Playback/hidden tracks

Dorico
1

Hi all, I’ve searched the forum but didn’t find a solution for my unique situation - perhaps someone here can help?

I have a unique situation in Dorico for iPad, whereby I have some MIDI recordings of electric piano improvisations, (Neo-Soul Keys, the best fender Rhodes emulation I’ve ever experienced!). I have imported these performances first into Logic to create a bespoke tempo track (since they were free improvisations with no click track) and then imported the resulting midi track (with correct tempo track) into Dorico for iPad. It works like a charm, putting the bar lines just where I want them and including the tempo changes correctly.
However I need to edit quite a lot of the details/nuances of timing and grace notes etc, because the midi import often makes these details very complex for a pianist to read. When I edit the score in Dorico to make it look more readable, the playback is affected, and not always in a good way. So I hit the perfect solution of adding a second track, copying all the midi data to that one too, and only editing one of the tracks (for a score) and hiding the other track (for correct playback).
It works - sometimes - but it depends on which window I have recently been in.

Essentially (TL;DR) I am trying to view (and edit) instrument 1 (the score) which is muted, and playback Instrument 2 (the original midi on the virtual instrument) which is hidden. So I am looking at my edited/more readable score, while listening to the unedited/more humanized/nuanced performance track. Since the bar lines always match, the two tracks are in sync, but I’m having trouble setting this up.

If I show both instruments in the Full Score section, I can mute the Score instrument in the Play tab and it works(plays only the original midi recording) - but then I can still see both piano staves. If I hide the Audio instrument (second piano stave) from Full Score, then it doesn’t play back !

Can I hide an instrument but still have it play back while editing another instrument viewed as a solo instrument?

Sorry for the long-winded explanation - trying to explain it !

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Patrick

2

You should be able to use manual staff visibility to hide one of the two instruments, then control which one plays back using the solo/mute buttons in the Mixer:

3

Thank you so much! This allowed me to do exactly what I wanted.

FYI (if you are on the Steinberg team) there seemed to be a little bug in the iPad Dorico which made it not work for me the first time:
I added the Audio part to the ‘Score’ view, and went to Write view and hid the Audio staves as per your instruction. They disappeared but the sound didn’t play. I looked at the Play view and somehow it hadn’t refreshed the instrument list - there was still only one instrument listed, the muted one( my edited score instrument). When I switched to Full Score and back to Score again, the Play screen updated and both instruments were there, and the sound played from the ‘invisible’ instrument. So I got it to work in the end! Let me know if you need more info on the slight weirdness/bug, as I don’t think I’ve explained it well :wink: and I can see whether or not I could reproduce it more clearly for the developers to fix it - looks like a screen/view refresh wasn’t happening when I added an instrument to a score view in the setup page.

Anyway thanks so much - your tip was fantastic and I’m very happy with the app!

Patrick

4

That’s interesting, thanks for letting me know. You’re sure that you weren’t looking at a part layout so that only one of the two instruments was included to begin with?

5

Yeah I’m not sure exactly what happened, and it doesn’t reproduce the same error every time. But something is definitely a bit off, regarding the refreshing of the instruments listed on the Play tab, when I make changes on the SetUp tab… If I figure out exactly how to reproduce it, I’ll let you know in this thread! And I’m a new user, so I may just be misunderstanding how it is supposed to work - though I’m also a programmer and I tend to recognise when things look a bit off :wink:

Sometimes it just does something a bit weird, which I can usually resolve by resetting the app etc.

In the meantime, thanks for all your help!

6

Me again! I can’t get this manual hiding to work in Galley view - is it possible, or only in Page view?
Thanks!

7

Galley view shows everything.

8

Ok thanks! I was hoping to make one of those cool screen recordings via Galley view with the hidden track playing, but I guess that was a hope too far… :wink:
All good, I can do it another way. Thanks again.