# NotePerformer 3 - Artificial Intelligence-Based Playback for Sibelius, Finale & Dorico



## Wallander (May 30, 2018)

*
NotePerformer 3 is out*

The Artificial Intelligence-based playback engine for Sibelius just got a lot better - and Finale and Dorico support.

And before you're asking. Yes, *it's a FREE update* for NotePerformer 2 users. Enjoy! 

NotePerformer Web Site

NotePerformer - Version History

NotePerformer 3 - Users Guide


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## Sami (May 30, 2018)

This is amazing. Thank you Arne and team Wallander!


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## NYC Chaz (May 30, 2018)

Thank you so much Wallander. A free update to the next version is pretty much unheard of these days.NotePerformer is one of the best purchases i have ever made and now i can use it in Finale also.


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## Paul T McGraw (May 30, 2018)

Wow! Thank you once again Wallander. NotePerformer is the software that has, for me, the greatest return on investment of any software I have ever purchased.


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## dcoscina (May 30, 2018)

The new update is FANTASTIC! The strings, especially slurred sound very very realistic. Of course the brass has always been excellent and I think there is even greater detail in the shorter arts now. Love it. Class act by offering it free to existing users too.


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## Maximvs (May 30, 2018)

Congratulation Arne for this new release... I am looking forward to install it  Cheers, Max T.


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## Olfirf (May 30, 2018)

Congrats! As I wrote a while back, this is easily one of the best purchases I ever made and it is great to see, that Dorico is now included, in case i will switch some day ...


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## resound (May 30, 2018)

A must have! Thank you for the free update!!


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## ptram (May 30, 2018)

Thank you very much, Arne! The new version sounds clearer that version 2, and in general sounds "better". It's incredible this was a gift!

Paolo


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## Prockamanisc (May 30, 2018)

Paul T McGraw said:


> Wow! Thank you once again Wallander. NotePerformer is the software that has, for me, the greatest return on investment of any software I have ever purchased.


This, a million times.


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## Dewdman42 (May 30, 2018)

Between this and the new Dorico...


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## JT (May 30, 2018)

I would be interested in hearing a comparison of the same musical score being played by all 3 notation programs. Are there differences between them?


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## Tacet (May 30, 2018)

Would this work with Dorico Elements 2 ?


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## Wallander (May 30, 2018)

JT said:


> I would be interested in hearing a comparison of the same musical score being played by all 3 notation programs. Are there differences between them?


The differences are primarily that Finale and Dorico do not have the full range of articulations. Finale supports most of it, however. There's more information on accessing articulations in Finale in our quickstart/support section of the NP website.

There are still plenty of things to be implemented in Dorico, but they're obviously on the hotlist for Steinberg. E.g. combinations of articulations doesn't work, which is the most noticeable aspect running NP (such as an accent with a slur, where only the accent plays). Articulation switching isn't fully mature yet, but it's getting there. The default Playback Options in Dorico also have a degree of "Espressivo" to them, which is unique to Dorico of course unless you lower those settings.

Tremolo speeds may also be handled differently. It's typically a notation program controlled setting. 

But in the general case, playback is identical. Or at least that's the intention.


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## Wallander (May 30, 2018)

Tacet said:


> Would this work with Dorico Elements 2 ?


I must be honest here and say I don't know, yet, as I've only worked with the Pro version in development. Steinberg would probably know this better than me at this early stage. I'm assuming that if Elements supports VST plug-ins and Playback Templates it should also support NotePerformer.


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## NoamL (May 30, 2018)

NotePerformer is a MUST HAVE with Sibelius. Thank you so much for the next version.


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## muziksculp (May 30, 2018)

Hi,

NotePerformer 3 sounds very good !

I currently don't use any notation software, but if I decide to go forward and get one, which one would you recommend from these three options (Dorico 2, Finale, Sibelius) ? and which one of these programs does NotePerformer 3 work best with ?

Thanks,
Muziksculp


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## JF (May 30, 2018)

This looks amazing. Will you support Notion in the future?


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## Tacet (May 30, 2018)

Wallander said:


> I must be honest here and say I don't know, yet, as I've only worked with the Pro version in development. Steinberg would probably know this better than me at this early stage. I'm assuming that if Elements supports VST plug-ins and Playback Templates it should also support NotePerformer.


Any chance you could check with Steinberg, Arne? Pretty please?

They are a lot more likely to give you a prompt and straight answer, I think, than to anyone else...

Thank you!


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## Dewdman42 (May 30, 2018)

if and when its working better with Finale, I will probably get it. I really don't like Sibelius. I might go to Dorico at some point, but sounds like NotePerformer needs to improve there as well. Sounds like a really great way to write though.


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## SimonCharlesHanna (May 30, 2018)

Sounds so good!


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## bryla (May 30, 2018)

Loving the implementation in Finale and Dorico! 

2 questions that apply to both:
How do I set it up so Noteperformer defaults on opening both applications (just like Sibelius). Seems like I have to select it every time.

How do I open the NP3 mixer?


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

Tacet said:


> Any chance you could check with Steinberg, Arne? Pretty please?
> 
> They are a lot more likely to give you a prompt and straight answer, I think, than to anyone else...
> 
> Thank you!


Ok so I just asked Daniel, and he responded that NotePerformer 3 runs beautifully in Dorico 2 Elements as well.


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

JF said:


> This looks amazing. Will you support Notion in the future?


Possibly. I'm not ruling it out.


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

bryla said:


> Loving the implementation in Finale and Dorico!
> 
> 2 questions that apply to both:
> How do I set it up so Noteperformer defaults on opening both applications (just like Sibelius). Seems like I have to select it every time.
> ...


In Dorico you may change the default Playback Template from Preferences. It's still a per-score setting, so your old scores are not affected unless you change the Playback Template manually and re-save.

In Finale, playback is also a per-score setting. You should make NotePerformer your primary choice of Sound Map (putting it at the top of the list in that dialog) and then it will be prioritised when reassigning sounds. But any old scores are saved with their old playback settings and must be reconfigured to use NotePerformer.

For all programs I strongly recommend following our Quickstart guides:

https://noteperformer.com/?page=support

Only Sibelius uses the method of having a plug-in rack separate from the score itself, by storing it in a Playback Configuration rather than the .sib file. There are pros and cons to both approaches.

You open the NotePerformer 3 mixer the same was as you open other plug-in windows in Dorico/Finale. There's an icon in the Dorico plug-in rack next to the plug-in instance, and there's an icon or button with the same purpose in the Audio Units/VST rack dialog in Finale.

In Sibelius there's only the built-in mixer, because plug-in settings aren't saved with the score so it wouldn't make sense to provide a separate mixer. But the Sibelius mixer has a similar feature set to NotePerformer's, and those mixer settings are saved with your score. If you open the NP "interface" in Sibelius you only get an about box.


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## gyprock (May 31, 2018)

I've got a 2nd monitor on my iMac connected to the display port. When I drag the NotePerformer mixer to the 2nd monitor there is a resolution change so the mixer is magnified and only part of it can be seen e.g. the pan and channel titles are gone as well as the title bar with global volume and reverb. Also only 8 channels out of 16 can be seen.

The mixer window also loses focus so it is not possible to adjust volumes. Looks like the mixer only functions within the scope of the Dorico app.


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## Rob (May 31, 2018)

I didn't know it was Finale-compatible, have to try this out! Thanks Arne, looking forward to see it in action...


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

gyprock said:


> I've got a 2nd monitor on my iMac connected to the display port. When I drag the NotePerformer mixer to the 2nd monitor there is a resolution change so the mixer is magnified and only part of it can be seen e.g. the pan and channel titles are gone as well as the title bar with global volume and reverb. Also only 8 channels out of 16 can be seen.
> 
> The mixer window also loses focus so it is not possible to adjust volumes. Looks like the mixer only functions within the scope of the Dorico app.


Hmm, which one of your displays is high-DPI?

It's likely that only the graphics is magnified. The mouse controllers are probably in their right place (not matching the position of the graphics).

Plug-ins in Dorico are not actually attached to Dorico, but to the VstAudioEngine2 application which is a separate running process.


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## gyprock (May 31, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Hmm, which one of your displays is high-DPI?
> 
> It's likely that only the graphics is magnified. The mouse controllers are probably in their right place (not matching the position of the graphics).
> 
> Plug-ins in Dorico are not actually attached to Dorico, but to the VstAudioEngine2 application which is a separate running process.


I've also got Daniel looking into it on the Dorico forum. As I just mentioned to him, I tested with HALion Sonic SE and had no problems i.e. there was no change in resolution and I could still select and control anything on the interface. I've also had no problems with Cubase, Kontakt, Photoshop or any other app when dragging between windows.

My 2nd monitor is a BenQ at 1920 x 1080. Interestingly, I discovered that I can drag the Dorico app to the BenQ monitor (without any apparent loss of resolution) and as long as the NotePerformer window stays on the iMac it's ok i.e. I've got use of two monitors.


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

gyprock said:


> I've also got Daniel looking into it on the Dorico forum. As I just mentioned to him, I tested with HALion Sonic SE and had no problems i.e. there was no change in resolution and I could still select and control anything on the interface. I've also had no problems with Cubase, Kontakt, Photoshop or any other app when dragging between windows.
> 
> My 2nd monitor is a BenQ at 1920 x 1080. Interestingly, I discovered that I can drag the Dorico app to the BenQ monitor (without any apparent loss of resolution) and as long as the NotePerformer window stays on the iMac it's ok i.e. I've got use of two monitors.


AFAIK neither Halion Sonic SE or Kontakt are high-DPI aware, so they wouldn't be subject to something like this. 

I'm guessing that NP doesn't change the high-DPI mode when you go between monitors, but it's something we detect at startup and then the setting sticks. So when you're taking that high-DPI window to the low-DPI monitor, the graphical context suddenly has twice as many pixels as a low-DPI interface would have. 

Is this Mac or PC?


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

I responded to your thread at the Dorico forum, but for reference here's what I wrote:

"You could always "resolve" this by forcing VstAudioEngine2.app (inside Dorico 2.app/Contents/Applications/) into low-resolution mode for all plug-ins. You do this by ticking that checkbox under "Get info" for VstAudioEngine2.app, from Finder. This will force NotePerformer into low-resolution mode as well, meaning it should behave like Halion and Kontakt in this regard. If it doesn't, please let me know."


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## mobileavatar (May 31, 2018)

Congratulations Arne, what a great plugin, and it's just getting better and better! Can't wait for the multi-articulations to be supported by Dorico!! By then, I could finally make my switch.

BTW, I have been hoping that sul pont and sul tasto will be included in the already well-covered library. Are the two articulations in the roadmap?


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

Sul tasto has always been supported! But sul ponticello isn't supported simply because I haven't found a satisfactory way to emulate it with DSP. 

Admittedly there haven't been much opportunity to focus on the sul ponticello issue lately, due to everything else that went into this update.


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## lucor (May 31, 2018)

Amazing how this keeps getting better and better! I wonder when we can ditch our orchestral libraries, maybe in Note Performer 7?


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## suchtreble (May 31, 2018)

Are there any audio demos for np3 like there are for np2?


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

suchtreble said:


> Are there any audio demos for np3 like there are for np2?


The YouTube videos haven't been updated yet, but all tracks in the SoundCloud player on the NP website are updated to NP3.


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## Dewdman42 (May 31, 2018)

The latency issue with finale, have there been any discussions behind the scene with makemusic to fix that? Honestly finale has had sound delay problems FOR YEARS. I don’t really expect them to fix that. So one second delay behind the play cursor is not a complete deal breaker for me, but one second delay while clicking on notes probably is. That issue effects both Mac and pc?


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## Wallander (May 31, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> The latency issue with finale, have there been any discussions behind the scene with makemusic to fix that? Honestly finale has had sound delay problems FOR YEARS. I don’t really expect them to fix that. So one second delay behind the play cursor is not a complete deal breaker for me, but one second delay while clicking on notes probably is. That issue effects both Mac and pc?


It affects both Mac and PC unfortunately. I don't want to speak for MakeMusic, but I would assume they're looking in it now that NotePerformer 3 officially has Finale support.

Luckily, the delay when clicking notes should be a relatively simple fix. The latency behind the cursor could potentially be more difficult to address, but as you say it's not quite as problematic.


