Resources for learning music technology

After 25 years or so away I come into this as a music tech novice and am finding the learning curve steeper than expected

Learning notation in Dorico has a fun side to it but anything to do with audio/playback, even just basic setting up Dorico with VSTs and getting things routed properly etc has me slipping into a catatonic state

This morning I spoke with a music/technology teacher at a local college about finding someone to guide me through setting up a system and basic tutoring on the tech side and one of his recommendations was Groove3

Mainly it would be for tutorials on the tech side of things

He also recommended looking into Cubase but maybe further down the road

My preference at this point is to get someone to set things up so i can focus on music

Anyway I’m wondering if others have used Groove3 or are there other resources I should look at

If you want to focus on music creation and not on setting up VST instruments, and provided you are not focused on jazz or pop, for which it is not particularly suitable, I would strongly recommend you use NotePerformer. NotePerformer is literally “set and forget”, and you never need worry about manually routing any sounds.

If you want to go beyond the factory NotePerformer sounds, buying a third-party library like Spitfire’s BBC Symphony Orchestra together with the NotePerformer Playback Engine and then using that is the best way to improve the fidelity of the sounds without needing to learn anything about VST instruments, expression maps, and so on.

Again, using BBC SO with NPPE is basically “set and forget”, and after the initial download, install and setup steps, which will take at most a few hours, you can leave all playback setup tasks behind you and focus on learning Dorico itself and creating music.

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Thanks

You have pretty much described the current state of affairs here

What i have thus far is NP + BBCSO & the Cinematic Studio Series all of which are beyond expectations and i should be perfectly happy w nothing more

But who couldnt be seduced by some of the beautiful piano libraries?

Thats the main one but i also need chinese instruments etc for mockups of some old resurrected scores

So either i get over the learning difficulties w assistance of course or rework all of my scores for different instruments

The ideal for someone like me would be click on the instrument name on the score and designate right there VSL Bosendorfer or EW ghu cheng etc w the least fuss possible about inner workings

Roughly what NP does behind the scenes but w simple access for the user

My problem is i have no bandwidth for the tech side of things as they are

Hi @bluekayak88 ,

to have something halfway automatic in the instrument switch (even if you need a little setting up things at the beginning) you can create personalised Playback Templates that unify NP (with NPPE), with your desired extra libraries. You need to create endpoint configurations of some extra Instrument that you need, and add these at the top of the list in the Edit Playback Template dialogue:

Here a visual guide :

CREATE ENDPOINT CONFIGURATION:

EDIT YOUR PLAYBACK TEMPLATE:


I also strongly suggest the following video that explains more deeply (there are some UI differences since the video is 3 years old):

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Thank you I appreciate your time and effort laying out the stepwise instructions and will give that a shot

Learning notation in Dorico has actually been enjoyable, dealing with the inner workings of playback not so much. The sound library resources are amazing there just seems to be a pain factor to go with it

I’m sure the day will come when all of this will be invisible and effortless

Currently I’m working on something for two pianos, a simple problem I hadn’t anticipated was that I would need … two pianos

Which means choosing two that will be distinguishable, and setting them up in Dorico, which I imagine wont be difficult. Unless it means creating endpoint configurations and templates etc, the mere prospect of which I find daunting

There are worse things in life

I don’t understand… If you only need two pianos, it is simple enough to set everything manually, no need to create a playback template for that.
Make sure you pan them in different locations (as would be done in a real live recording), if you can have two different virtual instruments, so that they really sound a little bit different… And that’s it! Use the same hall reverb to make sure they sit in the same space and you’re done. Hope it helps.

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Thanks

By “set everything manually” is that anything to do with endpoints or expression maps? or is it just about attaching the VSTs into Dorico?

This is still all still very new to me

You can probably tell that I have zero understanding of setting up playback in Dorico and elsewhere and haven’t found the videos and other instructions helpful

(Building on @Christian_R and @MarcLarcher excellent advice)

  1. Create an empty project.

  2. In Setup add two piano players

  3. In Play configure your VST(s) to load your chosen pianos and route them one to each instrument (They will happily use the Default expression map)
    (You will probably need to experiment with overall dynamic levels in the VST to get the balance you want)

  4. When you are happy. Do File>Save as project template… piano duet.

Then whenever you want to start a new project you just start a new piano duet from the hub and all your settings will will be preserved.

As you gain more experience you can enhance and change things, but this should get you started with a minimum of difficulty.

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Thanks for that and for all the good input here

When i post i should open w a caution about who youre dealing with

I think the assumption here is that most people have at least a basic grasp of what’s going on and some are quite expert

At the moment im somewhere on the opposite end of that spectrum

May I suggest Groove 3? It’s an online, commercial site that provides excellent training videos on many DAWs and audio techniques and music mixing and production.

[Disclaimer: I do not work for Groove3 and I derive no commercial benefit from them.]

Purely out of interest, it is owned by Hal Leonard.