Hi Andi,

Thanks very much for getting back to me. I understood that you can effectively copy the articulations of an entire instrument by means of the "copy root slot" but if you paste it into the other instrument, it simply erases the original articulations whereas I want to add them to the original. Of course it's possible to copy individual patch slots and add to the "type" list but that's more tedious.

I take your point that it's anyway not ideal to mix instruments from the point of view of the Synchron player. The fact remains that in notation software, a muted trumpet is not a different instrument from an unmuted one and cannot be set up as one -- at any rate in Dorico. It is possible to switch MIDI channels (assuming using VE) to a different instrument in the Expression Maps but some have advised against that, due to a volume reset when switching.

Perhaps there is no obvious or ideal solution but I'm interested in what you would do im my position? Of course simply staying with the VI Pro instruments remains an option!

best wishes, David

Hello David!

You don't have to overwrite a dimension tree, when you copy the root slot. You could also copy the root slot from one preset to a new slot in the first dimension of another preset.

With muted instruments in Sibelius I would do as described in the "Optimizing Sibelius Playback" manual, page 33. There's no difference in this respect between Vienna Instruments (Pro) and Synchron Player. In Dorico switching the MIDI channel might be a good idea. I didn't try that yet.

Best,
Andi

that's exactly what I was looking for! I didn't realise that you could copy the entire tree from one instrument to a new slot in the first dimension as I'm still thinking a bit in VI mode. I'll try this out and if losing the instrument-specific impulses does prove to be irritating then I still have the MIDI switching option. Many thanks!

In a case like this, wouldn't the mixer settings be the same

Hello Bill!

The mixer presets between an instrument played con sordino and the same instrument played senza sordino are different. They have different impulses.

Best regards,
Andi

could you possibly give an example, Andi. I don't see anything myself.

By the way, I've got my trumpet sorted out fine in Dorico, now as far as I can see. I take your point about Sibelius, incidentally, and indeed used your tips in the "Optimizing Sibelius Playback. I just don't use it for new compositions any more.

@andi said:

Hello Bill!

The mixer presets between an instrument played con sordino and the same instrument played senza sordino are different. They have different impulses.

Best regards,
Andi

Thanks for these explanations

Can you please comment a bit more about this.  The Mixer setup is in the "preset" right?  So if I load a preset and then don't try to copy any other presets into it on other slots...I should be fine, and I assume I can place any patch from any instrument I want into a slot also...but of course, the mixer setup would remain from the original preset...so the loaded in patch might not work right?  Do I have that right?

if I want to build my own multi, for any reason, I guess I would need to build a custom mixer preset that has all the channels from each of the two different instrument presets...  and then assign all the patches to slots...and make sure they are assigned to the right channels, etc..  a lot of work but possible yes?

Thanks for your detailed description, Dewdman42, and I endorse your suggestion to VSL. It may be that I've misunderstood something as my procedure seems simpler than yours. My task was initally simply the following -- to merge the Special Edition mute trumpets and trombones contents into the primary instruments. I just did the following following Andi's suggestions:

1. go to the mute instrument and right click in empty space and "copy root slot"

2. in the main instrument, click on the + to create a new articulation in the articulation column and call it "mute"

3. right click and "paste slot". The entire mute tree structure is then copied into this slot. In the Dorico Expression Map, you simply add F#1 (assuming default mapping) to access the mute articulations you want to use.

I can understand that mixer impulses are different between different instruments and that they wouldn't be carried across but I can't see any mixer settings which differ between mute and standard trumpets. In practical terms what, if anything, is it I'm actually losing with this approach?

David

you asked about mimicing the ViPro Matrix, that's why i did it that way.  Its not 100% clear to me what you did, but its working for you then great!  I have no idea what you might be missing.

But my impression is that Synchron player is quite a bit more flexible then ViPro in terms of the dimension tree vs ViPro Matrix concept, with different approaches possible to arrange patches into a preset.

I think you can probably manually build the mixer preset yourself of two different instrument presets combined into one, but you'd have to figure out what mixer settings to use for each channel, which convo IR to use, etc..build a larger mixer, and then edit each patch in the dimenstion tree to point to the right mixer channel.  I think its doable, but would take some manual work and not easy.

ok -- I see what you were getting at with your methodology and thanks again for going to the trouble. As for the "what am I missing?", this was more directed at Andi who warned about the possible downside to this approach. Perhaps he will chip in later with further clarification.

Hello Dewdman42!

Here are instructions on how you can move the whole dimension tree one dimension down.

