I was looking for a way of playing back Kontakt patches in dorico like ‘Kontakt Factory Library/Orchestral percussion/Asian Percussion’ that are set up to play back different instruments at different pitches like a GM Drumset. This patch has a really good Tam Tam sound at its lowest register which I think I would like to use for a future project.
I came up with the following procedure:
(1) load a (default) Halion piano sound
(2) Replace Halion SE3 with an instance of Kontakt in the list of Vst instruments under Play mode
(3) Go to Set Up mode and change the name of thenew Kontakt instrument from ‘Piano’ to ‘Asian Percussion’
(4) Save the endpoint configuration for that instance of Kontakt now under the name ‘Asian Percussion’ with ‘Default’ in the expression map column and instrument name ‘Asian Percussion’
(5) Save the endpoint congigurations for all VST 's in the project
(6) Save the project.
I realise that this goes against the philosophy of notation programs which seek to notate all changes . I do not have a way of notating the tam tam patch. when I get around to using it.
But I have implemented the above procedure for other Kontakt patches such as ‘Kontakt Factory Library/ Orchestral Percussion/ Base Drum’ which does not play back correctly under the standard procedure presumably because the Halion patch is a single line patch and the corresponding Kontakt patch is a drum set type of patch
The above procedure is only a short cut which migh tor might not improve the playability of these Kontakt patches in in Dorico in the long run as it was probably not the intention of the Dorico programmers to implement this sort of approach to drumset type percussion patches
(e.g. no percussion map is used.)
I would be interested to hear what others might think
Hi Julian. Actually, I was looking into it, since I managed to fix my problem with Kontakt 6.7. I found the Kontakt factory-Orchestral-Percussion-Tamtam nki and tried to create a percussion map to use it easily in Dorico, as per the Factory manual:
Right now I am kinda stuck because I upgraded to Monterey (to try and solve my issue with Kontakt, but it was irrelevant…) and now my Steinberg UR242 audio card is useless for MIDI (but that’s another problem). So I’m using another keyboard (via usb) than my usual MIDI keyboard, and wasting some more time.
After trying to understand the instrument, I came up with the idea that the documentation was not describing the instrument I have in my computer, and that a percussion map like this :
gave me access to the three flavours of tamtam. But what on earth are those cymbal sounds (like bell sounds…) all over the place? Well, nevermind, this perc map works, I join it here. I had to choose some weird playback techniques for big, medium and small tamtam (bass tone, natural and bell… well, it does not matter, as long as your Percussion edit window in Setup mode is set accordingly:)
I hope this gives you some ideas so as to how to set a percussion instrument up in Dorico. I have to go to work, but if you have time, try and understand what I did and you can ask your questions Kontakt Tamtam.doricolib.zip (1.4 KB)
Hello Marc
I tried setting up a percussion map as you described (I had already come to the conclusion that the NI documentation was not correct for VSL Tam Tam) but that was as far as I have got.
Is it supposed to be the case that different noteheads trigger different sounds (in this case for the three techniques you found worked all that is necessary is to assign them to different noteheads).
I applied different noteheads to the three sizes of Tam tam (Default, Arrow up, Arrow down) but all three gave the same dull 'tam tam sound as before (the same sound as Kontakt always gives for the Tam Tam map without percussion map or something else).
There must be more to differentiating the sounds for playback than just the notehead type.
Could you explain further when you have time?
Also the method I came up with outlined above, (assigning a keyboard patch to Halion and changing its name when Kontakt is opened so that it references the correct Kontakt instrument) really works and seems to be stable. Is this just a fluke or what?
Obviously I need to read up a bit more on all this but in the meantime I would be greateful for any help you could offer.
Hi. Daniel explained very well the workflow in this thread. Use the percussion map I provided and follow his steps and you’ll have the best possible workflow!
There does not seem to be a direct way of setting up a kontakt Cymbal sound as a patch that uses an instrumental stave with an F clef. How to use percussion maps for this!
If I have to use percussion maps is there anyone out there who can give me a step by step guide as to how to do this… The stuff online about percussion maps is not particularly helpful in that it does not explain how to pin down the relationship of the notation to the playback sound and seems to be more concerned with playing techniques which, at the moment, for me are a secondary concern.
I cannot seem to get any sound out of a single line staff for Kontakt Cymbals. (Presumably this is becauuse I have not specified the correct playing technique) Why not the default sound of a Cymbal clash.
It’s a bit unconventional to write for an untuned or unpitched instrument on a standard pitched staff with a pitched clef, whether it’s a G clef or a C clef. In Dorico, percussion maps can’t take effect on a pitched staff: whatever pitch you specify on the staff is the pitch that will be played out to your chosen endpoint. You can transpose it by one or more octaves easily enough (using an expression map) but really this is not how things are intended to work.
I’ve already provided you a link to a detailed walkthrough of setting up a percussion map, but I’ll post it here again:
By default, the cymbal instrument does indeed look for the Natural playback technique, so you need only define a mapping in your percussion map for the standard clash sound for the cymbal, and make sure it uses the same instrument and playback technique as the cymbal instrument in your score.
