# "The Shark Theme" from JAWS - NotePerformer!



## Wallander (Mar 9, 2015)

"The Shark Theme" from JAWS!

Generated entirely by NotePerformer, from John William's original score. In other words, this is a sequencing-free, tweaking-free, automatically generated mockup. Just a plain sheet of music processed by NotePerformer 1.4.2c running in Sibelius 7. 

Enjoy! 8)


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## bcarwell (Mar 9, 2015)

Yes, but.... I don't think it is available for Finale, correct ? If/when it is and has capabilities close to on Sibelius I would buy it in a heart beat.

Bob


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## RiffWraith (Mar 9, 2015)

Wallander @ Mon Mar 09 said:


> "The Shark Theme" from JAWS!
> 
> Generated entirely by NotePerformer, from John William's original score. In other words, this is a sequencing-free, tweaking-free, automatically generated mockup. Just a plain sheet of music processed by NotePerformer 1.4.2c running in Sibelius 7.
> 
> Enjoy! 8)



Cool.

Where are the sounds coming from? Sample libs?

What was it that made the sheet music decisions?

And how can this be of benefit to people?


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## Wallander (Mar 9, 2015)

bcarwell @ Mon 09 Mar said:


> Yes, but.... I don't think it is available for Finale, correct ? If/when it is and has capabilities close to on Sibelius I would buy it in a heart beat.
> 
> Bob


Right, for the time being at least, NotePerformer is Sibelius only, and although it would be great to support both, I can't make any guarantees at this point about a potential Finale port.


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## Wallander (Mar 9, 2015)

RiffWraith @ Mon 09 Mar said:


> Wallander @ Mon Mar 09 said:
> 
> 
> > "The Shark Theme" from JAWS!
> ...


NotePerformer is a playback plugin for Sibelius (replacing the bullt in playback) with a full orchestral library included, largely based on synthesis, featuring for example full string divisi. So all the sounds are NotePerformer's own. 

The software makes its own decisions based on the written score, and the techniques and annotations by John Williams.


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## Saxer (Mar 9, 2015)

very impressive!


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## Mike Greene (Mar 9, 2015)

This is really impressive. 8)


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## Wallander (Mar 10, 2015)

Thanks! 8) 

My feelings towards NotePerformer are obviously biased, but if you're a skilled orchestrator I would argue that with proper post-processing, just listening to this video (which is completely unprocessed) there are many smaller everyday projects like ads and apps where NotePerformer's mockups should be perfectly usable as an end product. Maybe not the next Star Wars movie or blockbuster trailer, but then again most projects aren't on that level. 

Does it replace a DAW, $5000 worth of sample libraries and years worth learning those tools? Of course not! There's no limit to how far you can go with the right tools, skills, devoted time and dedication when you sequence by hand, and the width of excellent sample libraries have never been greater. It's quite astonishing, really. Not to forget, as soon as you enter "epic" territory, sample libraries just can't be matched (perhaps not even by a live orchestra) and more obviously sample libraries don't limit you to orchestral sounds. With NotePerformer you're giving away control over most of the details, for better and for worse. 

With that said, NotePerformer can be a _huge_ time saver towards creating mockups that do the job, if you're comfortable with orchestrating and writing musical score. And because NotePerformer was designed to be an excellent proof-reading tool, you would typically end up with a perfectly good score if you just follow its lead. Ready to be handed over to live players if you get that opportunity. 

On the question of who uses this and why, my answer would be, if you secretly wish you could write music by writing musical score instead of tweaking MIDI CC curves and velocity levels, there's no reason not to try it out. Both NotePerformer and Sibelius are available as free 30-day trials.


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## Vlzmusic (Mar 10, 2015)

As a wholehearted fan since 2007, I must say - its about damn time this little genius start talking, and promote himself a bit!! 

I love Arne`s works, owned and used Wivi, and I think Noteperformer is such a logical step forward, for the system so flexible, to become so clever as well, to practice that flexibility on real life scores.

