NotePerformer by Wallander Instruments - REALISTIC NOTATION PROGRAM PLAYBACK

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Wallander Instruments is proud to present: NotePerformer :)

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NotePerformer - Realistic Notation Playback

NotePerformer is a brand new type of orchestral library that reads ahead and analyses your score, and plays back your music with accurate phrasing - for each and every member of your virtual orchestra!

When writing orchestral music with NotePerformer you don't have to worry about key switches, CC curves, routing MIDI channels, assigning instruments, keyboards, breath/wind controllers etc. In fact, there isn't even a NotePerformer interface, but you do all your work in Sibelius! You write the music as a musical score, add new instruments from the score as you please, add slurs, articulations, dots, techniques, etc. Then press play, and NotePerformer does the rest.

I could go on forever on why this technology is the coolest thing ever for computer-based composition (and for producing scores for live performers) but I am going start with some audio demos first, so that you get an idea of what sound quality to expect:


Tchaikovsky - The Nutcracker Suite - Dance Of The Sugar Plum Fairy
https://soundcloud.com/noteperformer/no ... aikovsky-5

Holst - The Planets - Jupiter
https://soundcloud.com/noteperformer/no ... -holst-the

Grieg - Peer Gynt Suite - Morning
https://soundcloud.com/noteperformer/no ... -peer-gynt

Quilter - A Children's Overture
https://soundcloud.com/noteperformer/no ... -quilter-a

There are also a ton of more examples on the NotePerformer website.

Now, these demo tracks were obviously written centuries ago, and not for the purpose of showcasing NotePerformer. The demos are meant to honestly and transparently demonstrate what this technology can do (and cannot do) from traditional scores with tons of comparable recordings and prints, and what kind of playback quality is achievable with NotePerformer even without prior experience in using sample libraries.

I couldn't figure out whether this mind-reading full orchestral library should cost $499 or $2999, so I decided it should cost $129, which is practically a giveaway. So if you're a Sibelius user and want this, please hurry before I change my mind! :)

So to summarize, NotePerformer is perhaps the most affordable orchestral library on the market, while also being one of the most extensive in terms of included instrument content and techniques. And it more or less reads your mind so you don't even need to fill in the details with a sequencer, and you end up with a highly accurate and detailed score for live performances.

And one more thing I forgot to mention. The whole library is based on additive synthesis (winds) and our recently patent-approved sample dynamics technology (for strings and percussion) previously known from our iOS apps, so the library fits in less than 1 GB RAM. NotePerformer typically loads in a few seconds at Sibelius startup, and then you have immediate access to every instrument and technique in the entire library and you can work with multiple scores simultaneously, and do all your work from a small laptop.

So will NotePerformer make you throw away all your big orchestral libraries? Probably not, and I'm not suggesting you do so. But if you use notation programs for whatever purpose in your work, my super-biased opinion is that NotePerformer is an absolute no-brainer upgrade to Sibelius.

I could go on and on, but I'll leave room for questions instead. I'll try my best to answer them. :)

NotePerformer -requires- Sibelius 6, Sibelius 7 or Sibelius First.

Available now from NotePerformer - Realistic Notation Playback
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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looks amazing...but i'm strictly a "piano roll" composer is it a way to use it if you simply can't write scores ?

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Krakatau wrote:looks amazing...but i'm strictly a "piano roll" composer is it a way to use it if you simply can't write scores ?
I'm afraid there isn't. The expression technology relies on having a score to look ahead in, using what you put into the score to create the expression.

As for now there are no plans to make a VST/AU port, as it would be incredibly difficult to use this software in a sequencer due to how the technology works.
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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Looks great, Arne. Congrats on the release!

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Congrats! Great idea!

Can it do strings divisi? Worried about balance issues.