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## Eric G (Jun 1, 2018)

First of all, THANK YOU Arne!

Long time customer here and you have pulled me back in. I wouldn't have minded paying for the upgrade so that speaks volumes.

Question: How does NP3 handle the new divisi in Dorico 2? Should I assume seamlessly?


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## Wallander (Jun 1, 2018)

Eric G said:


> First of all, THANK YOU Arne!
> 
> Long time customer here and you have pulled me back in. I wouldn't have minded paying for the upgrade so that speaks volumes.
> 
> Question: How does NP3 handle the new divisi in Dorico 2? Should I assume seamlessly?


Unfortunately, I would assume it doesn't handle it at all in playback. For the time being, the channel assignment in Dorico isn't fully developed yet, but it's largely based on how one setups instruments in Setup mode. If you add a grand staff, for example, I think Dorico collapses it into a single MIDI channel even (we've covered this in more detail in the docs). They also collapse unison notes into single MIDI notes.

At some point I'm assuming that they'll want to assign different instruments instruments to different MIDI channels. But meanwhile, NP:s strings have been playing divisi automatically since version 2 at least, on a single staff. It's necessary, to conserve CPU, as the sections are built in real-time from solo instruments. Otherwise we would have to deal with hundreds of violins when you write chords, and it wouldn't be quite feasible. 

To be honest I'm not sure it would be an option (or a plus) to use a Dorico-powered divisi for NP:s strings, because it would be difficult to determine how to divide, when then notes aren't on the same channel or potentially not even the same instance. Dorico's divisi are quite likely more about the printing aspect and how it's organised in your project.

The problem for NP isn't typically that notation programs _lack_ support for techniques. But rather that they're doing all kinds of stuff to make up for deficiencies in other playback devices (e.g. collapsing unisons to avoid hanging notes). If only all notes were provided fully quantised with no fuzz, playback would be perfect.


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## Eric G (Jun 1, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Unfortunately, I would assume it doesn't handle it at all in playback. For the time being, the channel assignment in Dorico isn't fully developed yet, but it's largely based on how one setups instruments in Setup mode. If you add a grand staff, for example, I think Dorico collapses it into a single MIDI channel even (we've covered this in more detail in the docs). They also collapse unison notes into single MIDI notes.
> 
> At some point I'm assuming that they'll want to assign different instruments instruments to different MIDI channels. But meanwhile, NP:s strings have been playing divisi automatically since version 2 at least, on a single staff. It's necessary, to conserve CPU, as the sections are built in real-time from solo instruments. Otherwise we would have to deal with hundreds of violins when you write chords, and it wouldn't be quite feasible.
> 
> ...



Thanks for the quick response and the clarity. Its good to know standard NP divisi works as I expect on one staff. I would definitely document an official statement on it in your documentation for everyone's clarity.

However, this won't stop me from moving forward. This is a game changer for me.


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## Eric G (Jun 1, 2018)

Eric G said:


> Thanks for the quick response and the clarity. Its good to know standard NP divisi works as I expect on one staff. I would definitely document an official statement on it in your documentation for everyone's clarity.
> 
> However, this won't stop me from moving forward. This is a game changer for me.



Apparently, based on the overview video for Dorico, all of the notes are on the same MIDI channel. So this may work right now. But I also heard there may be plans to put them on separate channels.

You may want to want to let Daniel know that this needs to be an option for DIVISI notes to separate or keep them on the same MIDI channel.


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## Wallander (Jun 1, 2018)

Eric G said:


> Apparently, based on the overview video for Dorico, all of the notes are on the same MIDI channel. So this may work right now. But I also heard there may be plans to put them on separate channels.
> 
> You may want to want to let Daniel know that this needs to be an option for DIVISI notes to separate or keep them on the same MIDI channel.


NotePerformer should happily divide the strings over the number of notes sent. If you send a chord of three notes, regardless of voice configuration etc. in the notation program, they're divided over those three MIDI notes. And it works even it two of the notes are the same note (e.g. 2/3 of the string section plays a note, the final 1/3 plays the other note). So as long as the MIDI notes are on the same channel, NP:s section strings should divide automatically.


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## Sjamus (Jun 2, 2018)

Instant buy if you support Notion


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## ulrik (Jun 3, 2018)

Wallander said:


> *
> NotePerformer 3 is out*
> 
> The Artificial Intelligence-based playback engine for Sibelius just got a lot better - and Finale and Dorico support.
> ...



Beautiful done Arne, and thank you for the free update!!


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## bill45 (Jun 3, 2018)

Can you use this in Combination with sample libraries in the notation software(Dorico Finale).


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## bill45 (Jun 3, 2018)

What are the system requirements?
Is t CPU heavy.I checked the website for info.


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## Wallander (Jun 3, 2018)

bill45 said:


> Can you use this in Combination with sample libraries in the notation software(Dorico Finale).


I haven't explored this option in Finale or Dorico, but I believe you can do it in both programs. 

In Finale it would involve changing the "Device" in the Score Manager. Either to one of the existing Sound Maps (such as Garritan's Instrument for Finale) which would automatically assign a sound, or to a VST/AU plug-in of your choice, in which case you may need to configure it manually. 

In Dorico I don't feel like I have the full picture yet in terms of the automatic program assignment and the effects it has, as the Playback Template feature is new to me as well. But you're able to change the MIDI routing manually for a track/staff in Play mode, to a different device and MIDI channel, meaning I think you should be able to do it.


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## Wallander (Jun 3, 2018)

bill45 said:


> What are the system requirements?
> Is t CPU heavy.I checked the website for info.


If you follow either version link (trial version, paid version site license) you'll see our full specifications. Although the CPU-use per voice is higher than a sample library, the overall requirements are still relatively modest compared to the average product discussed on this forum.


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## Sunny Fable (Jun 4, 2018)

If you add Notion support, I'm in.


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## Dewdman42 (Jun 4, 2018)

Notion Support would be stellar. Overture Support also, though that product is still too buggy. I'm probably going to get Dorico, so I hope it will be able to handle overlapping articulations in the not too distant future.


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## Knomes (Aug 5, 2018)

Hi,

I'm using the trial version of noteperformer3. I'm trying to open the "High-resolution mixer" in Finale25 but I cannot figure out how to do it. Could anybody help me?

Thanks


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## Wallander (Aug 5, 2018)

Knomes said:


> Hi,
> 
> I'm using the trial version of noteperformer3. I'm trying to open the "High-resolution mixer" in Finale25 but I cannot figure out how to do it. Could anybody help me?
> 
> Thanks


Did you click the "pencil" icon next to each plug-in instance (called bank in Finale) in the "VST Banks & Effects" dialog? It's called "Audio Units Banks & Effects" on Mac. 

We've seen some problems with opening the GUI on Finale 2014.x on Mac, but they're related to the 32-bit version of Finale only and shouldn't apply to Finale 25.


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## Knomes (Aug 5, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Did you click the "pencil" icon next to each plug-in instance (called bank in Finale) in the "VST Banks & Effects" dialog? It's called "Audio Units Banks & Effects" on Mac.
> 
> We've seen some problems with opening the GUI on Finale 2014.x on Mac, but they're related to the 32-bit version of Finale only and shouldn't apply to Finale 25.



I'm on windows but following your indications I found it. Thanks!


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## Piotrek K. (Aug 12, 2018)

I'm just testing it with Sibelius / Finale trials and I think this is incredible piece of software, I mean close to being revolutionary. To get such an expressive and realistic, in terms of phrasing and dynamics, performance I would need to sculpt samples for hours, mix articulations like crazy, not to mention amounts of RAM / disk space (and dollars) I would need to get similar result.

I'm a hobbyist and from hobbyist stand point this is wonderous plugin - I can just focus on writing music! And I'm currently doing it on 10 years old AMD Athlon x3 and 4GB ram (my i5 mobo died, waiting for new one) - impossible with modern samples. Some things are still a mystery to me (can I create portamento? is there a way to make slur more pronounced?), but those are details.

I'm planning to buy Noteperformer, bur first I need to choose notation software (I am was DAW person). Although I think I need to wait for black friday with that, spending 600$ for a piece of software that looks and at times feels like 2006 (Finale feels and looks, Sibelius looks... well and feels too ) is a lot and subscription is not an option.

Anyway keep doing what you do and wait for my money


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## David Cuny (Aug 12, 2018)

I saw the other day that someone had imported MusicXML into their notation program to generate a demo from Note Performer.

Out of curiosity, is there enough information in MusicXML itself to support NotePerformer? Sure, you wouldn't get realtime playback, but in theory most notation programs export MusicXML by this point.


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## smallberries (Aug 12, 2018)

David Cuny said:


> I saw the other day that someone had imported MusicXML into their notation program to generate a demo from Note Performer.
> 
> Out of curiosity, is there enough information in MusicXML itself to support NotePerformer? Sure, you wouldn't get realtime playback, but in theory most notation programs export MusicXML by this point.



This would be my route into NotePerformer as well -- I notate using Lilypond. It's a separate issue how underpowered Lilypond's MusicXML output is at the moment, but I'd be motivated to improve that if NotePerformer was ready to consume MusicXML at the other side.


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## Wallander (Aug 12, 2018)

David Cuny said:


> I saw the other day that someone had imported MusicXML into their notation program to generate a demo from Note Performer.
> 
> Out of curiosity, is there enough information in MusicXML itself to support NotePerformer? Sure, you wouldn't get realtime playback, but in theory most notation programs export MusicXML by this point.


It would work for sure, but as you may have guessed it would have to be MusicXML from another notation program, e.g. MuseScore or LilyPond. The reason being, you need to have a proper score with slurs and dynamics explicitly notated.

It may also require some manual tweaking and setting up, as there are normally issues with MusicXML import, with many instruments not being appropriately assigned, tempo marking not working etc. In Sibelius, you may want to reset the mixer and turn off Live Playback and lower Espressivo, things like that. In Finale, chances are dynamics won't work, but you may have to delete the expressions imported from the MusicXML from Expression selection, and Finale will then offer you to replace that symbol with one of the built-in types, which should work with playback.

Exporting MusicXML from a DAW would only generate the notes (I guess) and that would be equal to exporting a .mid file, which wouldn't produce satisfactory results for sure.


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## smallberries (Aug 13, 2018)

Wallander said:


> It would work for sure, but as you may have guessed it would have to be MusicXML from another notation program, e.g. MuseScore or LilyPond. The reason being, you need to have a proper score with slurs and dynamics explicitly notated.
> 
> It may also require some manual tweaking and setting up, as there are normally issues with MusicXML import, with many instruments not being appropriately assigned, tempo marking not working etc. In Sibelius, you may want to reset the mixer and turn off Live Playback and lower Espressivo, things like that. In Finale, chances are dynamics won't work, but you may have to delete the expressions imported from the MusicXML from Expression selection, and Finale will then offer you to replace that symbol with one of the built-in types, which should work with playback.
> 
> Exporting MusicXML from a DAW would only generate the notes (I guess) and that would be equal to exporting a .mid file, which wouldn't produce satisfactory results for sure.



I agree with the final sentence (you can't go losslessly from midi to MusicXML). But I'm a little baffled by the remainder of the post. Either MusicXML is capable of this interchange (and its implementations are lacking) or it is not. The current state of various importers or exporters is less important than the question about is this a viable "lossless" score interchange standard and are products converging on it as a necessary checkbox. 'cause we do need one of those, and I blew milk out my nose when I heard that printing Sibelius to PDF and scanning that back in with music OCR is the state of the art workflow.


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## David Cuny (Aug 13, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Exporting MusicXML from a DAW would only generate the notes (I guess) and that would be equal to exporting a .mid file, which wouldn't produce satisfactory results for sure.


No, that's certainly not the case. MusicXML is primarily used to describe of how the music should be _notated_. Here's the listing of supported elements:

https://usermanuals.musicxml.com/MusicXML/Content/EL-MusicXML.htm

This includes dynamics, ornaments, slurs, articulations, and so on. Additionally, specific instructions can be embedded in MusicXML.

Basically, all the special techniques that Note Performer uses to create a performance can be captured in MusicXML.


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## smallberries (Aug 13, 2018)

David Cuny said:


> No, that's certainly not the case.
> ...
> Basically, all the special techniques that Note Performer uses to create a performance can be captured in MusicXML.