I definitely have used Noteperformer in "real" projects, and many times I find specific charm in its interpretation of certain pieces, like this Mendelssohn here :

https://vlzmusic.bandcamp.com/track/mendelssohn-wedding-march (https://vlzmusic.bandcamp.com/track/men ... ding-march)


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## Wallander (Mar 10, 2015)

Vlad, seeing users like yourself putting my stuff to such amazingly good use is what makes me want to keep doing this year after year!


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## Daryl (Mar 10, 2015)

I am a huge fan of NotePerformer, but for me most of the limitations are because of Sibelius, not the actual NotePerformer software. With a couple of changes, it could be very useful for providing backing stems for recording sessions, for example.

However, there are still things that need to be user configurable. For example timing is somewhat erratic, and I'm not convinced that this is solely the fault of Sibelius, as GM does not cause the same problems. I would also like to be able to set the look ahead time, so that it might be possible to use Sibelius in Rewire mode with Nuendo.

Having said that, I'm really hoping that something can be done with the new Steinberg notation program, particularly as currently I would imagine that everything is up for grabs.

D


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## Wallander (Mar 10, 2015)

Daryl, regarding the erratic timing, did you update to 1.4.2c? 

http://www.noteperformer.com/?mode=news

If not, could you please try that and let me know if it helps? 

I very much agree that it would be highly desirable to make NotePerformer compatible both with real-time record and Rewire. Finding a solution for that is still high on the agenda.


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## Daryl (Mar 10, 2015)

Wallander @ Tue Mar 10 said:


> Daryl, regarding the erratic timing, did you update to 1.4.2c?
> 
> http://www.noteperformer.com/?mode=news
> 
> ...


We have updated, but I haven't used it in anger yet. However, I did use the previous version for the last 8 albums, so I know the idiosyncrasies very well. Do let me know if I can be of any help, as I think that this is an excellent product, and want it to achieve as much success as possible.

D


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## Wallander (Mar 10, 2015)

Ok. If you do try it out, let me know. Make sure you're running 1.4.2c, not 1.4.2, because some issues were fixed between these two versions.


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## Daryl (Mar 10, 2015)

Wallander @ Tue Mar 10 said:


> Ok. If you do try it out, let me know. Make sure you're running 1.4.2c, not 1.4.2, because some issues were fixed between these two versions.


Will do. Probably at the start of next week.

D


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## ag75 (Mar 10, 2015)

NotePerformer is VERY impressive! But I also wish that it was available for Finale as I have switched over to Finale recently. But I occasionally use Sibelius for this very reason. Great piece of software. Well worth the price.


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## FriFlo (Mar 10, 2015)

ag75 @ Tue Mar 10 said:


> NotePerformer is VERY impressive! But I also wish that it was available for Finale as I have switched over to Finale recently?


Why would anyone do that?! (o)


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## apessino (Mar 10, 2015)

I have said it before, but here it is again: NotePerformer is the greatest thing ever to happen to Sibelius. 8) 

As for the "erratic timing" I have noticed that too, and it differs from machine to machine, score to score - it seems related to the audio driver, buffer size, etc. I seem to be able to reduce the incidence by adding latency.

Also, I find it that it does NOT happen if you export audio from Sibelius. In the exported wav file the timing is always perfect for me. The are also a few bugs with hairpins being ignored that go away when exporting audio ( I have a reproducible case score for you if you would like it, with the latest version).


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## Wallander (Mar 11, 2015)

apessino said:


> As for the "erratic timing" I have noticed that too, and it differs from machine to machine, score to score - it seems related to the audio driver, buffer size, etc. I seem to be able to reduce the incidence by adding latency.


Hmm, are you on PC by any chance when the timing problems happen? It's known that when running Sibelius on PC, you can experience problems with timing if you use just the built-in sound card (DirectSound or MMA) and don't use an ASIO driver such as ASIO4ALL. Instead of getting buffer problems and crackles in the sound, timing becomes bad. 

