Change midi channel with expression maps?

Dorico
8

A followup to this issue that I recently discovered.

Without any third party tools, there is currently at least one workaround to hop channels. It’s not as simple as an expression map entry, but none the less, here’s how I accomplished it TODAY without a $90 UDS third party app in play.

  1. Insure in Setup/Layout Options, that “Allow Instrument Changes” is turned on.

  2. Go to the Setup Tab.

Put this into Galley View (ctrl-alt-2), or you can do it via the View Menu, or with a little icon in the lower left panel.

Add a new Instrument to the Player that you wish to use multiple plugins/MIDI Channels.

In this case, I’m going to assign three instruments to my “Violin I” and “Violin II” Players. Ultimately, I’ll have a big key-switching instrument for Violin 1. For Violin 2, I’ll be implementing a special ‘no vibrato’ sustained violin section that isn’t included in the big key-switching variant. For Violin 3, I’ll be entering the ‘soloist’ violin passages.

Note that when Dorico is in Galley View, you’ll see all of the instrument staves unfolded as above. When you change to Page View, all the staves merge into one as long as there are empty bars in the other staves of this player.

  1. In the Play Tab, assign each player to the plugin and MIDI Channel of your choice.

At this point simply use Galley View mode in the Write Tab to cut/paste, or enter fresh music on the ‘instrument’ you want to sound. Here you can see where I’ve put my senza vibrato and Soloist passages onto the different instrument staves, but made sure all other staves are empty for these particular bars.

Now notice that when I switch back to Page View, All these staves are folded into one visually, but I get the expected playback over different MIDI Channels.

  1. Finally we’ll need to make adjustments so we get the Instrument Names until they display as we want.

In the Setup Tab, unfold the Player Flows, and alter the Instrument Names by clicking on the little > marks.

In this score I simply renamed as follows:
Violin 1 as “Violin I” for the long name, and “Vlns.” for the short name.
Violin 2 as “senza vib.” for both the long and short names.
Violin 3 as “Solo Violin 1” for the long name, and “Solo” for the short name.
Violin 4 as “Violin II” for the long name, and “Vlns.” for the short name.
Violin 5 as “senza vib.” for both the long and short names.
Violin 6 as “Solo Violin 2” for the long name, and “Solo” for the short name.

Now I get this in Page View, while all the staves are spread out and visible in Galley View.