I can input on multiple staves at the same time using the Shift arrow, but not when I am using real time midi keyboard. Even though I’ve selected multiple staves, as soon as I hit the record button, I only get notes recorded on one staff. Is there a way to do what I would like?
I’m afraid not, Jess: real-time recording is currently limited to a single instrument.
Understood. If I recorded a violin in real time, would I be able to copy it and paste it onto multiple instruments? If so how would that be done?
Thanks
Standard copy/paste. Copy your violin, select all your target instruments (you can ctrl-click to select non-adjacent ones, or shift-click to select fist and last and everything in between) and paste.
Even with my midi setup calibrated (and I have good timing), I find that real-time input almost always needs some amount of cleaning: quantization and playback overrides sometimes reset or finessed. Unless I’m playing something extremely simple like basic quarter / half / whole notes on the beat, but even still I would find a stray rest or slur to cleanup.
My point being, if you were to be able to real-time record the same music to multiple staves, you would effectively multiply and make redundant the amount of cleanup to do. Or you would still then clean up one staff, delete all the others and copy paste this to the rest. So basically you’d be back at square one.
YMMV, perhaps your input is perfect every time, but I haven’t had that experience. Just my two cents!
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Thanks for responding. I understand what you are saying and that’s true. But sometimes I don’t care about what’s written; I just want to be able to hear what a piece would sound like before I commit it to strict notation. When I used Finale, I was able to find string sections but on Dorico, I can’t find any string sections, only individual instruments. Maybe I’m not looking in the right place. I downloaded and installed BBCSO, which does have string sections, but I can’t get it to work and can’t find any decent tutorials to help with it.
Oh, fair point – I don’t do that myself so I hadn’t considered that workflow. That does make sense.
For a string section, you have a few options from the setup page:
The simplest and fastest would be click the button at the bottom which says ‘Add Ensemble’ and where it says build, begin typing ‘string’ and it will offer you a few section presets:
If you want to get more specific, in this same build menu you can write out each part of the section:
By default, these will be individual players - you can see this by the icon which is one person. You can quickly go down this list and double click on each icon to turn them into section players:
The other method is to click on the bottom panel for ‘Add Section Player’ and type violin, viola, etc., but in this case you’d have to do it one at a time. But these would be section players, not individual instruments.
Additionally, under ‘Add Section Player’ if you type ‘Strings’ or look under the ‘Sketch’ menu you can find generalized sections that are placed onto grand staves. Which, for your needs in the original post, this might be the most helpful, since you could real-time record on this grand staff using an ensemble string patch for example, and when you’re happy, you could clean up, parse out and explode parts out onto your section players.
For BBCSO there should be a playback template somewhere if you search for that; in addition you could look into NotePerformer with their engine for BBCSO.
Hope all that helps!
Try using a sketch strings instrument. This gives you a grand staff with string ensemble sound.
I am not near my computer that has Dorico, but you have been helpful in making some sense of what I want to do. I will try the double clicking on the violin (e.g.) and see what happens. If I double click it again, would it add a 3rd player?
Also, I did find the BBCSO playback template and loaded it onto Dorico and can choose it, but after that, I cannot get it to work. I just don’t know how to choose instruments. After I’ve used BBCSO as my template, I go to choose an instrument and get the same instrument list as before I’ve chosen that template. My technical skills are not good enough to follow the instructions in one of the video tutorials. It just seems like a foreign language to me!
Sorry if I wasn’t clear - the single person icon simply means an individual solo player; whereas the dual-person icon means a section of players. If you double-click it again, it would toggle back to the individual player.
With the BBC playback template enabled, when you add either individual players, or section players, you should get the correct corresponding sound immediately without the need of any additional setup.
The only caveat would be the the sketch grand staff which you may want to use for real-time input trying of ideas; I don’t believe BBC has an ensemble string patch, so for that you may want to use Halion or NotePerformer if you have.
You are really being very helpful and generous with your information, and really appreciate it. However, I still don’t know how to use that Dorico playback template. I go to the Play header, click on Play Template, and then choose BBCSO. Then what? Once it’s chosen, I try to add an instrument and get the same template as always asking me to select an instrument from the list presented and they are the same instruments as always, not the BBCSO instruments… Nowhere do I see any of the BBCSO instruments available to choose. Am I making any sense? If I were next to the computer that has Dorico, I’d be able to explain step-by-step what I am doing, but unfortunately, I am not.
I’d also suggest assigning keyboard shortcuts to ‘Duplicate to staff above/below’. I use Ctrl-Alt N/M
See this thread for some info on crafting string sections with Sonic Selections.