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Wallander wrote:Wallander Instruments is proud to present: NotePerformer :)

Image

NotePerformer - Realistic Notation Playback

NotePerformer is a brand new type of orchestral library that reads ahead and analyses your score, and plays back your music with accurate phrasing - for each and every member of your virtual orchestra!
][/b]

This sounds great - just this kind of "light" tool I've been looking for. For the notation I've used so far MuseScore but now I have to consider buying Sibelius First + the NotePerformer. Total investment would be just about EUR 200.
One question, maybe a bit out of this thread but connected to the use of the NotePerformer: Can I use Sibelius + NotePerformer as a slave for the sequencer?
E.g. creating basic rhytm track, some instrumentation and vocal by the Live and
then create the orchestral arrangement by the Sibelius + NotePerformer and
play these in the synch? I just glanced through the Sibelius First manual but didn't find any information about this. Harry

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I think this is a great idea, the results sound great! I find there's some robotic-ness to the high velocity notes, especially in the first demo, but other than that I can't find much else to nag about. :) those could probably be easily averted with slight changes to the composition.

This is something I'll probably point my dad to, as he uses Sibelius First but no DAW, so he might get really excited about the realism of the sounds. Myself, even though I like how this sounds, I don't use Sibelius and even if it was possible to use this within a DAW, I might want more control than there's available. Mostly I would probably use this to stick midi songs from old games and the like, just to hear what they sounded like, which obviously would make it an expensive toy. I hope your customers will find a better use for it! :lol:

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asnor wrote:Looks great, Arne. Congrats on the release!
Thanks! :)
frankvg wrote:Congrats! Great idea!

Can it do strings divisi? Worried about balance issues.
Sorry no. We intended to support this but couldn't make it work with Sibelius Sound IDs, so the idea was put aside.

In the end we choose to support only features that are in Sibelius' own House Styles and Dictionary, because then you don't need to go through hoops to use NotePerformer, and you know that the features will work out-of-the-box because the internal library uses them already.
Harry_HH wrote:This sounds great - just this kind of "light" tool I've been looking for. For the notation I've used so far MuseScore but now I have to consider buying Sibelius First + the NotePerformer. Total investment would be just about EUR 200.
One question, maybe a bit out of this thread but connected to the use of the NotePerformer: Can I use Sibelius + NotePerformer as a slave for the sequencer?
E.g. creating basic rhytm track, some instrumentation and vocal by the Live and
then create the orchestral arrangement by the Sibelius + NotePerformer and
play these in the synch? I just glanced through the Sibelius First manual but didn't find any information about this. Harry
Sibelius supports Rewire, but it doesn't work with NotePerformer.

Sibelius does compensate for the read-ahead latency used by NotePerformer, but this doesn't seem to apply to other hosts connected with Rewire to Sibelius. So in our experience, the hosts will be off sync quite severely.

If you want to mix with live audio I think your only option (that I know of) is to bounce the NotePerformer playback to disk, and load into your host as a fixed audio track.
I think this is a great idea, the results sound great! I find there's some robotic-ness to the high velocity notes, especially in the first demo, but other than that I can't find much else to nag about. Smile those could probably be easily averted with slight changes to the composition.

This is something I'll probably point my dad to, as he uses Sibelius First but no DAW, so he might get really excited about the realism of the sounds. Myself, even though I like how this sounds, I don't use Sibelius and even if it was possible to use this within a DAW, I might want more control than there's available. Mostly I would probably use this to stick midi songs from old games and the like, just to hear what they sounded like, which obviously would make it an expensive toy. I hope your customers will find a better use for it! Laughing
Maybe it was written that way. 8)

More seriously, NotePerformer plays the score exactly as notated. It doesn't do corrections or and it doesn't add any kind of emotion to the music. So if you write a hundred straight notes that's what you'll get. :)
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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Wallander wrote:
Harry_HH wrote:This sounds great - just this kind of "light" tool I've been looking for. For the notation I've used so far MuseScore but now I have to consider buying Sibelius First + the NotePerformer. Total investment would be just about EUR 200.
One question, maybe a bit out of this thread but connected to the use of the NotePerformer: Can I use Sibelius + NotePerformer as a slave for the sequencer?
E.g. creating basic rhytm track, some instrumentation and vocal by the Live and
then create the orchestral arrangement by the Sibelius + NotePerformer and
play these in the synch? I just glanced through the Sibelius First manual but didn't find any information about this. Harry
Sibelius supports Rewire, but it doesn't work with NotePerformer.

