NOTION Music Forum

Hi All

I've recently bought Notion after using Sibelius since version 2 at college and generally I am very impressed. The playback in particular is stunning compared to Sib 7's let down of a library.

However my problem is that I work professionally on musical theatre show orchestrations and one feature that was great in Sibelius was the ability to change an instrument mid-piece on woodwind doubling without having to add a new stave, just an instrument change command to alter the transposition and playback sound. Does Notion have this? As I have to produce demo and backing tracks for the composer I work with I really need this kind of feature to make life easier otherwise I will have to make a workaround for playback and revert to Sibelius for the printed material. I don't want to do this but it could just be me of course!

Many thanks,
Stewart

stewart1981 wrote:. . . the ability to change an instrument mid-piece on woodwind doubling without having to add a new stave, just an instrument change command to alter the transposition and playback sound. Does Notion have this?

Yes!

One way to do this is to use the Change Instrument Per Staff command, which is explained beginning on Page 11.8 of the NOTION 4 User Guide . . .

As I read what you wrote, it appears that you want to change to an "instrument" that actually has what one might consider to be two voices, which for example in a real orchestra might be starting with a solo Clarinet playing the notes on the staff but then switching to two Clarinets playing the notes on the same staff where the added Clarinet is playing the same notes but an octave higher . . .

There are several ways to do this, and one way is to use the Change Instrument Per Staff technique with a VSTi virtual instrument that supports multiple channels, in which case you can assign two Clarinets to the same channel but assign only one Clarinet to another channel, where Channel 1 might be the Solo Clarinet and Channel 2 might map to a pair of Clarinets, one of which is the same as the Solo Clarinet you assigned to Channel 1, and in this technique the "instrument" is a VSTi virtual instrument like Kontakt 5 (Native Instruments) and what you really are changing is the channel in a multi-channel factory or user-defined preset, where for example you can assign two Clarinets to the same channel so that when that channel is selected, two Clarinets play, and depending on the specifics you might be able to configure the second Clarinet to play an octave higher . . .

NOTION 4 also supports multiple voices on the same staff, which is another way to do it, and you can assign a different instrument to each of up to four such voices, but you also can assign the Solo Clarinet to all four voices and then have each Solo Clarinet play different notes, which provides more detailed control . . .

Change Instrument Per Voice is explained beginning on Page 11.10 in the NOTION 4 User Guide . . .

If the second set of notes you want to play simultaneously has the same timing as the first set and the interval will be the same for all the notes, then you can use the Add Interval command to double a series of notes but at a different fixed interval, where for example if you want to add a major third harmony note to a series of notes, this is the easy way to do it, and it is explained on Page 10.9 in the NOTION 4 User Guide . . .

One of these techniques should provide a nice solution for what you need to do, so read about it in the NOTION 4 User Guide; do a few experiments; and if you need help, post another message with more specific information on what you need to do . . .

Lots of FUN!

[shift]+[i] = instrument change

-t