This applies not just to NotePerformer but also to the built-in sounds (not GM though because that's handled by the OS, but to Sibelius Sounds). But you can experience more problems with NotePerformer than with Sibelius Sounds because it's a more complex software and consumes more CPU, and is more likely to max out the audio interface. 

Anyway, the solution is to download ASIO4ALL and use as your sound interface, if you don't have a separate ASIO sound card, and that should do the trick.  On Mac there should be no such problems, because the built-in driver is low latency compatible from the start just like ASIO4ALL. 

And you're right, occasionally hairpins or dynamics can be ignored, and it can depend on where you start playback from. I'm not sure why, to be honest. From NotePerformer's perspective, dynamics is just a MIDI CC curve which is controlled by Sibelius, like a breath controller or expression pedal. And when a hairpin is ignored, the MIDI CC messages just aren't sent out by Sibelius like they should be. So this particular issue can't be worked around by NotePerformer. But sometimes the problem goes away by for example moving the hairpin a bit to the side.


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## apessino (Mar 12, 2015)

Hey Arne!  

Yes, I am on PC (3 that I use regularly, 1 at work, 1 at home studio, 1 on a MacBook Pro running Win7), but I don't use "built in sound" with any of them. 

Thanks for the input - like I said, the issues were small and I managed to work around them on every machine (well, I have not used the laptop in a while, so I don't know there) but I use ASIO drivers on every on eof them and I was still having some issues. On my main DAW PC Sibelius itself has trouble with some of the Yamaha/Steinberg drivers, so I am not surprised NP would suffer in the process. I am forced to use the "Generic ASIO Driver" option with Sibelius (which works fine) or Sibelius hangs when initializing the audio engine.

Anyhow, not a big deal... my point was just that, if someone like Daryl is having timing issues and wants to incorporate some NP output into a DAW track, exporting audio might solve the problem. 8)


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## Daryl (Mar 12, 2015)

apessino @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> Anyhow, not a big deal... my point was just that, if someone like Daryl is having timing issues and wants to incorporate some NP output into a DAW track, exporting audio might solve the problem. 8)


Not really. In fact I always have to do a tempo warp to make the Sibelius rendered file play sort of in time with the DAW. However, I haven't done a similar test with GM sounds, so I can't say where the timing error truly lies when it comes to export I'm having a more serious problem at the moment, which happens on any version, and that is that a couple of scores cause some sort of CPU spike and cause Sibelius to lose the audio driver. It only happens using a Piano, but as I'm writing an album for Piano and Strings, it has sort of made NP fairly useless at the moment. I haven't had a chance to send the score to support, but I'll see if Arne has any suggestions.

D


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## apessino (Mar 12, 2015)

I see - well then I have not seen that problem. For me exported audio has been fine, even when the direct playback had issues. Sorry!


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## Wallander (Mar 13, 2015)

apessino @ Fri 13 Mar said:


> Hey Arne!
> ...
> Anyhow, not a big deal... my point was just that, if someone like Daryl is having timing issues and wants to incorporate some NP output into a DAW track, exporting audio might solve the problem. 8)


You're right.  I'm just over-answering it. 

Daryl, are you 100% sure you're on 1.4.2c, with the c<-- at the end? Because the prior version(s) had a bug which could cause irreparable audio/CPU spikes using slurs on the piano. So it sounds exactly like what you're having. 

It should say 1.4.2c in the splash window at startup. If you can't see the splash, click the gearwheel icon in the Sibelius mixer to open up the NotePerformer about box.


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## Daryl (Mar 13, 2015)

Wallander @ Fri Mar 13 said:


> Daryl, are you 100% sure you're on 1.4.2c, with the c<-- at the end? Because the prior version(s) had a bug which could cause irreparable audio/CPU spikes using slurs on the piano. So it sounds exactly like what you're having.


You're right. It's the earlier version. I'll get my assistant to get a fresh link for downloading on Monday. Thanks for the help.

D


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