Yes, to your final sentence, No to your first sentence, since MIDI simply cannot be be a waypoint for transforming from a score format another score format (MusicXML or other).

But a big yes to your notion that MusicXML/Sibelius/etc are at a different level of abstraction than MIDI. Translating between score level notation in different formats ought not descend into MIDI (which is a performance format and loses information about score structure)


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## Wallander (Aug 13, 2018)

smallberries said:


> I agree with the final sentence (you can't go losslessly from midi to MusicXML). But I'm a little baffled by the remainder of the post. Either MusicXML is capable of this interchange (and its implementations are lacking) or it is not. The current state of various importers or exporters is less important than the question about is this a viable "lossless" score interchange standard and are products converging on it as a necessary checkbox. 'cause we do need one of those, and I blew milk out my nose when I heard that printing Sibelius to PDF and scanning that back in with music OCR is the state of the art workflow.


Ok, so to clarify, MusicXML is capable of this interchange, but its implementations are _somewhat_ lacking, in particular when it comes to playback elements of a score. 

For example, different notation programs seem to use different standards (in MusicXML) for determining instrument assignment. E.g. by a General MIDI program, or the name of the staff, or other elements that I haven't even been able to figure out as it's not documented.


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## smallberries (Aug 13, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Ok, so to clarify, MusicXML is capable of this interchange, but its implementations are _somewhat_ lacking, in particular when it comes to playback elements of a score.
> 
> For example, different notation programs seem to use different standards (in MusicXML) for determining instrument assignment. E.g. by a General MIDI program, or the name of the staff, or other elements that I haven't even been able to figure out as it's not documented.



@Wallander thanks. I've got lots of questions about MusicXML and its uptake, but they don't belong in this thread about your excellent product.


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## Musicam (Aug 13, 2018)

Very hard to find a tutorial.


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## David Cuny (Aug 13, 2018)

smallberries said:


> Yes, to your final sentence, No to your first sentence, since MIDI simply cannot be be a waypoint for transforming from a score format another score format (MusicXML or other).


Sorry, I never meant to imply that MIDI was the source. I'd assumed that the user would always be working from a music notation program, and generating sufficiently good MusicXML for playback. Specifically, I was thinking of programs such as MuseScore, Notion or LilyPond (although they may not _currently _be sufficient).


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## David Cuny (Aug 13, 2018)

Musicam said:


> Very hard to find a tutorial.


On NP or MusicXML?

https://www.musicxml.com/tutorial/


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## David Cuny (Aug 13, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Ok, so to clarify, MusicXML is capable of this interchange, but its implementations are _somewhat_ lacking, in particular when it comes to playback elements of a score.
> 
> For example, different notation programs seem to use different standards (in MusicXML) for determining instrument assignment. E.g. by a General MIDI program, or the name of the staff, or other elements that I haven't even been able to figure out as it's not documented.


Thanks!

I'm aware that the use of MusicXML elements wasn't consistent across various programs. But I hoped that there would be enough demand from some products - such as MuseScore and LilyPond - that their developers would be willing to move to a format the NotePerformer could consume... _and_ these programs would have a sufficiently large user base that it would be worth _your_ time.


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## Wallander (Aug 15, 2018)

smallberries: I don't mind if you want to discuss MusicXML in this thread, if that gives you get the answers you're after. 

David: If notation programs would communicate MusicXML during playback, NotePerformer could certainly work with that (we could have a special implementation for the quirks in each program, like we already do with MIDI). But the problem is, MusicXML is only ever used as a file format, and not for communicating music in real-time. It's not structured in a serial fashion like MIDI, which is optimised for real-time playback. But maybe at some point we'll make an offline MusicXML file music player for NotePerformer, if time allows.

Making a notation program compatible with NotePerformer wouldn't actually be very hard. As long as all techniques and markings in the score is communicated somehow, and the note lengths and dynamics aren't creatively altered by the notation program. But notation programs weren't written for NotePerformer, but it's the other way around. So we have to adjust to the playback system of each notation software and try to make the best of it.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 15, 2018)

I think it could be done with midi, someone would just have to specify a specification for how to use serialized midi data to represent what is commonly represented in notation, and eventually in MusicXML.


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## David Cuny (Aug 15, 2018)

Wallander said:


> But maybe at some point we'll make an offline MusicXML file music player for NotePerformer, if time allows.


Yes, that's _exactly_ what I meant.


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## Wallander (Aug 15, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> I think it could be done with midi, someone would just have to specify a specification for how to use serialized midi data to represent what is commonly represented in notation, and eventually in MusicXML.


Yes, it could definitely be done, relatively easy. The harder part would be convincing notation program developers to implement that scheme.


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## Saxer (Aug 16, 2018)

@Wallander Yesterday Dorico was updated to 2.1 - are there any improvements concerning Noteperformer 3?


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 16, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Yes, it could definitely be done, relatively easy. The harder part would be convincing notation program developers to implement that scheme.



Starts with a spec 

Something like that would also make noteperformer usable from a daw


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Saxer said:


> @Wallander Yesterday Dorico was updated to 2.1 - are there any improvements concerning Noteperformer 3?


Quarter-tone playback should now work, automatically, even for chords, which is brilliant  if you're into quarter tones, that is. 

There have obviously been tons of improvements, but I think that's the main update from NP's perspective with this release.


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> Starts with a spec
> 
> Something like that would also make noteperformer usable from a daw


I can't argue with that...  

However I'm not sure NotePerformer would be welcome in the world of DAWs. It's hard to explain to a DAW developer you want a full second of latency.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 17, 2018)

Hmm I’m not aware of any limits to how much latency can be reported to the daw from the plugin, if there is an upper limit or not. Maybe so. Certainly it would it be a “playable” instrument, at the very least it would only be usable for playing back existing midi tracks.

But imagine if I could export midi from dorico to my daw and then complete final production work there, for example


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> Hmm I’m not aware of any limits to how much latency can be reported to the daw from the plugin, if there is an upper limit or not. Maybe so. Certainly it would it be a “playable” instrument, at the very least it would only be usable for playing back existing midi tracks.
> 
> But imagine if I could export midi from dorico to my daw and then complete final production work there, for example


You may be able to report it to the DAW, but latency-compensation in a DAW often means the entire project is delayed to match. So if you include NotePerformer in a project, rather than a 256 or 512 samples buffer, you're going to have a 44100 samples buffer, and a one-second delay performing your virtual instruments from a MIDI keyboard.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 17, 2018)

No usually instrument tracks are compensated by playing existing midi regions early to match the reported latency. That is certainly how Logic Pro works, I can’t speak for all of the daws, but I would assume similar. 

Aux channels with latency will cause everything else to be delayed because they are considered to be a “live” channel.

Of course there is no way around the fact that trying to play note performer with a live keyboard will have intolerable latency for the user.


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## Knomes (Aug 17, 2018)

But, it would be possible, on the contrary, to have NotePerformer export the MIDI so that after having written a piece one can start working on the mock-up with a lot of CC lines already filled up?
I do not know if this would be very useful, just curiosity.


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> No usually instrument tracks are compensated by playing existing midi regions early to match the reported latency. That is certainly how Logic Pro works, I can’t speak for all of the daws, but I would assume similar.
> 
> Aux channels with latency will cause everything else to be delayed because they are considered to be a “live” channel.
> 
> Of course there is no way around the fact that trying to play note performer with a live keyboard will have intolerable latency for the user.


The actual behaviour varies a lot between DAW:s, and in my experience they've usually designed the feature primarily for compensating smaller delays for IR reverbs, linear phase filters and other effects that have an intrinsic delay. Anyway, it would be a lot more difficult to do what NP does, if the MIDI wasn't lined up as expected. But who knows, maybe some day.


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Knomes said:


> But, it would be possible, on the contrary, to have NotePerformer export the MIDI so that after having written a piece one can start working on the mock-up with a lot of CC lines already filled up?
> I do not know if this would be very useful, just curiosity.


I've had this asked a few times, and although NP could provide some degree of expressiveness, the MIDI data would most likely be very far from the appropriate controller lanes for other virtual instruments. 

Many important parts of NP are also not controller lane parameters. For example the note transitions and how they're handled, and how attacks and releases are varied both in length and shape, and these things are quite sensitive. Plus, it's not a common feature set but they're tailored for each individual instrument in NP. 

If you want to get a higher production quality, you're better off using NP3 as a core sound and supplement it by layering other sample libraries on top of it. You can export tracks one-by-one and import as audio tracks into a DAW and mix creatively with your virtual instruments, replacing or supplementing with other VIs whenever it helps the music.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 17, 2018)

Wallander said:


> The actual behaviour varies a lot between DAW:s, and in my experience they've usually designed the feature primarily for compensating smaller delays for IR reverbs, linear phase filters and other effects that have an intrinsic delay. Anyway, it would be a lot more difficult to do what NP does, if the MIDI wasn't lined up as expected. But who knows, maybe some day.



How does cubase work with inst track latency compensation, for example, are you aware?

I can say for certain that logic works as described and most daws that I have had similar inquiries about are similar. Either way, any daw worth it’s salt with latency compensation will ensure that midi tracks are rendered through instrument plugins with sample accuracy, regardless of whether it’s 10ms, 100ms or 1000ms of latency in the channel. It is certainly possible that someone may impose an upper limit on latency correction but I am not aware of what it is, if so. But such an instrument would be no fun to play live with your midi keyboard is all.

It actually only makes sense to send midi regions to instruments early in order to compensate inst tracks, I would be surprised but not shocked, to find out any of the daws with delay compensation do otherwise with recorded inst tracks. But in any case, they generally ensure sample accurate rendering of instrument tracks one way or another, regardless of the latency. (shrug)

I don't entirely understand why NP3 would have so much trouble with DAW's or a midi approach, other then it might be a challenge to figure out and implement, but obviously you know the guts of it all. But I will just say that we as humans are able to read notation and turn it into a midi performance using key switching and CC lanes accordingly. Can you give us a specific example of something that could not in your opinion be translated through midi over into NP3? 

Anyway, its possibly a conflict of interest for you to develop an inexpensive NP3 plugin that will run in the DAW when you'd rather sell the more expensive normal plugins for that use. But all I can say is it would be quite helpful if we could export from a notational; a midi performance that would work from a DAW too, and if NP3 as a plugin in a DAW could respond to a midi performance according to a spec. Doesn't sound like you're interested in going down that road so its a moot point.


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## Wallander (Aug 17, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> How does cubase work with inst track latency compensation, for example, are you aware?
> 
> I can say for certain that logic works as described and most daws that I have had similar inquiries about are similar. Either way, any daw worth it’s salt with latency compensation will ensure that midi tracks are rendered through instrument plugins with sample accuracy, regardless of whether it’s 10ms, 100ms or 1000ms of latency in the channel. It is certainly possible that someone may impose an upper limit on latency correction but I am not aware of what it is, if so. But such an instrument would be no fun to play live with your midi keyboard is all.
> 
> ...


I'm not saying your instruments will be out of sync. I'm saying you will have latency from your MIDI keyboard if you add NP to your project.

An example: You project has a one-second latency because NotePerformer requested it. All MIDI messages to e.g. your Kontakt sample library is now delayed by one second, to line up with NotePerformer. So when you do real-time record with your Kontakt instrument, you press the keys but you don't hear the audio until one second later.

This can be exemplified by running NotePerformer in Sibelius, which latency compensates. You'll notice that Kontakt, Sibelius Sounds etc. are all delayed by one second, permanently, making it unbearable to play your Kontakt instruments from your MIDI keyboard due to having NP in your project, and realtime recording is out of the question. This would be extremely disturbing to have in a DAW.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing regarding MIDI. I only questioned the possibility that NotePerformer could export MIDI from running in e.g. Sibelius, and that one could reuse that MIDI data for controlling an entirely different VI in a DAW to achieve the expressiveness of NP.


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## Saxer (Aug 17, 2018)

Synful had a similar approach years ago. They had a switch for realtime and playback mode. Only the playback mode had latency.


