Hi,
I have just looked at the Web Help guide, but cannot find the section on Play Mode.
Am I missing something ?
The version 4 manual doesn’t yet include Play mode – for now you can refer to the Dorico 4 Version History document.
(@k_b careful about searching online for manuals, it’s easy to end up on very old pages – your link is from v1 of the software, and is a version of the manual I really wouldn’t recommend using unless someone really was still using Dorico 1! The url and also the logo on the top-left of webhelp pages will give you an indication of the version.)
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oops, sorry. I was surprised myself how fast I came back with a google search…
The beauty of iOS is that it hides a url or cuts it down so one actually doesn’t know, were one exactly lands… I did the search on an iPhone and ended up with this:
Thank you - I thought it would be somewhere !
Yes that’s true, the original first version manual didn’t specify “v1”, as it didn’t need to at that stage! And therefore it’s probably the hardest to tell immediately whether it’s not the latest.
The manuals team really are looking into ways to make it easier to version-hop, which would be a welcome improvement when it comes.
Regarding versions, I find the difference in color scheme between v1–2 and v3–4 is very informative! Since we can’t seem to control which versions show up in web searches, I wonder if there could be at least a slight variation in color scheme for each major version. Seeing v4 pages in the same colors as v3.5 makes me worry that many users will miss the difference.
The differentiation in appearance is more an accident of timing, based on when updates to the overall styling were brought in, but I agree it’s another helpful visual indication of version. My hope is that when we do implement a dedicated “version hopping” facility, perhaps including easier language-hopping too, that will do the job.
(Edit: as it happens, the v4 manual will end up with a different styling for numbered images, offering another visual distinctness from v3.5. As these get updated to reflect Dorico 4’s UI, they’ll also use our current numbering style, which is quite different from what we used previously. For example, Layout Options in v4 compared to v3.5)
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Thanks for pointing to the Version history document Lillie, but there is nothing there that helps me understand how to use the play and playback functions of Dorico 4. In particular, I cannot figure out how to turn on note playback for inputting notes, and though I know that my installed version of Dorico is capable of sound playback, when I hit “Play” in either write mode or in the Play mode screen, I can see the karet moving, but don’t hear anything. It is (unfortunately) completely opaque to me how I can deal with any of this. When I type “Sound” into the search bar I get a pointer to Input Pitch > Sounding Pitch, but toggling that back and forth got me one new note to sound, but none of the others do in the score I’m working on.
What am I missing?
It looks as though the device Dorico is sending the audio signal is not what you’re expecting — I mean, you never have sound, haven’t you? But the play line moving indicates that everything is working properly. Check Preferences >Play > output device (all the way down)
Hope it helps
Hi Marc,
I achieved sound this morning in Dorico 4. thought I had solved the problem of no sound by re-installing all Dorico 4 elements from download assistant.
After working on mostly layout things all day, I wanted to do some note input / check copy/paste notation from another dorico file, and then didn’t have sound.
I fiddled with the “note input > sounding pitch” a bit, and got one note to sound as a new note input.
but now nothing else in the whole file sounds.
Update: I can get sounds in Dorico 4 in a different file (made in Dorico 3, updated on open in 4) but not in a different made-in-dorico-4-file I’ve been working in all day.
Update: Now the alto saxophone will play, but nothing else. Obviously this is operator error, but I have no idea what to click or change considering the view I have in front of me.
Adding this screenshot:
If you go further to the left, you can click on “Routing” and then onto the E symbol. This will bring up a window, where you can see which sounds are loaded.
You mean this??
If so, I see slots filled for violin, viola, clarinet, alto sax and Contrabass.
What am I missing?
I know from the past that you have to add instruments, but there are now three variations of the VST instruments – There were two, and I added one by accident so now there are three. I can’t seem to delete the one that was added.
I hope the folks who are writing up the documentation for the “play” feature will provide clear guidance for how to set up playback for those of us who do not use cubase and other sound engineering programs. I look at all of this and really just want to run away because there is nothing intuitive at all about any of it. (for example, I can “see” my five instruments in the EQ faders on the bottom left. If I can see them, why can I not hear them?? How do I know that there is an extra step involved, and how can I know which of the (now) three VST instrument sets I’m supposed to set up and use??)
In the Play menu you will be able to “Reload unassigned Instruments”. (or similar)
This quite often clears problems with not correctly assigned instruments.
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Thanks K_B – that was helpful.
Anyone who can help explain whether/how to delete the extra hal-lion preset thingys is gratefully accepted.
Really, @jakeysworld, the issue is that you’re trying to do too much setup yourself. Dorico will set playback up for you, so you don’t ever need to go into Play mode and start manually assigning VST instruments in order to get sound. I would recommend that you stick to using the built-in playback templates and don’t interfere too much with the assignments Dorico is making in Play mode until you have a grasp of how everything fits together.
With the utmost respect dspreadbury, I did not mess with any of the presets in Dorico when I opened it up for the first time as Dorico 4. The “presets” gave me zero sound in both the old documents I had previously created in dorico 3, and in the new document I created in Dorico 4, so it was 100% necessary for me to fiddle with them to get sounds assigned to all of the instruments.
jake, it is worth going through the rather enjoyable video tutorials. Audio is by default a non-issue.
If your project is messed up, there are two simple steps to get it back up and running.
@jakeysworld, I’m sorry to have offended you, that wasn’t my intention. If you are finding that Dorico doesn’t load sounds automatically, then you have an installation and/or configuration problem, and that’s what we should be focused on fixing, rather than the second order problems created by you trying to work around that problem.