Sibelius does compensate for the read-ahead latency used by NotePerformer, but this doesn't seem to apply to other hosts connected with Rewire to Sibelius. So in our experience, the hosts will be off sync quite severely.

If you want to mix with live audio I think your only option (that I know of) is to bounce the NotePerformer playback to disk, and load into your host as a fixed audio track.

)

Thank you for the reply. In other words, the workflow would be:
a. Creating basic track with the Live (sequencer), and orchestral arrangement with the Sibelius connected to secuencer via the Rewire and playing with the Sibelius default sounds
b. Playing the orchestral arrangment with the Sibelius connected to the NotePerformer and bounching the audio track(s).
c. Downloading the (b.) audiotracks to the Live (sequencer)

Two additional questions:

1. Do you think that in future you can develop NotePerformer to the direction where the connection with the sequencer(s) will be more tight/smooth?
2. At the moment, does the Sibelius really follow the sequencer via the Rewire without delay, i.e. you can perform the above workflow point a?

Harry

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Harry_HH wrote: Thank you for the reply. In other words, the workflow would be:
a. Creating basic track with the Live (sequencer), and orchestral arrangement with the Sibelius connected to secuencer via the Rewire and playing with the Sibelius default sounds
b. Playing the orchestral arrangment with the Sibelius connected to the NotePerformer and bounching the audio track(s).
c. Downloading the (b.) audiotracks to the Live (sequencer)

Two additional questions:

1. Do you think that in future you can develop NotePerformer to the direction where the connection with the sequencer(s) will be more tight/smooth?
2. At the moment, does the Sibelius really follow the sequencer via the Rewire without delay, i.e. you can perform the above workflow point a?

Harry
The only workflow I can think of would be writing the music and arrangement in Sibelius with NotePerformer, bounce to disk as audio, and load the audio file into the sequencer (separately from Sibelius). No Rewire involved.

Perhaps at some point there will be a no-delay implementation, but it would require Sibelius rewrites so it's not something that can be done easily, unfortunately...

Regarding your last question, I am not sure I'm in a position to answer how well Rewire works with Sibelius in general. You may want to try the Sibelius forum:

http://www.sibelius.com/helpcenter/index.html

There are a lot of helpful people over there, who can probably fill in the details!
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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Does NotePerformer use Sibelius Sounds or does it have its own instruments? I assume the latter but I want to be sure.
/Ragnar (Uppsala)

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Ragnar H wrote:Does NotePerformer use Sibelius Sounds or does it have its own instruments? I assume the latter but I want to be sure.
/Ragnar (Uppsala)
Hi Ragnar! :)

NotePerformer is a self-contained playback device with its own sounds.

If you're just using NotePerformer, you don't even need to have the Sibelius sounds installed (and save 40 GB space). With that said, there are still some sounds in the Sibelius 7 library, such as choirs, which NotePerformer doesn't have covered yet.
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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Wallander wrote: NotePerformer plays the score exactly as notated. It doesn't do corrections or and it doesn't add any kind of emotion to the music. So if you write a hundred straight notes that's what you'll get. :)
Wallander wrote:The expression technology relies on having a score to look ahead in, using what you put into the score to create the expression.
So what does it do, actually? The claim is about realism. One statement says nothing is there but what you write, the second to me claims something that for me may as well be magic. What does it find 'looking ahead' that isn't there in real time?

You also talk about no more need for switching articulations so what in your engine is going to turn a legato/sus into a marcato, or a spiccato in a strings part? I realize your market for this doesn't resemble me, but when the claims are this extraordinary it's kind of who's the Wizard behind the curtain.