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## Knomes (Aug 18, 2018)

Wallander said:


> I've had this asked a few times, and although NP could provide some degree of expressiveness, the MIDI data would most likely be very far from the appropriate controller lanes for other virtual instruments.
> 
> Many important parts of NP are also not controller lane parameters. For example the note transitions and how they're handled, and how attacks and releases are varied both in length and shape, and these things are quite sensitive. Plus, it's not a common feature set but they're tailored for each individual instrument in NP.
> 
> If you want to get a higher production quality, you're better off using NP3 as a core sound and supplement it by layering other sample libraries on top of it. You can export tracks one-by-one and import as audio tracks into a DAW and mix creatively with your virtual instruments, replacing or supplementing with other VIs whenever it helps the music.



Thanks for the answer!


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## Billy Palmer (Aug 18, 2018)

Would instant recommend this to anyone who orchestrates in notation software!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 18, 2018)

Wallander said:


> I'm not saying your instruments will be out of sync. I'm saying you will have latency from your MIDI keyboard if you add NP to your project.



Agreed, as pointed out earlier, playing a live midi keyboard through the inst will be delayed. But only from Np3, not the other instruments



> An example: You project has a one-second latency because NotePerformer requested it. All MIDI messages to e.g. your Kontakt sample library is now delayed by one second, to line up with NotePerformer.



No it doesn’t quite work like that. The “project” in logicpro will not add one second of delay to the whole project. I can see that Sibelius might. In logic when you use an instrument plugin then the midi regions are sent early so that sound from the instrument is exactly in sync with the piano roll, the metronome, clock counter and other tracks.

When you play a live keyboard, it can’t be sent early. The other tracks are not delayed but rather you will hear a delay between when you press a key on the keyboard and the sound from the instrument. So highly latent plugins are basically just not playable as would be the case with NP3.



> So when you do real-time record with your Kontakt instrument, you press the keys but you don't hear the audio until one second later.



No it won’t effect kontakt because kontakt doesn’t have that long latency. When you put a hypothetical Np3 plugin on a channel and play midi to it with a live keyboard, it will have that long delay, but all other tracks will be fine. And playback of midi regions into NP3 would also be fine, since they would be fed early.



> This can be exemplified by running NotePerformer in Sibelius, which latency compensates. You'll notice that Kontakt, Sibelius Sounds etc. are all delayed by one second, permanently, making it unbearable to play your Kontakt instruments from your MIDI keyboard due to having NP in your project, and realtime recording is out of the question. This would be extremely disturbing to have in a DAW.



Sibelius must be using extremely simplistic latency compensation compared to logicpro. LPX works as described above. Sibelius simple solution must be to always delay everything to match the slowest one, and yes I can see how that would be unbearable to play live instruments in Sibelius since they would all be made latent. I presume cubase, reaper, dp and other big daws are also smarter like LPX otherwise everyone would be complaining about how unresponsive their midi keyboard is as soon as they insert a latent plugin on any channel.

For a better explanation of how Logic handles plugin delay compensation, please see p241 in Edgar Rothermich's book "Logic Pro X - The Details": http://dingdingmusic.com/------titles------/logic-pro-x---the-details.html


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## Saxer (Aug 18, 2018)

Actually Logic's behavoiur changed recently (can't rember when but I think around 10.2 or 10.3).
Before it was like that:
Add a plugin with delay (like a compressor with look ahead of 150ms) to any track and every track will be delayed by that amount (global latency compensation) including the live recording virtual instrument track.
Meanwhile you can add a plugin with delay and it will not change the delay of the live recording virtual instrument track. It will delay all tracks on playback to make sure they are all together in time. And it will surely delay the live track if it has to pass this plugin (like Ozone8 on the masterbus). But delayed plugins on parallel tracks doesn't touch the live recording track any more. Great improvement!


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## Wallander (Aug 19, 2018)

If recent Logic X versions handle latency compensation transparently, those are great news. But there are maybe twenty different hosts commonly being used. And people very often use older versions of hosts, for many different reasons.

Many developers would hesitate to admit it, but to be completely transparent about it, from a marketing and support point-of-view, you can't afford to release an audio plug-in which is non-operational or causes showstopper issues for 25% of DAW users. Not because of a 25% loss of sales, but because of the repeated negative publicity and added sales support burden from all the disappointed people who will download your trial or purchase your software, every single day, without noting the minimum specs. And thinking outside the box usually results in unwanted side-effects in at least one DAW. Which is why all attempts to extend the plug-in standard (e.g. VST3, AAX, AU3 etc.) have been fruitless. Regardless of the functionality of an individual host, or plug-in standard, plug-in developers are still forced to find the lowest common denominator in all DAWs commonly being used, and adopt to that. Because with the hundreds of different DAW configurations possible, that's difficult enough to maintain, as is.

I'm not ruling out making NotePerformer's sounds into a VST at some point. I'm only saying, being a plug-in developer and trying to break new ground while at it is not as easy as you may have hoped.


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## Saxer (Aug 19, 2018)

Absolutely understandable reasons!


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 19, 2018)

Sorry no it has worked this way for a very long time. Latency compensation strategies have of course improved over time and most daws moved to sophisticated latency compensation years ago, not just recently. Notationals in the other hand have very rudimentary support for audio plugins, which is why Sibelius responds the way you have described.

Logic provides a lot of configurability about how latency compensation will be handled and my observation is that a huge number of users don’t really understand latency and all the moving parts nor how to best configure things in their daw as they work through a project


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## Wallander (Aug 19, 2018)

Dewdman42 said:


> Sorry no it has worked this way for a very long time. Latency compensation strategies have of course improved over time and most daws moved to sophisticated latency compensation years ago, not just recently. Notationals in the other hand have very rudimentary support for audio plugins, which is why Sibelius responds the way you have described.


I don't know Logic well enough, so I'm happy to take your word for it.

But even if e.g. Kontakt wouldn't be affected by NotePerformer's latency in the DAW, like you describe, NotePerformer's instruments would be affected by that latency. And you couldn't operate it as readily as you would operate an ordinary VST.



Dewdman42 said:


> Logic provides a lot of configurability about how latency compensation will be handled and my observation is that a huge number of users don’t really understand latency and all the moving parts nor how to best configure things in their daw as they work through a project


Yes, that's correct.

As I mentioned earlier, I don't rule out making a VST of NotePerformer's sounds at some point. But if that where to happen, I'm not sure it would have the latency aspect.


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## Dewdman42 (Aug 19, 2018)

We are speaking hypothetically anyway and since you are willing to entertain the conversation: I think NP as a plugin would only suffer an inability to effectively be played live from a midi keyboard in real-time. Which is the same case in Sibelius. All track playback would be fine. And kontakt would not be effected. Perhaps as someone suggested earlier, if you ever get to this, you could put a switch on it that operates in some kind of live mode with less latency when using it live, and another mode for track playback that does all the lookahead to render the way it does in Sibelius. 

It’s understanable if you don’t have resources to pursue this anytime soon, if ever. I just wanted to clarify the daw capabilities.


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## sinkd (Sep 3, 2018)

vurry, vurry, nice. thx chillbot. subscribed.


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## Knomes (Sep 15, 2018)

I have a question:
If i created the expression "a2" and used the script to make it work, when in that line the instruments makes 2 notes (for example a bichord in an oboe part) it automatically returns back to one note per instrument? In actual scores there is no need to indicate that.
As a solution should I just insert the "solo" expression (always taken from the script section) and hide it?
Thanks for the answers!


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## Sami (Sep 15, 2018)

@Wallander I‘m noticing that in recent versions of Noteperformer the latency when inputting notes is extremely low, actually basically real time. What‘s that due to?


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## ptram (Sep 15, 2018)

@Wallander : Arne, do you plan to add some broader stroke ensembles, just for drafting? I like to write in a few-staves particella, and having something like Woodwinds High, Woodwinds Low, Brass High, Horns, Brass Low, Strings and Percussion (like in Albion One) would be of great help when writing a first draft.

Paolo


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## Wallander (Sep 16, 2018)

Knomes said:


> I have a question:
> If i created the expression "a2" and used the script to make it work, when in that line the instruments makes 2 notes (for example a bichord in an oboe part) it automatically returns back to one note per instrument? In actual scores there is no need to indicate that.
> As a solution should I just insert the "solo" expression (always taken from the script section) and hide it?
> Thanks for the answers!


The MIDI message "~C104, 2", corresponding to "a2", creates a two-players section. Single notes are doubled. If you write a chord of two or more notes, each note is performed by a solo player.

The MIDI message "~C104, 3", corresponding to "a3", creates a three-players section. Single notes are tripled. If you write two notes, the first two players perform the upper note, and the third player perform the lower note. If you write a chord of three or more notes, each note is performed by a solo player. 

The MIDI message "~C104, 0" resets the staff to ordinary playback. Each note is performed by a solo player. 

I hope that explains how that feature works. Explicitly writing e.g. "a2" or "solo" in a score will have no effect on playback, that's just for printing purposes. MIDI messages are hidden from print, but they affect playback.


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## Wallander (Sep 16, 2018)

Sami said:


> @Wallander I‘m noticing that in recent versions of Noteperformer the latency when inputting notes is extremely low, actually basically real time. What‘s that due to?


When entering notes with the mouse there's no read-ahead or latency in NotePerformer. It should be as real-time as General MIDI (when running Sibelius or Dorico). 

There's a chance that NP3 feels more responsive than NP2, due to algorithmic improvements. I can't remember exactly how or when I changed these things. But at _some_ point I remember putting some effort into making sure notes respond as quickly as possible during mouse input. E.g. turning off timing humanisations, opting for a faster attack (within the allowed range) and things like that.  I could have overlooked this in the release notes for NP3.


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## Wallander (Sep 16, 2018)

ptram said:


> @Wallander : Arne, do you plan to add some broader stroke ensembles, just for drafting? I like to write in a few-staves particella, and having something like Woodwinds High, Woodwinds Low, Brass High, Horns, Brass Low, Strings and Percussion (like in Albion One) would be of great help when writing a first draft.
> 
> Paolo


Hmm... the idea actually never occurred to me. 

May I ask how percussion would work in a reduction? Wouldn't this simply be any single staff and using instrument changes? 

Roughly what kind of setup where you thinking of in terms of ww and brass?


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## ptram (Sep 16, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Hmm... the idea actually never occurred to me.
> 
> May I ask how percussion would work in a reduction? Wouldn't this simply be any single staff and using instrument changes?
> 
> Roughly what kind of setup where you thinking of in terms of ww and brass?


Thank you very much for considering this proposal.

For Percussions, I would say that Timpani could be assignend to the bass clef, while the other percussions to the treble staff, with the bigger drums and cymbals in the lower range and the smaller in the higher. One instrument per line or space.

As for the other sections, I would say that Woodwinds High could be a mix of flutes, oboes and clarinets, with volume fading between ranges (clarinets fading out when going over middle C, then oboes fading out and only leaving flutes). Lows would be bass clarinet, bassoons and contrabassoon, again with a gentle volume slope between ranges.

Brass High could be trumpets and horns, Mid horns and tenor trombones, Bass a tenor trombone, bass trombone, bass tuba.

Maybe Woodwinds and Brass sections could be made by a single instrument per type, so that you can write chords and double voices while leaving the orchestra transparent. Writing 'a2' would double them.

Strings would be a not-too-heavy Strings orchestra, good both for full orchestra and a modern chamber orchestra (I would say 10-8-6-4-2).

Paolo


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## Rob (Sep 16, 2018)

Since we're posting desiderata, Arne, there's one thing I'd like to see implemented in a future release, and it's a way of controlling the attack speed. In many cases I want a gentle, slower attack and the only way I found is to put a very low dynamic at the note start followed by a crescendo hairpin. Maybe making it velocity-dependent?
And one other thing, the default panning of violas should be slightly right, more or less at one o'clock, not left as it is now imo.


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## Wallander (Sep 16, 2018)

Rob said:


> Since we're posting desiderata, Arne, there's one thing I'd like to see implemented in a future release, and it's a way of controlling the attack speed. In many cases I want a gentle, slower attack and the only way I found is to put a very low dynamic at the note start followed by a crescendo hairpin. Maybe making it velocity-dependent?
> And one other thing, the default panning of violas should be slightly right, more or less at one o'clock, not left as it is now imo.


I understand how this could be useful to someone like yourself who have mad MIDI skills.  But, I must be honest and say, velocity control over attacks is never going to happen with NotePerformer. For good reasons.

