# Dealing with Kontakt player libs in Dorico



## swinkler (Nov 24, 2022)

I'm considering Spitfire's Chamber strings library but as I'm watching walkthrough videos it looks like they have 3 different presets - core techniques, decorative techniques and performance legato. So if I needed all the different articulations, would I have to have 3 instances of Kontakt for each section and how would 3 instances (presumably on different midi channels) map to a single staff? I do have VEPro so hosting wouldn't be an issue. I'm just struggling with the 1 staff to many instances relationship.


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## Woodie1972 (Nov 24, 2022)

You can set a relative or absolute channel change to direct Dorico to the next instance. Problem might be then that you have to create quite some extra expressions within the used map to avoid playback issues. On the other hand, when you have done this, you can save the expression map and load it again if you need it in another template f.e..


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## Bollen (Nov 24, 2022)

I'm not sure how to go about it with Expression Maps, because I do everything manually. But I find Dorico's workflow better than a DAW because you can have ONE staff addressing multiple VST by the use of independent voices.


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## swinkler (Nov 24, 2022)

Bollen said:


> I'm not sure how to go about it with Expression Maps, because I do everything manually. But I find Dorico's workflow better than a DAW because you can have ONE staff addressing multiple VST by the use of independent voices.


Oh yeah I forgot about that. Might be a possibility


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## Bollen (Nov 24, 2022)

swinkler said:


> Oh yeah I forgot about that. Might be a possibility


It's actually quite simple and flexible, Although I prefer to have one 'clean' staff just for notation and other hidden staves for the VI playback.


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## swinkler (Nov 24, 2022)

Bollen said:


> It's actually quite simple and flexible, Although I prefer to have one 'clean' staff just for notation and other hidden staves for the VI playback.


Yeah might look funny to all of a sudden have stems down on a non-divisi part.


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## Bollen (Nov 25, 2022)

swinkler said:


> Yeah might look funny to all of a sudden have stems down on a non-divisi part.


You can also just use upstems.


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## mducharme (Nov 25, 2022)

swinkler said:


> I'm considering Spitfire's Chamber strings library but as I'm watching walkthrough videos it looks like they have 3 different presets - core techniques, decorative techniques and performance legato. So if I needed all the different articulations, would I have to have 3 instances of Kontakt for each section and how would 3 instances (presumably on different midi channels) map to a single staff? I do have VEPro so hosting wouldn't be an issue. I'm just struggling with the 1 staff to many instances relationship.


Spitfire makes this easier for you, you are overcomplicating things. Put all three on one MIDI channel and lock them to UACC CC (CC#32) and use CC32 to change between all articulations. When you use UACC CC32 control to change articulations, it silences the other instances on the same MIDI channel that do not have that articulation present. For instance, if you choose an articulation with CC32 that is in "core", then "decorative" and "performance leg" on the same channel will be silenced until such time as the CC32 value changes again to something that those patches can do. Since there is no overlap between core, decorative, and performance in terms of articulations/techniques, there will never be a situation where you end up getting sound out of more than one at the same time, and the result behaves as though it were a single patch with core, decorative, and performance all in one, and all on one MIDI channel.


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## swinkler (Nov 25, 2022)

mducharme said:


> Spitfire makes this easier for you, you are overcomplicating things. Put all three on one MIDI channel and lock them to UACC CC (CC#32) and use CC32 to change between all articulations. When you use UACC CC32 control to change articulations, it silences the other instances on the same MIDI channel that do not have that articulation present. For instance, if you choose an articulation with CC32 that is in "core", then "decorative" and "performance leg" on the same channel will be silenced until such time as the CC32 value changes again to something that those patches can do. Since there is no overlap between core, decorative, and performance in terms of articulations/techniques, there will never be a situation where you end up getting sound out of more than one at the same time, and the result behaves as though it were a single patch with core, decorative, and performance all in one, and all on one MIDI channel.


That’s perfect and makes a ton of sense as I struggled through the solo violin and solo cello which I also bought.

Turns out with those there’s only a total performance patch so I’m taking a different approach but I did come to understand UACC pretty well during the process. 

one other side note that I’m very happy out is the solo instruments sound really good with just close mic inside MIR3D.

Thank you @mducharme for that detailed reply.


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## swinkler (Nov 26, 2022)

Finally had a bit to play with this and it's terrific (UACC). I also figured out the option to use samples for trills wasn't selected so this took care of a nagging problem I've had with playback not triggering sampled trills. 

Making progress little by little. Hopefully I can rival @ed buller with some of his demos


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## swinkler (Nov 26, 2022)

I do have another question regarding legatos. Solo strings have 3 different legatos in the legato patch that are triggered based on velocity ranges. How would I handle this since the only condition seems to be note length?


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## VSTHero (Nov 27, 2022)

One solution I found (for Kontakt libraries) was to use a script to assign velocity control to a CC; might be worth looking into. Otherwise might have to rely on the velocity editor in play section or create some kind of macros for reassigning velocity to select notes (basically the classic do it by hand approach). My guess is later updates for Dorico will provide more rules/options in expression maps to cover this issue, but currently the rule set doesn’t seem to recognize the need for velocity control except when it is for dynamics.


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## swinkler (Nov 27, 2022)

VSTHero said:


> One solution I found (for Kontakt libraries) was to use a script to assign velocity control to a CC; might be worth looking into. Otherwise might have to rely on the velocity editor in play section or create some kind of macros for reassigning velocity to select notes (basically the classic do it by hand approach). My guess is later updates for Dorico will provide more rules/options in expression maps to cover this issue, but currently the rule set doesn’t seem to recognize the need for velocity control except when it is for dynamics.


I think you pointed me in the right direction and thank you! I activated 'CC mapped vel.' on all the instances and this seemed to trigger some automation in Kontakt to pick the right legato based on the conditions, at least in my testing so far. In other words I just have one Legato expression map to 32/31 but if the velocity goes into another range it chooses another legato and likewise if the notes are faster it'll choose a legato based on how long the notes are. So I think I've got it. I've got a pretty good template for an upcoming short film project and couldn't be happier that a majority of my workflow, if not all will be done in Dorico. 

Big thanks to @VSTHero @ed buller @mducharme @Bollen and many others.


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