I’m working on an orchestra piece that has a brief aleotoric section. In this passage several players are instructed to play a pattern and repeat it freely over 5-10 seconds. I have this notation for it, which I believe is clear enough.
How can I make Dorico play this back? Right now, as you might expect, every instrument plays their passage just once and then quits. I don’t mind clicking in the notes myself in the piano roll, nor would I mind notating it exactly and hiding it, but I want to do it in the most efficient manner.
In my Finale days, I would just put it in a hidden layer. Thoughts or ideas?
Yep, what you said is what I’ve done for this kind of thing in the past, and what I believe is the only existing workaround (since Dorico doesn’t support inidividual aleatoric staff playback).
For stuff like this I sometimes like to label my staves clearly for my own sake, for example if I was writing for a violin:
Violin - this is the real notation you’d present to players (everything as normal)
Violin (Playback) - then I would copy and paste the notes on this staff, repeating them however I wish the midi to actually play it. And then I simply right-click and hide this staff from score view. What I like about this workflow is I can still see it in galley view, and the label keeps things organized when I re-open the project later on, I know if a staff is meant for playback only.
Finally on the notation staff you could select the notes to suppress playback, or sometimes I simply disconnect the staff from any VST under the play tab (or mute it in the mixer).
UGH! Would I need a new VST instrument for this staff? Almost every instrument joins in the aleotoric fun and I don’t know if my processor can handle a second orchestra
Well, no, you’d only need VSTs (or NotePerformer if you use that - which is very CPU friendly!) for the playback staves. The notation staves can be null/empty so they don’t need to pass any audio.
So let’s say you have 10 instruments doing aleotoric passages, you’d have 20 staves:
10x real notation (no VST)
10x hidden playback staves (VST)
So basically if you were going to use those 10 channels as VSTs or with NotePerformer, it would be VST usage as normal, since the other 10 are for visual player use only.
Alternatively, you could always duplicate the flow (or project file) after writing: one flow for notation only, and then the other flow would be filled out with all the notes to cheat aleatoric midi playback, this way you don’t have to deal with hidden staves and you can basically have one flow for score, and the other flow for rendering a mockup.
