Suggestion : locking out a given sound when working out orchestrations

Dorico
1

Greetings,

I would warmly welcome the ability to lock out a given sound (eg a piano sound) when working on large projects. I’m used to orchestrate my compositions on my piano so that using a piano sound whatever the selected staff would be just great.
We could toggle locking on and off with a shortcut key.

2 Likes
2

This is exactly how I work. Anytime I touch my MIDI keyboard I want to hear Piano, but of course I want playback with all the loaded libraries. It’s not too hard to do now though.

  1. In Preferences/Play uncheck MIDI Thru
  2. Open up a standalone Piano VST outside of Dorico
  3. If you’re on Windows, create multiple virtual MIDI ports. LoopMIDI is free and easy to use.
  4. Assign one MIDI port to your Piano VST, and another to Dorico.
  5. On Windows, use a software MIDI router to route the signal from your MIDI keyboard to both Dorico and your Piano VST simultaneously.

It’s not too difficult to accomplish, but I agree, it would be nice if Dorico could natively support this type of workflow by allowing the user to specify a single sound that is used for any incoming MIDI information from a MIDI controller.

3

Surely, any standalone Player app will always play back when you press MIDI keys, without any need for software MIDI routing?

4

Not in Windows. Whatever is using the MIDI port monopolizes it so you have to use something to route the signal to multiple ports at once. You can’t use the same port for both Dorico and a VST Piano for example as after one program accesses it, any other programs can’t receive the signal. I use Bome as a software MIDI router but there are plenty of others, including some freeware.

1 Like
5

Yes indeed. This is also what I’m used to do.
But sometimes, when using a complex sound setup, I need to quickly check the sound actually played by the staff I’m working on.

6

If I need to check playback on an individual staff, just select a few notes on that staff and press P, which will play back only any staves with selected material.

1 Like