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jancivil wrote:
Wallander wrote: NotePerformer plays the score exactly as notated. It doesn't do corrections or and it doesn't add any kind of emotion to the music. So if you write a hundred straight notes that's what you'll get. :)
Wallander wrote:The expression technology relies on having a score to look ahead in, using what you put into the score to create the expression.
So what does it do, actually? The claim is about realism. One statement says nothing is there but what you write, the second to me claims something that for me may as well be magic. What does it find 'looking ahead' that isn't there in real time?

You also talk about no more need for switching articulations so what in your engine is going to turn a legato/sus into a marcato, or a spiccato in a strings part? I realize your market for this doesn't resemble me, but when the claims are this extraordinary it's kind of who's the Wizard behind the curtain.
Consider this example:

With most orchestral sample libraries you make the distinction between short notes and long notes. You normally record short note samples separately, because they sound different to just playing a short note with the sustain patch.

If you use ordinary notation program playback, and write a short note, it will be by default played back with the sustain patch. This sounds bad, so everyone puts staccato dots on short notes. But now you have the wrong notation, because staccato means "the note should be played for about half the written duration". So staccato on an already short note means you should play a VERY short note. This is a general problem with sample libraries, "staccato" is a fixed-length note but this is not true staccato.

So if you adjust your score until it sounds good with your "ordinary" sample library, you're using all the wrong articulations. And if you hand that score over to a live performer, it will sound completely different to what you had expected.

Now this is just an example, but NotePerformer keeps track of things like these. It reads ahead, and will know if it encounters any short notes. Then it will play it like a short note of the right length. If you put a staccato dot on that note, it will be played as a VERY short note.

So it's not wizardry. :) What NotePerformer does is to counteract the deficits of MIDI playback of a musical score.
Arne @ noteperformer.com

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Wallander wrote: NotePerformer keeps track of things like these. It reads ahead, and will know if it encounters any short notes. Then it will play it like a short note of the right length. If you put a staccato dot on that note, it will be played as a VERY short note.

So it's not wizardry. :) What NotePerformer does is to counteract the deficits of MIDI playback of a musical score.
You haven't answered my question. Why does reading ahead turn a 'staccato dot' into 'the right short note'? You mean it knows from context when to make different length staccatos? That sounds like Artificial Intelligence and for some reason I would expect to see that costing more. ;) Or are short notes just 'more staccato-like' consistently*? Is the program integrated with the playback engine to some extent and gives more attack to, seeing the staccato dot?
Wallander wrote: This is a general problem with sample libraries, "staccato" is a fixed-length note but this is not true staccato.
Well, it may be 'general' but I'm using something that specifically addresses it. "True staccato" indicates something to do with the samples handling, doesn't it. You aren't reinventing the wheel here.

"deficits of MIDI playback of a musical score"; yeah, 'staccato dot' in real life is interpreted by musicians with a certain knowledge of style, a lot of things, but a dot on a score in a notation program has a literal, fixed meaning to the machine. SO, people use the piano roll and attend to actual note duration and pick actual articulations in the libraries. You're making a claim that 'reading ahead' addresses the deficits of using a notation program as a playback engine but you won't say what it does.
You normally record short note samples separately, because they sound different to just playing a short note with the sustain patch.
If it is really a staccato, I put a keyswitch in front of the note. The actual behavior of the player with the instrument, for instance the bow pressure and release is just a different articulation than, there are different types of samples used for a reason here. Short staccato, medium staccato, long staccato, short portato... And I can shrink or stretch these if I get so picky, and deal with the release characteristic, and more.
I know this program doesn't address that so me posing this is rhetorical.

*If you're saying 'Sibelius' handling of short notes is deficient' per se, that's one thing, but 'MIDI playback' is a WYSIWYG thing and you're saying the machine 'gets' more by seeing more/this reading ahead.

I'm going to guess you work in marketing, but your lingo here is not very meaningful to me.

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