I’m just trying to understand the relationship between Playback Template (under the “Play” menu heading when in Play Mode) and the VST’s you’ve loaded at the right. My confusion is: it feels like the point of specifying a “Playback Template” would be to be able to save and re-load a “Playback Configuration” (as in Sibelius) that consists of various VST’s you always prefer using for specific instruments in your score (Trillian for bass; Superior Drummer for drums, NotePerformer3 for classical instruments, etc.). Right now, however, it appears that you can only specify in the Playback Template a single library of sounds (either “all” NotePerformer3 or “all” whichever of the VST instrument you’ve loaded, etc.) and when you do, it resets the VST instruments you’ve loaded at right, to match whatever “Playback Template” you just chose. Am I missing something or is this just a feature (Playback Templates featuring combinations of VSTs you can save/reload) that is simply coming a bit further down the line? (just curious and sorry if I missed this being covered elsewhere already). So excited (by the way) by the direction things are going! I haven’t considered composing “finished product” in an actual notation program in years (I’ve been using Logic and then exporting into notation when I need score/parts), and while we’re still not there (to me) without live MIDI recording, a click, and editable note velocity, it’s getting so close I can almost taste it (so much thanks for all your admirable work!)
The playback template does indeed fulfil something of the same role as the playback configuration in Sibelius, except that because the plug-in state etc. is always saved in the project in Dorico, unlike in Sibelius, it’s more of a means of initialising how the playback should work for a given project as you add players and instruments, rather than something that is consulted every time you start playback to figure out what to do.
In the fullness of time you will indeed be able to define a playback template for yourself that includes a variety of different VST instruments and specifying which plug-ins should be used for which instruments, but for the time being if you work with a common ensemble you might find a good approach is to set up one project with the players, instruments and VST instruments that you want to use, then save it as a quasi-template after deleting its flows, and start new projects from it: then your preferred setup will be available from the start.
I use Noteperformer instruments in combination with VE PRO loaded instruments.
When I add later on for instance a Noteperformer solo violin, it is not shown in the noteperformer mixer and is not loaded.
I added a noteperformer instance
In Play mode I selected for the solo violin instrument that Noteperformer instance
The noteperf mixer stays empty. In the other noteperf. mixer windows no solo violin is shown either.
What must I do to load the instrument?
I had an email exchange with Arne about it. He says it has something to do with how Dorico would deal with having multiple virtual instruments at the same time (e.g. VEPRO) and recommend to ask the question at the Dorico forum.
I’m not sure how you would add an extra instrument directly to NotePerformer’s mixer. Everything really has to be driven from the players and instruments in the Dorico project. What you may find is that after adding a new solo violin player in your Dorico project, you need to go to Play mode, and ensure that you assign the violin player to an instance of NotePerformer and a specific channel of that instance using the header on the left-hand side, then go to the right-hand side and click the Endpoint Setup button for that instance of NotePerformer (the cog in the VST Instruments panel), and ensure that the NotePerformer expression map is chosen for that channel.
I followed the procedure you suggest without success.I will now try if this problem also occur with Halion. If not there might be a problem with noteperformer and Dorico.
To test this with Halion I changed the playing template to Halion.
The instruments load automatically
Then load instruments in VE Pro
Then add another Halion instrument. It did not load automatically. So I go to Halion, load manually the instrument in a free channel
in Play mode set it to the same channel.
It works
I think it would be great if it’s possible in Noteperformer to load an instrument also manually. But if this is not possible, I’ll load automatically all the Noteperformer instruments first and then the VE PRO instruments. It is a workaround.
By the way, I think Noteperformer is a great product. I like it a lot!!! And I am going to use it as my main library. Thank you for the good work, Arne
It’s designed behaviour that after you start managing your VST instruments and channel assignments manually, Dorico won’t do anything automatic any more. You should, though, find that you can get NotePerformer to work by assigning the channel and expression map manually as described in my earlier reply in this thread.