As soon as you start adding user-control you paint yourself into a corner as a developer, because you can no longer significantly change how attacks behave. Or it becomes impossibly difficult to do so without breaking the user's interface to it. You're basically cementing the current state, by taking what's supposed to be the artificial intelligence of the software, and putting it into the hands of the user instead.

The philosophy behind NP is that I'm building it as a black box where I can change and improve things, and experiment freely, without concern for anything but the score. And what may determine attacks are performance rules only. And this is also the key to why NP is such a successful product. The output quality is not dependent on the user's MIDI skills, but the interface to using it is trivial.

But for those who are MIDI-savvy, I get that leaving out all forms of control over playback takes some practice and may be uncomforting at times. This doesn't mean things cannot be improved. If you have a musical situation where you feel confident that a player would always attack a note more softly than NP, and you have some idea of why that would be (using parameters that can be readily determined from the score alone, e.g. a relationships between notes) I'm all ears.

The violas are panned to the left to even out the spread of energy between L/R with strings, as all strings but violins will otherwise end up to the right, if you're following standard seating. And it's also to match the default panning of NP's mixer with roughly how NP is relatively panned by Sibelius. NP uses its own panning settings, but in Sibelius the violas are by default panned quite a lot to the left. So I don't really have an opinion about where the violas should be, but the default panning is more for practical reasons, consolidating NP between notation programs and being useful in a wider range of situations. Such as being able to write for string orchestra only, without getting too much energy in the right speaker, by default.

Now that I look it up, NotePerformer's violas are panned to L16 by default, but Sibelius's violas are panned as far as L32.


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## Wallander (Sep 16, 2018)

ptram said:


> Thank you very much for considering this proposal.
> 
> For Percussions, I would say that Timpani could be assignend to the bass clef, while the other percussions to the treble staff, with the bigger drums and cymbals in the lower range and the smaller in the higher. One instrument per line or space.
> 
> ...


I think it's an interesting idea, and it's certainly something I would consider.

But separating into high/low isn't very practical in Sibelius, because the clef isn't communicated to the plug-in, and the order of staves vs. MIDI channels isn't guaranteed so you cannot be sure what MIDI channel is high and which is low. And in Dorico it's impossible, even, because grand staves, or multi-staff instruments, are collapsed into a single channel in playback.

Chances are the only practical way to do this would be to have a single patch for brass, a single patch for ww and a single patch for strings.

The default string orchestra in NP is 8-8-6-6-4.


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## Rob (Sep 17, 2018)

Wallander said:


> I understand how this could be useful to someone like yourself who have mad MIDI skills.  But, I must be honest and say, velocity control over attacks is never going to happen with NotePerformer. For good reasons.
> 
> As soon as you start adding user-control you paint yourself into a corner as a developer, because you can no longer significantly change how attacks behave. Or it becomes impossibly difficult to do so without breaking the user's interface to it. You're basically cementing the current state, by taking what's supposed to be the artificial intelligence of the software, and putting it into the hands of the user instead.
> 
> ...


Ok, I understand... But you could maybe put a parameter like "slow atck" in the script and let the user assign it to an articulation of choice. As for violas, not a big problem, I'm panning them anyway... thanks for your reply!


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## ptram (Sep 17, 2018)

Wallander said:


> Chances are the only practical way to do this would be to have a single patch for brass, a single patch for ww and a single patch for strings.
> The default string orchestra in NP is 8-8-6-6-4.


I think that having a single patch per each family would be fine. Maybe even easier for a particella. The size of the strings is already perfect!

Paolo


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## Wallander (Sep 17, 2018)

Rob said:


> Ok, I understand... But you could maybe put a parameter like "slow atck" in the script and let the user assign it to an articulation of choice. As for violas, not a big problem, I'm panning them anyway... thanks for your reply!


The philosophy behind NP is to indicate what needs to go into the score, and what doesn't. 

Lets say an arbitrary orchestra picked up your printed score, not being familiar with the music or your compositional style, and without further instruction. Would 10 out of 10 orchestras play those notes with a soft attack, sight-reading/prima vista?


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## Rob (Sep 17, 2018)

Wallander said:


> The philosophy behind NP is to indicate what needs to go into the score, and what doesn't.
> 
> Lets say an arbitrary orchestra picked up your printed score, not being familiar with the music or your compositional style, and without further instruction. Would 10 out of 10 orchestras play those notes with a soft attack, sight-reading/prima vista?



honestly, yes, 8 out of 10 would use softer attacks at sight reading, it's not so much a matter of style, more of contextual musical meaning...


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## Wallander (Sep 17, 2018)

Rob said:


> honestly, yes, 8 out of 10 would use softer attacks at sight reading, it's not so much a matter of style, more of contextual musical meaning...


Looking at the .mp4 you attached for me, chances are they would play the attack in e.g. bar 21 more softly. But it also sounds like the dynamics may not be quite where they should be, overall. I wonder if that phrase isn't actually starting at mp, with no hairpin, rather than p<mp? Would you be able to provide me the score for troubleshooting?


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## ptram (Sep 18, 2018)

Wouldn't writing "soft attack" (or, conversely, "strong attack") over the note be interpreted as described?

Paolo


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## Wallander (Sep 19, 2018)

ptram said:


> Wouldn't writing "soft attack" (or, conversely, "strong attack") over the note be interpreted as described?
> 
> Paolo


Possibly, if your players are smart enough and know English.  But it's an explicit text instruction and not a standard technique with a well-defined behavior.

For reference, I troubleshooted the .musx file with Rob, and the most fundamental problem was the fact that the MIDI dynamics wasn't at the level you would expect them to be, going by the score. In Sibelius, hairpins <> are very basic, and simply lower or increase dynamics by one step. But in Finale there's a lot more intelligence to it, so it's difficult to predict the dynamics are at when you involve hairpins. I can't recall exactly, but I think the p< swell actually started at MP, looking at the MIDI. 

With that said, slow and lyrical music is much more difficult for NotePerformer. Because slow music provide less read ahead, with a fixed one-second latency.


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## adone sabatini (Oct 7, 2018)

Salve, ho acquistato noteperformer3. All'avvio del brano continua a comparire il messaggio che il prodotto in prova deve essere acquistato dopo un lasso di 30 giorni. Strano, ho fatto regolamente le procedure di istallazione. Nella finestra iniziale del programma c'è regolarmente il mio nome. Lavoro con Finale2014. La tuba non esegue il legato ed i timpani non eseguono le dinamiche. Chiedo aiuto. Grazie a tutti.


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## Rob (Oct 7, 2018)

adone sabatini said:


> Salve, ho acquistato noteperformer3. All'avvio del brano continua a comparire il messaggio che il prodotto in prova deve essere acquistato dopo un lasso di 30 giorni. Strano, ho fatto regolamente le procedure di istallazione. Nella finestra iniziale del programma c'è regolarmente il mio nome. Lavoro con Finale2014. La tuba non esegue il legato ed i timpani non eseguono le dinamiche. Chiedo aiuto. Grazie a tutti.


ciao Adone, se vuoi avere feedback devi postare messaggi in inglese, lingua del forum...

hi Adone this is an american forum, in order to get feedback you’d better post messages in english...


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## adone sabatini (Oct 7, 2018)

Hi, I bought noteperformer3. At the start of the song, the message that the product under test must be purchased after a period of 30 days will appear. Strange, I have done the installation procedures regularly. My name is regularly in the initial window of the program. I work with Finale2014. The tuba does not perform the legato and the timpani do not perform the dynamics. I ask for help. Thank you all.


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## Wallander (Oct 8, 2018)

adone sabatini said:


> Hi, I bought noteperformer3. At the start of the song, the message that the product under test must be purchased after a period of 30 days will appear. Strange, I have done the installation procedures regularly. My name is regularly in the initial window of the program. I work with Finale2014. The tuba does not perform the legato and the timpani do not perform the dynamics. I ask for help. Thank you all.


I replied to your email instead, and if you're still having problems with the timpani and legato, I'll guide you through it over email (I may have to have a look at your .musx file). 

But for other's reference, we've learned that Finale 2014.x caches AU and VST plug-ins by copying them to a different folder, in your user's private folder. So when installing the full version of NP on top of the trial, you'll still get the cached trial version in 2014.x. I've solved it for the next update, as the installer takes care of clearing our that cache. 

Finale 25+ doesn't have the same behaviour so it won't produce the same problem (which is why we increased the minimum version to Finale 25, a while time ago).


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## fratveno (Oct 9, 2018)

Wallander said:


> With that said, slow and lyrical music is much more difficult for NotePerformer. Because slow music provide less read ahead, with a fixed one-second latency.



During the weekend I listened to a beautiful rendition of Aase's Death by Grieg performed by the Berlin Phil, so it inspired me to mockup the first 8 bars in NP3 for comparison. One can use any recorded performance of this piece for comparison really. I know, I know, we all hear differently, but, I do recommend anyone who, like me, symphatize with Rob (above) regarding attack (type, speed) to do this. (It also illustrates the problem regarding how slurs should be interpreted (especially) in strings.) This is more or less a universal issue with string libraries, because the attack type for strings varies enormously with the tempo and dynamics of the music. I enjoy NP3 very much indeed, so I guess that makes one wish for the (nearly) unobtainable realism


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## Wallander (Oct 9, 2018)

fratveno said:


> During the weekend I listened to a beautiful rendition of Aase's Death by Grieg performed by the Berlin Phil, so it inspired me to mockup the first 8 bars in NP3 for comparison. One can use any recorded performance of this piece for comparison really. I know, I know, we all hear differently, but, I do recommend anyone who, like me, symphatize with Rob (above) regarding attack (type, speed) to do this. (It also illustrates the problem regarding how slurs should be interpreted (especially) in strings.) This is more or less a universal issue with string libraries, because the attack type for strings varies enormously with the tempo and dynamics of the music. I enjoy NP3 very much indeed, so I guess that makes one wish for the (nearly) unobtainable realism


We have the full Aases Death score in our database of scores used for performance rule determination in NotePerformer.

Arguably it's one of the "worst" scores we have, from NotePerformer's perspective.

There are many reasons for it, also to do with the score and how it's notated (i.e. with very little detail, and most of the expression and dynamic balance being left to assumption). But stretched, lyrical phrases spanning many seconds are truly a worst-case scenario for NP. Having one second of read-ahead doesn't mean much when that second only covers a fraction of the length of a note, because the tempo is very slow.

Attack behaviour will slightly change in the next NP update, but the underlying problem is still the same. There just aren't any (known) technical queues in the music which reliably predict that the attack should be vastly different in this case, as opposed to e.g. a Mozart symphony notated at a similar BMP and dynamic but which happens to be stylistically more tempo-driven. Even though a human being easily could make that distinction by ear, through musical training and bias.


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## fratveno (Oct 9, 2018)

Thanks for your reply! I, and I think most people in here, do realize the challenge involved. Maybe you could consider a Style-Slider, so that the user could point NP in the right direction when the score is scarce in markings...? Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Contemporary...


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## Wallander (Oct 9, 2018)

fratveno said:


> Thanks for your reply! I, and I think most people in here, do realize the challenge involved. Maybe you could consider a Style-Slider, so that the user could point NP in the right direction when the score is scarce in markings...? Baroque, Classical, Romantic, Contemporary...


Unfortunately the musical performance system in NP isn't adopted for a scheme like that. We don't have extended performance rules for music outside of the current scope, but everything was designed from the bottom up, for making the best out of the limitations that apply.

I'm still not ruling out finding the appropriate technical queues in the future, for improving additional aspects of playback.


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## Piotrek K. (Oct 21, 2018)

Hi @Wallander,
currently I'm quite seriously thinking about choosing Dorico as my notation buddy. This software is, in my opinion of course, fantastic, not only in terms of looks, but also in terms of how it works (this little DAW in there is to die for).

NotePerformer seems to be limited though. Either I'm doing something wrong, or there is no playback for trills, glissandos, not mentioning more advanced articulations. Are those things that you can override with your hacking skills and add with next NP update or we need to wait for Dorico team to adress these?