- Rightclick an empty space in the dimension area and choose "Copy root slot".

- Rightclick the first slot in the first dimension and select "Paste slot".

- Choose a new title and switch for your new first dimension and give the first slot a name.

- Delete the other slots in the first dimension by rightclicking them and choosing "Delete".

--

Building custom presets with different instruments that get routed to different mixer channels is possible, but complicated.

--

David, the SYNCHRON-ized Special Edition presets "02 Trumpet I (C)" and "03 "Trumpet I (C) muted" have different EQ settings and different impulses. Nevertheless, you can of course combine them in one preset, if it helps your workflow.

Best regards,
Andi

@andi said:

Hello Dewdman42!

Here are instructions on how you can move the whole dimension tree one dimension down.

- Rightclick an empty space in the dimension area and choose "Copy root slot".

- Rightclick the first slot in the first dimension and select "Paste slot".

- Choose a new title and switch for your new first dimension and give the first slot a name.

- Delete the other slots in the first dimension by rightclicking them and choosing "Delete".

Thank you that is definitely easier!

what exactly is the meaning of Copy Root Slot?  What is being copied when you do that? 

Actually I think I get now how you came to the idea of calling it "Copy Root Slot", because there must be a hidden slot, which is the root slot of the whole dimension tree.

Not immediately intuitive to me, but not hard once you know...

Thanks for the simplified instructions!

Hello Dewdman42!

"Copy root slot" is the command for copying the whole dimension tree to the clipboard.

Best,
Andi

Yea I get that now, It just wasn't clear to me from the name "Copy Root Slot".  

"Copy Dimension Tree" would have made perfect sense.  ;-)

But as I said, there must be a hidden slot, which that command allows us to copy...so it makes sense when you know there is a hidden root slot.  

@andi said:

David, the SYNCHRON-ized Special Edition presets "02 Trumpet I (C)" and "03 "Trumpet I (C) muted" have different EQ settings and different impulses. Nevertheless, you can of course combine them in one preset, if it helps your workflow.

Best regards,
Andi

OK, I see what you mean -- the EQ settings are somewhat different and when listening closely, there is indeed a difference. Mute copied into the normal instrument lacks something of the raw distinctiveness of timbre which you hear when the original instrument is used. I'll perhaps try the channel change and see if I can get that to work.

have managed to get the channel change to work in Dorico. Although the software does not yet allow you to add a new instrument to a player which is not already in the list, in Setup you can create a copy of something already existing  and just rename it, thus creating in the Play window the essential additional track for allocating to a different MIDI channel. The beauty is it doesn't appear in the score so you can don't need to do an instrument change at all -- simply create the articulation " mute" and the Expression Map directs you to the new channel you've selected. The Synchron mute instrument articulations largely map the non-mute ones so no additional programming is required. Just remember to include the reset to original channel command in the default "nat", otherwise you stay mute for ever!

PS I have not yet really checked to see if I can see any issues reported by one or two users that the dynamic level isn't inherited between the channels, resulting in volume jumps. If I can confirm this, I'll report back

So I'm playing around with trying to create some multi-instrument presets with combi-mixer.  Maybe the JSON can be used here.

As Andi pointed out, most of the difficulty is related to getting mixer settings from one instrument to another.  We can build a dimension tree with any combination of "patches" we want, but the actual mixer settings such as EQ and other things, are contained in the overall inst preset, which is saved in a binary format and I can't find any way to produce a JSON configuration of the overall inst preset.  We can get the JSON for each slot (and its descendants).  But slots only seem to contain either references to patches or various edit and performance attributes.  Nothing about the mixer is in that JSON that is available with right click copy.

It is however possible to save a user mixer preset.  So open each instrument preset that is intended to be combined into a single instrument preset.  For each one, save the mixer preset.  After that go open them all and try to figure out how to combine the JSON from several into one mixer preset.  

That will not be for the faint of heart though, but it might be possible.  Might be able to write a javascript script to do it.

Its probably easier to just open each of the intended instruments in another synchron instance and then approximate the EQ settings in the combined one, one strip at a time. 

if there is some other way to do this already in an easy way, please advise.

 (note, would be nice if there was a "Copy Channel Strip Settings" command or something, and could then copy and paste from one instance of Synchron to another; and build up combi multi-instruments that way, or at least easily add slightly different instrument family groups to a single synchron instance with a combined mixer when needed)

Hi Dewdman,

Just right-click on the volume meter in the mixer :)

Best, Ben