PLAY Guides / Tutorials?

[paulc]

I am looking for guides and video tutorials for PLAY.

I had a bit of experience loading articulations into Kompakt and assigning them to different MIDI channels for use in a sequencer. But ever since the transition to PLAY, I have not quite understood whether the articulations should be loaded:

* Into separate PLAY instances
* Into the same PLAY instance via different MIDI channels*

Aside from that, I tried certain configs and they didn't work. *I tried to ADD articulations to an existing instance of PLAY and the existing ones were over-written. ?? The sequencer later crashed on shutdown. Not sure if impossible. The manual is not helping.


What I'm trying to do (sort of) is create my own collection of articulations for an instrument, eg. solo clarinet. Just the ones I pick myself. So, a limited keyswitch. Can I create my own keyswitch? Would I want to!? Am I better off selecting an existing keyswitch and deactivating things I don't want?

I am currently running PLAY 4, but can upgrade to v5.

Thanks,
Paul.

[slinky005]

The manual is pretty good place to start.

[LMW]

Hey Paul,

it's mainly a workflow thing if you decide to go for separate instances
or for multi-timbral. There is basically no hardware limitation anymore
on the CPU core utilization if you're using an up-to-date DAW. Which
one are you using at the moment?

Starting page 75 of the manual, a multi-timbral setup will be explained:
http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/d...ser-Manual.pdf


If you select "Add", then it shouldn't overwrite. If you double-click on the
patch, though, this is seen as "Replace" and the last loaded patch will be
overwritten.
When you mention it crashing, do you mean the Play engine, Sonar or Sibelius?
Which exact versions of all three are you currently running, depending on what
is crashing? Also, which Operating System version are you on?


You currently do not have the option of creating custom keyswitches in
the Play engine. Using an already existing keyswitch and then unloading
can definitely be done, and it's a method I've employed on numerous
occasions!

Cheers.

[paulc]

Hi Lorenz, thanks for your message.

So, I don't need to worry so much about opening many instances of PLAY on modern hardware. At the moment I have a couple of instances of PLAY, each with only one articulation! That doesn't seem right.

Does the 'Channel' setting below 'MIDI Port' not work the same as it did in Kompakt? I can't work out how it can be applied to articulations, rather than the instance of PLAY as a whole.

I'm currently using Sonar X3 Studio on Windows 7 64-bit. This is probably a good time to ask if this DAW will be supported in future, since being taken over and re-branded by BandLab as Cakewalk? I can upgrade to a later version.

Ignore the crash - it occured in 'proximity' to PLAY usage, but is not your problem. May have been Sonar or Windows... If it happens repeatedly, I'll let you know.

[michaelpluebell]

You can either load up a few instances of Play each with their own articulation or you can set up the auto-increment (Play's Settings > Other) so every new instrument loaded goes to the next available Midi channel (or in the 'Instruments' tab in Play 6 you can adjust the Midi channel instruments are already loaded to)

Note: With Play 6, hold Shift + Double Click a new instrument and it will be added into Play, just double clicking an articulation will replace the currently selected one.

Each instance of Play can only activate 1 core, so if you have a 4 core computer and are only using 4 articulations, loading them up separately might be better - but when you start to add more in, you'll want to route them as multi-timbral instruments.

Play works in the latest Cakewalk as well as Sonar X3

[paulc]

Thankyou very much.

I was unaware of the auto-increment setting. That could help.