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## Sami (Oct 21, 2018)

I disagree. Dorico has potential but is a disaster at the moment. Noteperformer on Sibelius is a one of a kind workflow enhancer and although I don't like Sibelius, I am a professional with deadlines to hit and thus see no other choice but using it. When Dorico becomes as usable and fully featured I will switch immediately and will be happy that NP is supported


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## Wallander (Oct 22, 2018)

Piotrek K. said:


> Hi @Wallander,
> currently I'm quite seriously thinking about choosing Dorico as my notation buddy. This software is, in my opinion of course, fantastic, not only in terms of looks, but also in terms of how it works (this little DAW in there is to die for).
> 
> NotePerformer seems to be limited though. Either I'm doing something wrong, or there is no playback for trills, glissandos, not mentioning more advanced articulations. Are those things that you can override with your hacking skills and add with next NP update or we need to wait for Dorico team to adress these?


These techniques weren't overlooked on our behalf, but they are yet to be implemented in Dorico. 

As NotePerformer readily supports trills of any interval when explicitly notated, and glissandos through the basic use of pitch bend, and we even support the full General MIDI dynamic range for pitch bend protocol, I expect these two things to start working the day Dorico adds them. 

As far as more advanced articulations go, the underlying issue is that Dorico currently operates as a single-articulation device. So when Dorico encounters, for example, an accented slur on a muted violin, Dorico will choose just one out of these articulations (accent, slur and mute) and ignore, or turn off, the other articulations. Following a priority order that's internal to Dorico. And because of how this works, it's technically impossible to detect multiple articulations at the same time. In this particular case you could get an accent, but not muted or slurred. Or a muted note, but not slurred or accented. 

You can, theoretically, access all of NotePerformer's articulations from Dorico by entering those MIDI switches manually into the MIDI lane. But I would recommend relying on this only to a basic extent, because the switches may be subject to change in the future. For the simple reason that it's still an open question how Dorico will deal with articulations and VST Expression Maps, when Dorico's playback matures.


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## Piotrek K. (Oct 22, 2018)

Thank you for detailed answer!


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## Werty (Oct 22, 2018)

I'm listening to the Elgar - Enigma Variations demo right now, it's freaking me out how realistic it sounds!


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## Leon Portelance (Feb 10, 2019)

Can you use Noteperformer in Overture 5?


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## Audio Birdi (Feb 10, 2019)

Can Note Performer be used to get a sense of how an orchestra is balanced against one another, instrument-wise at different dynamics?


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## Wallander (Feb 10, 2019)

Leon Portelance said:


> Can you use Noteperformer in Overture 5?


I’m afraid not... Right now, only Sibelius, Finale and Dorico are supported. I’m not ruling out broadening the support to other programs in the future, if technically feasible.


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## Wallander (Feb 10, 2019)

Audio Birdi said:


> Can Note Performer be used to get a sense of how an orchestra is balanced against one another, instrument-wise at different dynamics?


Yes, definitely! 

Proof-listening is largely what NotePerformer is about. Giving you a true sense of what the music would sound like with a real ensemble, as in getting the proper reaction to balance, dynamics and articulation, and being able to use that as a reference for orchestration.


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## Audio Birdi (Feb 11, 2019)

Wallander said:


> Yes, definitely!
> 
> Proof-listening is largely what NotePerformer is about. Giving you a true sense of what the music would sound like with a real ensemble, as in getting the proper reaction to balance, dynamics and articulation, and being able to use that as a reference for orchestration.


That's great to know!

I'm planning on using the trial version of NotePerformer and also a trial version of Dorico or Sibelius or Finale. 

Which Notation software would be best to use with NotePerformer at the moment since Finale and Dorico are still in Beta right now? 

Thanks again for all your help!


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## Wallander (Feb 11, 2019)

Audio Birdi said:


> That's great to know!
> 
> I'm planning on using the trial version of NotePerformer and also a trial version of Dorico or Sibelius or Finale.
> 
> ...


You should use whatever notation software you prefer working with! E.g. quality of score output and feeling comfortable with the interface.

NotePerformer has had Sibelius support for a lot longer, so it's very refined and almost without any issues. But the integration between NotePerformer and Dorico or Finale is constantly improving.

The Finale version works very well when you create new scores. Most of the difficulties we see are with older .mus or .musx files that were adapted for other playback devices, or have strange document settings or legacy percussion staves. But when you're a new user to Finale, who solely rely on NotePerformer playback, this is a very capable combination if you simply follow our support guide for setting things up. The next NP release will hopefully resolve some of the issues with articulation determination, such as pizz/arco not always responding as expected, as we're going to switch from using MIDI controllers to using the exact same key switches as employed by Garritan's built-in sounds, to reduce the possibility of error.

The Dorico version is also getting closer to being picked out of beta. There are still things to be ironed out, but the latest Dorico update -released by Steinberg a few days ago- resolves many of the articulation determination issues in Dorico. The things that don't currently work, e.g. glissando, are yet to be implemented in Dorico. In Dorico you also have the added benefit of being able to do real-time MIDI record with NotePerformer, and getting automatic polyphonic quarter-tone playback, if you're into that.


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## Audio Birdi (Feb 11, 2019)

Wallander said:


> You should use whatever notation software you prefer working with! E.g. quality of score output and feeling comfortable with the interface.



Thank you for all the information Arne!  

Would there be support for MuseScore or Notion in future for NotePerformer?


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## Wallander (Feb 11, 2019)

Audio Birdi said:


> Thank you for all the information Arne!
> 
> Would there be support for MuseScore or Notion in future for NotePerformer?


I don't rule it out. But MuseScore doesn't support VST or AU instruments, at least not yet. 

And with Notion we're struggling with the fact that Notion doesn't readily support multiple MIDI channels for virtual instruments, or changing programs over MIDI (Program Change). Notion wasn't designed for a General MIDI compatible output, which is similar to NP, but for monotimbral virtual instruments with the staff's program saved as a VST preset.


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## Audio Birdi (Feb 11, 2019)

Wallander said:


> I don't rule it out. But MuseScore doesn't support VST or AU instruments, at least not yet .... And with Notion we're struggling with the fact that Notion doesn't readily support multiple MIDI channels for virtual instruments, or changing programs over MIDI (Program Change).



Aaaah I see! hoping for both to be updated in future with the respected features that they're missing! 

I'm curious to see if NP could be integrated into DAWs which have notation editors built in, in future too. REAPER / Logic / Cubase / Cakewalk all have notation implementation but obviously isn't the primary focus of inputting MIDI notation. Would be interesting to see if it could be a feature of NP being able to be used in future by these DAWs!


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## Dave Connor (Feb 11, 2019)

Wallander said:


> As NotePerformer readily supports trills of any interval when explicitly notated.


Can you describe the correct way to notate a trill in order to trigger it in NP? I’ve never been able to get this to work. Thank you.


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## Rob (Feb 11, 2019)

Dave Connor said:


> Can you describe the correct way to notate a trill in order to trigger it in NP? I’ve never been able to get this to work. Thank you.


trills work here in Dorico, but had to enable generated trills in Playback Options/Trills/Generated trills only


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## Dave Connor (Feb 11, 2019)

Rob said:


> trills work here in Dorico, but had to enable generated trills in Playback Options/Trills/Generated trills only


Thanks for mentioning what software Rob since I forgot to do that. I’m using Sibelius 6 and always end up writing out my trills. User error no doubt so I will be happy to know how to do it correctly.


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## Wallander (Feb 12, 2019)

Dave Connor said:


> Thanks for mentioning what software Rob since I forgot to do that. I’m using Sibelius 6 and always end up writing out my trills. User error no doubt so I will be happy to know how to do it correctly.


Both a trill _line_ (tr~~~) and a simple "tr" symbol should do it. With the caveat that the basic "tr" symbol in Sibelius doesn't have the "+trill" sound ID attached to it, by default, in the Dictionary, meaning it won't automatically be slurred. I would suggest using the trill line, as that's the modern approach. 

If you're writing a trill line, but there's no trill in playback, my first thought is that your score may be using a custom House Style for e.g. VSL or EastWest? In which case the Dictionary may have been edited so that no trill is performed, but there's just a +trill sound ID change. Importing one of Sibelius's built-in House Styles would resolve that.

You could also just explicitly write out the notes of the trill, with a slur on top. This is if you want the repetition speed to be exact, or in case the interval isn't obvious. It takes up more space in the score, but it's perfectly acceptable if it supports the music. 

From NotePerformer's perspective, the choice of notation doesn't matter.


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## Wallander (Feb 12, 2019)

Audio Birdi said:


> Aaaah I see! hoping for both to be updated in future with the respected features that they're missing!
> 
> I'm curious to see if NP could be integrated into DAWs which have notation editors built in, in future too. REAPER / Logic / Cubase / Cakewalk all have notation implementation but obviously isn't the primary focus of inputting MIDI notation. Would be interesting to see if it could be a feature of NP being able to be used in future by these DAWs!


It's not obvious how NotePerformer could be integrated into a DAW, unfortunately.

In a notation software the timing and length of notes is predictable, and so is the timing of key switches and articulations. This isn't the case when the MIDI and switches are entered by hand, so articulation determination wouldn't be as stable. 

A plain sample library is also more manageable for the user, because you have a limited number of articulations to choose from. Things quickly become more complex when you have five or even ten different MIDI controllers which all control different aspects of the sound which may be used in combination. I.e. one CC controller for setting accent or marcato, another for vibrato amount, one for staccato or staccatissimo, one for slurs, one for mutes, one for general articulation, etc. 

The fact that NotePerformer is being used in a notation software, where we take responsibility for handling these switches, is what makes NotePerformer manageable and convenient to use. I don't think it would be as much fun doing the same process by hand in a DAW, where you may have to spend ten times as much time achieving the same thing. 

If NotePerformer's library of sounds were ever adapted for DAW use, my gut feeling says that virtual instrument would have to operate very differently from NotePerformer in a notation software.


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## Dave Connor (Feb 14, 2019)

Wallander said:


> Both a trill _line_ (tr~~~) and a simple "tr" symbol should do it.


 Using the Trill in the Line menu works great. It may then be further edited in the Properties menu (major or minor trill) in Sibelius 6 - for those interested. I tried it on the violins and it did sound slurred but perhaps not as you say. Happy to have solved this and thank you for your great invention!


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## dcoscina (Feb 14, 2019)

Just have to give another shout out to Arne for creating this godsend for anyone working in notation programs. The playback and sound quality is infinitely better than any built-in library available. I think the future of virtual orchestra expression/realism lies on this path. My 2 cents.


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## marclawsonmusic (Feb 14, 2019)

dcoscina said:


> Just have to give another shout out to Arne for creating this godsend for anyone working in notation programs. The playback and sound quality is infinitely better than any built-in library available. I think the future of virtual orchestra expression/realism lies on this path. My 2 cents.



Agree. It really is some amazing software. Kudos!


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## Virtual Virgin (Mar 30, 2019)

Will Noteperformer play back baroque ornaments in Dorico?


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## Wallander (Mar 30, 2019)

Virtual Virgin said:


> Will Noteperformer play back baroque ornaments in Dorico?


NotePerformer never generates its own ornaments, but it only plays ornaments as generated by the notation software, including trills.

From the top of my head I don't recall whether Dorico interprets baroque ornaments at all, in its current state. I checked the version history, and saw no mention of this unfortunately.

If you're currently experiencing that they don't work with NotePerformer, they are probably not being implemented for playback in Dorico yet.


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## JT (Apr 6, 2019)

I've just downloaded the demo to try with Finale. I have to say my initial impression is very positive, much better then the included sounds. 

A question about the mixer window, is there any way for the user to add an EQ or perhaps use a different reverb?


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## Steve Martin (Apr 6, 2019)

Can I ask what future plans are there for noteperformer? I use it in Dorico and Sibelius, and I'm very glad that I made the purchase.

Thank you if you have any info you are able to share, if that's ok to do that.


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## Wallander (Apr 8, 2019)

Steve Martin said:


> Can I ask what future plans are there for noteperformer? I use it in Dorico and Sibelius, and I'm very glad that I made the purchase.
> 
> Thank you if you have any info you are able to share, if that's ok to do that.


There are no plans ready to go public at this point, sorry.  But the most pressing matter right now is making sure the notation software implementations are improved. In particular the Finale and Dorico versions. So what's pending is the "boring" kind of news, but those that are necessary to attain a quality software. 

If you want to use a different reverb of EQ, you would have to use this from your notation software. There's unfortunately no way to add your own plug-ins or effects from inside NotePerformer, except for the calibration of the reverb level. 

