I’m looking for good handbell sounds compatible with Dorico. Please recommend your favorite package.
What I had under Finale is now quite out of date, so is irrelevant now.
Does your suggestion also have good sounds for other handbell techniques, such as mart, mart-lift, mallet, suspended mallet, thumb damp, singing bell, and shake? Also, handchimes? Do the samples cover at least the standard five octaves? Some groups now have six and seven octaves of chimes and bells.
Though my primary need is handbell sounds I’m also interested in good orchestral sounds (though haven’t checked out Halion’s offerings).
I’m not a pauper so don’t need for your suggestions to be free.
I just bought the Noisefirm sound set, but have zero idea how to install them into Dorico. It seems that the only installation instructions provided are for Kontakt, Logic, or Aberton
Welcome to the forum, @Mooselover. Assuming you have Kontakt already (and if you don’t, you’ll need to solve that first!), you can use the sounds in Dorico by going to the VST and MIDI panel in Play mode and adding a new entry in the rack, then loading Kontakt in there. Once you have Kontakt loaded, you can choose the handbells patch and load it into the first slot in Kontakt.
Now, back in Dorico, in the Track Inspector panel, in the Routing section, set your handbells instrument to point at the Kontakt plug-in in your rack, and the appropriate channel, and hopefully you will now hear the handbells sound triggered during playback.
I don’t have Kontakt. Can I use the free Kontakt Player, or do I have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy it? I literally wouldn’t use it, other than to be able to play decent handbell sounds.
That typically depends on the developer. According to the Noisefirm site for handbells, it says that it requires the full version. Being around black friday / cyber monday, there might be a deal on it, not sure.
There wasn’t a sale on K8 - still $389 CAD.
HOWEVER, there was a sale on K-Komplete Standard at 50% off, which made it only $0.50 more than K8. So I took the plunge. Maybe I’ll end up using it for stuff other than just Dorico playback.
Precisely the reason I’ve never bought this sample library in spite of the excellent sounds it produces. I don’t have kontact and cannot justify the expense, even on sale. Sigh.
The Garritan handbells, either in the bundled instruments, or in GPO5, will work in Dorico, and they do sound like handbells, regardless of age. (Though I’m no connoisseur.)
After I first posted the question back in mid October I purchased Dorico, which included Finale v27 and Garritan Instruments for Finale. Finale uses the GIF through the Aria Player.
This is not Garritan Personal Orchestra, which MakeMusic would be glad to sell separately.
To confirm, the Garritan Instruments for Finale can be used by Dorico? Do I need Kontakt, Kontakt Player, or another interface?
OK, so I got Noisefirm and Kontakt, so I can play them. So far so good.
I don’t understand how to get other techniques (besides basic ringing) to work, though.
One potential solution I thought of (haven’t tried it) would be to switch instruments for a player and have the second instrument be marts or mallets or whatnot, then switch back when the special notes have played.
Another possibility (haven’t tried it) would be to have the special notes go into different voices, then split out the playback tracks and use the alternate sounds for those voices.
Both of those options seem like a LOT more work than should be necessary. Is there a simpler method?
You would need to create a Percussion Map and/or an Expression Map so Dorico can send the correct messages to the Noisefirm instrument to trigger each technique.
OK, went down the rabbit hole on expression maps. Pretty neat!
However, in the tutorials for creating expression maps, it shows a keyboard with the playable range highlighted, then the key trigger notes highlighted in gold. The Noisefirm Handbells instrument has no such triggers, that I can find.
In the Noisefirm folder, there are hundreds of individual .wav files for three playing techniques for each of the 80+ handbells in the set. They’re labeled with filenames such as “C#3-leg-” (legato) or “C#3-sta-” (standard) followed by four capital letters that seem to be random. Each bell has three such .wav files for the three techniques.
But no key trigger. Forgive all the questions, but I’m brand new at all of this and it’s like learning a foreign language. I just spent $400+ on software to get decent handbell sounds out of my compositions and it’s frustrating when I can’t get them to play correctly.
Much appreciated for everyone who’s gotten me this far!
Sent this to Noisefirm:
Greetings!
I’ve recently purchased the Noisefirm Handbells VST for use in Dorico. I also purchased Kontakt 8 so that they would be playable. So far, so good.
I see that there are “one-shots” that include various playing techniques, such as staccato (mallets, probably), legato, and standard.
I have imported the SMUFL handbell notations in Dorico so that I can notate the various handbell techniques in my scores, and I went to make an expression map to make sure that playback would trigger the different sounds for those notations.
However, I don’t see any key trigger indications, so I don’t know which key triggers will switch the playback sounds.
Can you help?
I got this back:
Hi James!
Changing the bell articulation groups in Kontakt should be available by automating MIDI CC #1.
Give that a shot and let me know if you have any questions.
Cheers!
I pulled up the MIDI and there’s already something in CC1. What does “automate” it mean?
You should refer to the Handbells manual to see how different sounds are controlled/switched.
You may find that different CC1 values will trigger different sounds. With that information you would be able to construct an expression map for the instrument.
(We really cannot help more without that kind of information)
(We really cannot help more without that kind of information)
I was afraid of that. The documentation that came with Handbells had only installation instructions and nothing else.
I’ve been down a 3-hour rabbit hole trying to figure out how to send a CC1 trigger to a note in Dorico to see if it changes anything and I’ve gotten nowhere.
Le sigh.
Unless someone else has that instrument, you are very much on your own.
If you open the key editor (lower panel in Write or Play), you can add a CC1 editor and draw in different values to see/hear what happens (in particular see how the Handbells responds in Kontakt).
