releasing the notes, save and reopen, and more didn’t work. The issue is that the playback engine doesn’t solo staves piano 2 hands. Here’s a video showing what’s happening:
@Ulf could this be solved? If I want to solo playback the piano bass, then I need to create a new stave (or mute the stems within the Play window).
That’s curious, because it works as intended for me. I did have to select two bars worth of notes though. Selecting just one bar of the bass staff played both staves, but selecting two bars in the bass enabled playback of just the bass staff. See if that works for you as well.
Edit: I’m using Noteperformer, without Independent Voices activated.
I see in the video you’re using Note Performer. It would be worth trying with the regular Halion library just to narrow down where the problem lies.
Here it is with DoricoBeep (the native sound library). At @ 1:19 I added multiple staves, but nothing fixes it. The playback engine still plays 2 staves on piano either though 1 is selected. In fact, if I choose flute + piano bass then the playback engine still plays flute + piano bass + piano treble.
In the last video you didn’t have Independent Voice Playback enabled until 1:46. When it is enabled you’ll see an extra fader appear in the mixer.
In other words, get to the state you were at 1:50 then without disabling IVP go back to Write Mode and try it (check that the extra fader is in the bottom panel).
Hi @waltribeiro, to be honest I don’t have the faintest idea. Dorico decides what MIDI event it sends to the audio engine and the audio engine just takes these and feeds the VSTinstruments with it. So this logic of what MIDI event is generated, when and where it shall go, that is all on Dorico side and I have no clue of it. Sorry, but everyone has their own area of expertise, and this is certainly not mine.
@dspreadbury could I submit this thread as a bug, or as a v5.5 feature request? I’d like to solo piano staves during my livestreams. The ‘bug’ can be seen here @ 0:53 - when I select notes from flute + piano bass then the playback engine still plays flute + piano bass + piano treble together, as if the 2 piano staves are interlocked together . As a result, the playback engine doesn’t play piano staves separately. Independent voice playback doesn’t seem to work, I’m on v5.1.70.2200
I can confirm some unexpected behaviour here.
I setup this simple project (below) on the iPad version with built-in sound, Iconica Sketch.
There is no problem selecting one stave of the piano to hear it “soloed out”.
But if I try to play another instrument in combination with only one stave of the piano, Dorico will play both of them. So I would call this a variant of the above issue, as described by @waltribeiro .
Flute and Piano
Same here - piano left hand solo via selection in Write Mode is fine, but I can’t do e.g. just RH and Flute. I’d agree this is unexpected.
@waltribeiro has some other weird issue regarding independent piano-staff soloing. The only way that I can sort-of-reproduce this is if the left-hand notes were originally in the right-hand and have been moved down with m. In other words they belong to the same voice. But it doesn’t look as if this is relevant in Walt’s case.
Dorico has a special case for a selection of one staff of a grand staff instrument, but when you include another instrument, those instruments will be soloed for playback, rather than those staves. For better or worse (I would obviously argue overall for the better), Dorico’s view is instrument-centric, rather than staff-centric.
So the behaviour Walt is experiencing is to be expected, because once you have a selection of multiple staves belonging to different instruments, it will be those instruments that are soloed, not the staves.
If having the ability to playback one staff of the piano with another instrument is important, you could replace the piano with the Treble staff and Bass staff instruments braced together. However, getting the staff label for this “piano” vertically centered on the brace in each system would be difficult.
You’re correct. I mentioned that workaround here @ 0:25 that you’d have to create a separate treble player and bass player in “Setup > Add Player”, and then brace them together.
So a quick solution is to create 2 new Instrument Definitions named Piano LH and Piano RH (be sure to change the staves and transposing layouts). The staff bracket and vertical spacing is different, but that’s OK with me. Now solo playback is possible for each piano stave.