Another alternative is to bounce to separate stems/audio files and post-process them in a DAW with the effects of your choice.


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## Steve Martin (Apr 8, 2019)

Wallander said:


> There are no plans ready to go public at this point, sorry.  But the most pressing matter right now is making sure the notation software implementations are improved. In particular the Finale and Dorico versions. So what's pending is the "boring" kind of news, but those that are necessary to attain a quality software.
> 
> If you want to use a different reverb of EQ, you would have to use this from your notation software. There's unfortunately no way to add your own plug-ins or effects from inside NotePerformer, except for the calibration of the reverb level.
> 
> Another alternative is to bounce to separate stems/audio files and post-process them in a DAW with the effects of your choice.


Hi there,
thank you for your reply and I'm happy as to what you've shared as it is still good news, so I'm still very happy with your answer  As I use Cubase, I'm thinking of experimenting in this way if I want a different sound for one of my tracks. As the audio engine in Dorico [which I do have], is the same great sounding Cubase audio engine, exporting my stems, either in a group or separately, to cubase, is what I'm thinking of doing with a particular score - all I would have to do then is add other different sounds to that track in Cubase. For example - I want all the orchestral sounds as Noteperformer, but I may want a different sound for one track instead of the one I played back in Dorico - so I also export the Dorico file as a midi, and import that score, and use the midi track for the particular sound I chose, and eventually mix all of them -the midi file playback of the exported Dorico midi track, with the included audio files of noteperformer tracks from Dorico. I'm sure this should work, even though I haven't tried it as yet. As for the reverb, I'm guessing that you are saying we can turn the reverb off in our Notation program, such as Dorico, and export them "dry" and import them into our DAW and then add our own effects. Is this what you are meaning here? Thanks if you can please tell me if my understanding is correct.
best,
Steve


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## Wallander (Apr 8, 2019)

Steve Martin said:


> Hi there,
> thank you for your reply and I'm happy as to what you've shared as it is still good news, so I'm still very happy with your answer  As I use Cubase, I'm thinking of experimenting in this way if I want a different sound for one of my tracks. As the audio engine in Dorico [which I do have], is the same great sounding Cubase audio engine, exporting my stems, either in a group or separately, to cubase, is what I'm thinking of doing with a particular score - all I would have to do then is add other different sounds to that track in Cubase. For example - I want all the orchestral sounds as Noteperformer, but I may want a different sound for one track instead of the one I played back in Dorico - so I also export the Dorico file as a midi, and import that score, and use the midi track for the particular sound I chose, and eventually mix all of them -the midi file playback of the exported Dorico midi track, with the included audio files of noteperformer tracks from Dorico. I'm sure this should work, even though I haven't tried it as yet. As for the reverb, I'm guessing that you are saying we can turn the reverb off in our Notation program, such as Dorico, and export them "dry" and import them into our DAW and then add our own effects. Is this what you are meaning here? Thanks if you can please tell me if my understanding is correct.
> best,
> Steve


Exactly. The reverb is internal to NotePerformer. You can turn it off either on an instrument-by-instrument basis, but also globally with the slider at the top of the NP mixer.

You could choose to keep some reverb, just to get the early reflections. If you lower it to 0% the output is anechoic, which is very difficult to mix.

It's also common to supplement NotePerformer with sounds from other libraries directly inside the notation software. But doing it in a DAW gives you a lot more flexibility, as a DAW was built for that task. Especially if you want to layer multiple sounds/patches for a staff.


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## Wallander (Apr 8, 2019)

By the way, Sibelius 2019.4 was released the other day. And it's something of a revolutionary update, because it adds support for real-time recording (Flexi-time) with NotePerformer. 

https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews/sibelius-2019-4/


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## FriFlo (Apr 8, 2019)

Wallander said:


> By the way, Sibelius 2019.4 was released the other day. And it's something of a revolutionary update, because it adds support for real-time recording (Flexi-time) with NotePerformer.
> 
> https://www.scoringnotes.com/reviews/sibelius-2019-4/


Sadly, I won't do any more Sibelius Upgrades due to Avid being one of the worst crooks ever ... But I hope Dorico will soon catch up with Sibelius!


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## Steve Martin (Apr 8, 2019)

Wallander said:


> Exactly. The reverb is internal to NotePerformer. You can turn it off either on an instrument-by-instrument basis, but also globally with the slider at the top of the NP mixer.
> 
> You could choose to keep some reverb, just to get the early reflections. If you lower it to 0% the output is anechoic, which is very difficult to mix.
> 
> It's also common to supplement NotePerformer with sounds from other libraries directly inside the notation software. But doing it in a DAW gives you a lot more flexibility, as a DAW was built for that task. Especially if you want to layer multiple sounds/patches for a staff.


Thank you kindly for your reply. I like the reverb in noteperformer, so no problems there  
best, Steve


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## Brentishere (Apr 8, 2019)

I got a note today from Avid saying NotePerformer (for Sibelius) was 40% off; down to $77 thru their site. 
Is that a Sibelius-only version, or will it work with Dorico & Finale, too?


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## Steve Martin (Apr 8, 2019)

Brentishere said:


> I got a note today from Avid saying NotePerformer (for Sibelius) was 40% off; down to $77 thru their site.
> Is that a Sibelius-only version, or will it work with Dorico & Finale, too?


Hi there,
I wrote this to Wallender a while back.
"Hi to Noteperformer,

I have Sibelius 7.5 and Dorico - latest version. If I pay for one Dorico version, can I use one version for both?"
"Hi Stephen!

Yes, absolutely. We don't actually technically restrict the number of
systems or notation programs you use, but the restriction is that it's
a single-user license. And once installed on a system, NotePerformer
will work with Dorico, Sibelius and Finale in tandem."

Hope that is helpful.


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## Brentishere (Apr 8, 2019)

Outstanding. 
Now I have to shop. 
—B


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## Steve Martin (Apr 8, 2019)

Glad I was able to help


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## polyfonic (May 7, 2019)

I'm using Noteperformer in Sibelius rewired with Cubase. In order to orchestrate in Sibelius/Noteperformer synced with Cubase, I've so far been bouncing a mix of what I got in Cubase to audio and set that track to 1000 ms delayed playback. 
Is there another way to sync wihout having to export the miditracks to audio in Cubase?


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## Wallander (May 7, 2019)

polyfonic said:


> I'm using Noteperformer in Sibelius rewired with Cubase. In order to orchestrate in Sibelius/Noteperformer synced with Cubase, I've so far been bouncing a mix of what I got in Cubase to audio and set that track to 1000 ms delayed playback.
> Is there another way to sync wihout having to export the miditracks to audio in Cubase?


None that I know of, unfortunately. We officially don't support Rewire for this very reason. You're of course very welcome to try and find a workaround, but I've never seen sync working with Rewire when NotePerformer is involved.

Are the Cubase tracks VSTi instruments? Maybe there's a way to delay tracks in Cubase during playback, e.g. by the use of a MIDI plug-in?


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## polyfonic (May 7, 2019)

I think I found a workaround that works - Voxengo Sound Delay - https://www.voxengo.com/product/sounddelay/ - which lets me delay the audio and vsts on my Cubase DAW with 1000 ms and now it perfectly syncs with Sibelius/Noteperformer. When I want to record something live in Cubase, then I just deactivate the Voxengo plug and mute the Sibelius track and then voila.


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## Wallander (May 8, 2019)

polyfonic said:


> I think I found a workaround that works - Voxengo Sound Delay - https://www.voxengo.com/product/sounddelay/ - which lets me delay the audio and vsts on my Cubase DAW with 1000 ms and now it perfectly syncs with Sibelius/Noteperformer. When I want to record something live in Cubase, then I just deactivate the Voxengo plug and mute the Sibelius track and then voila.


Clever! 

Thanks for sharing!


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## JJHLH (Dec 26, 2019)

I downloaded the demo of NotePerformer to try with Dorico and I have to say this software is brilliant!

Honestly it makes me wonder whether it might effectively replace sample libraries at some point. It’s so easy to use in comparison. Congratulations on creating such a wonderful product.


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## toomanynotes (Dec 30, 2019)

Any support for notion? Ta


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## Wallander (Jan 1, 2020)

toomanynotes said:


> Any support for notion? Ta


I'm afraid not, no. 

The reason is simply that Notion does not currently offer the means of integration that we need. We need to be able to use all 16 MIDI channels, and assign sounds with MIDI Program Change, like a General MIDI device but with custom programs. We would also like the option to default to not using Notion's built-in reverb, so that NotePerformer sounds the way it does in Sibelius, Finale and Dorico.


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## David Cuny (Jan 1, 2020)

Do you know if there's any similar technical issues with Sonic Score's *Overture* notation program that would prevent it from running NotePerformer?

Other than the developer not having coded the support yet, of course... 

Thanks!


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## Wallander (Jan 2, 2020)

David Cuny said:


> Do you know if there's any similar technical issues with Sonic Score's *Overture* notation program that would prevent it from running NotePerformer?
> 
> Other than the developer not having coded the support yet, of course...
> 
> Thanks!


I'm not sure that Overture has a system like e.g. Sibelius do, where 3rd party sound can replace the built-in sounds, and assign instruments and articulations automatically. Please correct me if I'm wrong.


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## David Cuny (Jan 2, 2020)

Wallander said:


> I'm not sure that Overture has a system like e.g. Sibelius do, where 3rd party sound can replace the built-in sounds, and assign instruments and articulations automatically. Please correct me if I'm wrong.


One of the main selling points of Overture is built-in support for a large number of third-party sound libraries. I haven't gotten that deep into it, but it seems pretty powerful.


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## Wallander (Jan 3, 2020)

David Cuny said:


> One of the main selling points of Overture is built-in support for a large number of third-party sound libraries. I haven't gotten that deep into it, but it seems pretty powerful.


I’m probably mistaken about that, then. 

I remember there being some caveat to it. It could also have been our 1-second delay stirring things up.

If there’s a way to make it work, I don’t rule it out for the future.


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## adramelek (Jan 24, 2020)

Wallander said:


> I'm afraid not, no.
> 
> The reason is simply that Notion does not currently offer the means of integration that we need. We need to be able to use all 16 MIDI channels, and assign sounds with MIDI Program Change, like a General MIDI device but with custom programs. We would also like the option to default to not using Notion's built-in reverb, so that NotePerformer sounds the way it does in Sibelius, Finale and Dorico.



What a pity ! Notion is a very great notation program that i use every day to compose for TV. It's powerful and easy to use, plugin integration is quite good. Presonus team should be able to make Noteperformer work into Notion, Wallander, did you already contact them ? Maybe midi integration will be better with a future update... I hope so ! Thank you Wallander, Noteperformer is becoming a more than useful tool for many classicals orchestrators, composers and students. Regards, Cédric (from France)


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## Wallander (Jan 27, 2020)

adramelek said:


> What a pity ! Notion is a very great notation program that i use every day to compose for TV. It's powerful and easy to use, plugin integration is quite good. Presonus team should be able to make Noteperformer work into Notion, Wallander, did you already contact them ? Maybe midi integration will be better with a future update... I hope so ! Thank you Wallander, Noteperformer is becoming a more than useful tool for many classicals orchestrators, composers and students. Regards, Cédric (from France)


Notion is great. It's been a long time now, since I was in touch with Notion, but I'm pretty sure they know the reasons why we're not able to integrate with Notion currently.

I agree that it's a pity. They have a commendable system for articulation management, where we can program in detail the MIDI events and their timing, for all articulations. They should have an as powerful template system for assigning sounds/patches and setting up new scores. So that we could instruct Notion to send bank/program changes for our sounds, and not add the default mixer reverb effects, and things like that.


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## gyprock (Jan 27, 2020)

In Dorico with Noteperformer, what’s the best way to get rid of volume bumps when using pad like sustains in, for example, a string section. I find I have to use slurs to smooth the transitions between a change from one whole note to the next but then you get that pumping sound if everything is under a slur. Alternatively I can have all parts play under a marcato articulation. This helps, but I don’t want the score covered in unnecessary articulations just for playback. Any suggestions for smoother playback?

EDIT: I reduced the humanize % in the play options and this has helped.


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## dcoscina (Jan 27, 2020)

Dewdman42 said:


> if and when its working better with Finale, I will probably get it. I really don't like Sibelius. I might go to Dorico at some point, but sounds like NotePerformer needs to improve there as well. Sounds like a really great way to write though.


Dorico shares some simIlarities with Finale and Sibelius. I found it pretty easy to jump into coming from Sibelius (and preciously Finale).


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## dcoscina (Jan 27, 2020)

Wallander said:


> Notion is great. It's been a long time now, since I was in touch with Notion, but I'm pretty sure they know the reasons why we're not able to integrate with Notion currently.
> 
> I agree that it's a pity. They have a commendable system for articulation management, where we can program in detail the MIDI events and their timing, for all articulations. They should have an as powerful template system for assigning sounds/patches and setting up new scores. So that we could instruct Notion to send bank/program changes for our sounds, and not add the default mixer reverb effects, and things like that.


I find Notion development quite a bit slow these last years since PreSonus bought it from Jack Jarrett. They’ve also taken it away from Jarretts original conception of the program. However, it is the fastest notation program to compose on and I’ve been using it since 2005 when it first came out. Hopefully PreSonus will release Notion 7 (it’s been more than a few years since the last major update) and NP will be compatible with it. I’m loving NP in Dorico btw.


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## Wallander (Jan 27, 2020)

gyprock said:


> In Dorico with Noteperformer, what’s the best way to get rid of volume bumps when using pad like sustains in, for example, a string section. I find I have to use slurs to smooth the transitions between a change from one whole note to the next but then you get that pumping sound if everything is under a slur. Alternatively I can have all parts play under a marcato articulation. This helps, but I don’t want the score covered in unnecessary articulations just for playback. Any suggestions for smoother playback?
> 
> EDIT: I reduced the humanize % in the play options and this has helped.


If you want notes to sustain for their full length, they must be notated either legato or tenuto.


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## sbarrettmusic (Jan 27, 2020)

I want to start out by saying that NotePerformer has been a life changer. It makes playback in Sibelius so much more enjoyable!

However, there is one thing that has been bothering me. Consider the example below:




When I play this phrase in Sibelius, the first eighth note plays as staccato, but the following eighth notes play back at full length. Oddly, the half note in the second measure plays as staccato (quarter note length) and then the following notes play legato. Even more, if I remove the slur then the half note plays at full length. Are others seeing this behavior? Ideally the "stacc." text would force all the eighths to plays as staccato and then the slur would obviously force legato, which it does a note too late in this example.


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## nolotrippen (Jan 27, 2020)

Wallander said:


> If you want notes to sustain for their full length, they must be notated either legato or tenuto.


Why not just make this an AU/VST that can be used in any DAW (DP10 for example)? WIVI band is like that.


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## Wallander (Jan 27, 2020)

sbarrettmusic said:


> I want to start out by saying that NotePerformer has been a life changer. It makes playback in Sibelius so much more enjoyable!
> 
> However, there is one thing that has been bothering me. Consider the example below:
> 
> ...


NotePerformer doesn’t support notating staccato as ”stacc.” but you need to put dots on those notes, I’m afraid.

Also, the way Sibelius works, you would have to end text staccato with ”ord.” or ”nat.” before the slur. Otherwise the slur becomes legato+staccato. Text techniques are never ended by other techniques, but they’re stacked.


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## Wallander (Jan 27, 2020)

nolotrippen said:


> Why not just make this an AU/VST that can be used in any DAW (DP10 for example)? WIVI band is like that.


NotePerformer’s interpretation is greatly helped by the consistency of computer-generated MIDI. Even then, there are lots of differences in the interpretation engine, running NP in Sibelius, Finale and Dorico, respectively. NP is actually branched into three different versions at runtime, based on what notation program is detected.

Also, the one-second latency isn’t something we can count on working reliably in any VST or AU host. Not to forget, NotePerformer relies on a ton of state switches, for every note. It’s the opposite of a real-time playable instrument. It would for sure be very difficult to sequence. 

I’ve still considered using the NP sound engine for a VST/AU at some point, and did some early testing. But ultimately I concluded that too much of what makes NP great would be lost in the process. I can see lots of more interesting ways to go with NP.


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## sbarrettmusic (Jan 27, 2020)

Wallander said:


> NotePerformer doesn’t support notating staccato as ”stacc.” but you need to put dots on those notes, I’m afraid.
> 
> Also, the way Sibelius works, you would have to end text staccato with ”ord.” or ”nat.” before the slur. Otherwise the slur becomes legato+staccato. Text techniques are never ended by other techniques, but they’re stacked.


I see. Adding "ord." does fix the half note, thanks for that!

But I get the same results whether I type "staccato" or "stacc." so I'm wondering why the text is affecting the half note in the second measure then?


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## Wallander (Jan 28, 2020)

sbarrettmusic said:


> I see. Adding "ord." does fix the half note, thanks for that!
> 
> But I get the same results whether I type "staccato" or "stacc." so I'm wondering why the text is affecting the half note in the second measure then?


NotePerformer assumes that you're using the staccato "dot" articulation on the note. This MIDI switch is sent by Sibelius prior to every note.

When you use "staccato" text, Sibelius only sends the MIDI switch once, after encountering the text. So NotePerformer will only process the first note after the text as staccato.

If you then add a slur, without cancelling the "staccato", Sibelius will assume the slur to be both staccato and legato at the same time (semi legato). Sibelius will then send both the MIDI switch for legato, and the MIDI switch for staccato. So the first note of the slur will not sound the same as the rest.

Writing "staccato" or "stacc." makes no difference to Sibelius. I think the dictionary entry is "stac", which means it will trigger on any word starting with "stac". If you really want to do this with text, rather than using a dot on the note, you can edit the Dictionary so that the "stac" staff text doesn't trigger the +staccato sound ID, but it shortens the note length by 50%. You will get almost the same effect by that, because NotePerformer will articulate that shortened note as a proper short note.


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## Vincent Martin (Jan 28, 2020)

Less than 2 years ago, I was thinking that Dorico was not yet ready for what I wanted to do and I was not aware of NotePerformer, or not convinced by it.

So I invested a lot of time in Notion which I find is very powerful, flexible and easy to use. Especially, the rule mechanism which allows an accurate and automatic control of VSTi based on the notation. For instance, slurs can be taken into account, which, if I'm not mistaken, is not possible for example with the expression maps in Cubase. 

In addition, as I was frustrated by the lack of consistency and flexibility of sample-based VSTi, I was aiming at controlling physical modelling-based VSTi such as SWAM. But because I wanted to write music and not spend time recording numerous CCs data to get somehow realistic and expressive music, I needed a piece of software to automatically send CCs data to SWAM instruments and alike. So I delved into JUCE framework (which is fantastic) to glue different components together : MIDI controllers, Notion, VSTi, Vienna Ensemble Pro (rocking tool), Bome MIDI translator (great tool), to emulate a string section without programming each violin individually, to work-around certain limitations of one component, to smooth my workflow, or to optimize the computer performances based on the context, or to ease the mixing process, etc.

The rule mechanism in Notion can also take into account the duration of a note which was great for my purpose : e.g. automatically shape the enveloppe of a note. Unfortunately, it was not linked to the relative note duration but the absolute one (in ms) thus impeding the flexiblity. I had experimented several tricks. One of them was to delay the playback to know when the Note Off event occurs. NotePerformer also delays the playback. This is such a huge "limitation" of MIDI protocol (which was not at all designed for music notation programs but live performance and recording, so not knowing in advance when the Note Off event will occur !) Maybe MIDI 2.0 will handle this.

After one year and a half of exploration, experiments, developments, and... some disappointments, I suddenly realized that : Dorico had become a very usable and promising modern notation program and NotePerformer, which in essence was aiming at the same goal that I had, was now reaching outstanding realism and expressiveness.

I don't think I had overlooked what Dorico and NotePerformer could offer me 2 years ago (NP version 3 and Dorico version 2.2 were not existing yet). Now, I believe that Dorico+NotePerformer offer me more, TODAY (and in the last few months), than what I could ever have reached on my own. And noticing how quickly they are evolving, I am confident that I'll get the chance to write most of my music with wonderful tools.

I am so grateful for the work Wallander has done on NotePerformer !

Oh, for the short story, a buddy of mine who is a professional musician and sound engineer (recording+mixing) who used to highlight the poor audio quality of my previous compositions, was this time really impressed by the audio quality and the realism of the instruments of my last track which I posted here, fully rendered by NotePerformer.


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## Harald (Mar 29, 2020)

Hey,

For those interested in getting this product, Wallander just added a monthly payment "*rent to own*".
I think this is a great idea to allow that form of payment.
I'll try it as soon as I can write some decent music in dorico xD

Cheers,


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## dcoscina (Feb 25, 2021)

sbarrettmusic said:


> I want to start out by saying that NotePerformer has been a life changer. It makes playback in Sibelius so much more enjoyable!
> 
> However, there is one thing that has been bothering me. Consider the example below:
> 
> ...


Totally agree. I'm working up a piece I composed in StaffPad last summer in Dorico using NotePerformer and I feel as though I'm getting a fairly accurate idea of instrument balances and blending. I actually wrote a whacked out brass quintet piece last year and the quick note repeats in the piece drove StaffPad crazy but NotePerformer handled it like a champ!


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## Strad (May 9, 2021)

Not sure if this is the right place to post, but since this thread was started by Wallander:
I'm trying to understand NP's use of the terms nat. and ord. in Sibelius. If a previous marking in a violin staff was sul tasto, and I want to get back to normal arco, typically in a score I would write nat. or ord. With NP it does switch from the softer sul tasto back to normal arco, but it also ignores slur marks. How can I simply un-do the sul tasto, get back to arco, and have slurs played?


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## MauroPantin (May 9, 2021)

Strad said:


> Not sure if this is the right place to post, but since this thread was started by Wallander:
> I'm trying to understand NP's use of the terms nat. and ord. in Sibelius. If a previous marking in a violin staff was sul tasto, and I want to get back to normal arco, typically in a score I would write nat. or ord. With NP it does switch from the softer sul tasto back to normal arco, but it also ignores slur marks. How can I simply un-do the sul tasto, get back to arco, and have slurs played?


Probably stating the obvious, but have you tried "arco"?


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## Strad (May 9, 2021)

MauroPantin said:


> Probably stating the obvious, but have you tried "arco"?


Yes, that also fails to play slur marks.


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## Wallander (May 10, 2021)

Strad said:


> Not sure if this is the right place to post, but since this thread was started by Wallander:
> I'm trying to understand NP's use of the terms nat. and ord. in Sibelius. If a previous marking in a violin staff was sul tasto, and I want to get back to normal arco, typically in a score I would write nat. or ord. With NP it does switch from the softer sul tasto back to normal arco, but it also ignores slur marks. How can I simply un-do the sul tasto, get back to arco, and have slurs played?


The "ord." and "nat." techniques are standard dictionary entries in Sibelius, which resolve to the [reset] sound ID. That means they reset all articulation, regardless of your choice of playback device. 

If a slur starts on the same note as the "ord." technique, the order of the MIDI events may be such that the slur is cancelled prematurely. I would suggest moving the "ord." technique slightly backwards in the score, so that it occurs before the onset of the slur. 

If you can't have it there for visual purposes, I would hide the playback technique, and create a duplicate technique in the correct score position where I disabled the "Play on pass" checkboxes in the Inspector, which effectively turn off playback for that score element. So you have a hidden technique for playback, and a no-playback technique for print.


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## Strad (May 10, 2021)

Wallander said:


> The "ord." and "nat." techniques are standard dictionary entries in Sibelius, which resolve to the [reset] sound ID. That means they reset all articulation, regardless of your choice of playback device.
> 
> If a slur starts on the same note as the "ord." technique, the order of the MIDI events may be such that the slur is cancelled prematurely. I would suggest moving the "ord." technique slightly backwards in the score, so that it occurs before the onset of the slur.
> 
> If you can't have it there for visual purposes, I would hide the playback technique, and create a duplicate technique in the correct score position where I disabled the "Play on pass" checkboxes in the Inspector, which effectively turn off playback for that score element. So you have a hidden technique for playback, and a no-playback technique for print.


Thank you! That was a perfect explanation, and I understand how and why now. And it works! I have only had NP 3 days, but I am extremely impressed. This is a game changer.


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