Vienna Performer plays your MIDI like a musician reading a part: it looks at whole phrases, not single notes. These rules help you get the performance you have in mind.
Every Vienna Performer instrument is monophonic, also the sections. When two notes sound at the same time, only one is kept, in the render and in the preview sound. Write divisi and double stops on separate tracks.
Vienna Performer renders your part in performances: passages played as one piece, shown as blocks in the Performances view. A silence of two seconds or longer starts a new performance. Only notes within the instrument's range count.
A keyswitch, a MIDI note on one of the keys shown in the Instrument area, selects the technique for the notes after it. The technique switches at once, never crossfades. Place the keyswitch a little before the note.
Which technique a performance starts with depends on the time since the previous performance:
Less than 10 seconds after the previous one ends: it continues in that performance's technique. No keyswitch is needed.
More than 10 seconds after: it starts in Regular, the basic technique. For another technique, place a keyswitch at most 10 seconds before the first note.
A keyswitch within a performance switches the technique from that note on. The 10 seconds are time, not bars: at a slow tempo they span fewer bars.
Dynamics come from one of two sources: the mod wheel (CC1) or the velocity of the notes.
CC1 at 1–127: the mod wheel alone sets the dynamics, from ppp (low) to fff (high); velocity is ignored. Use it for long notes, crescendos and diminuendos.
CC1 at 0 (all the way down) at the beginning of a performance: the velocity of each note sets its dynamics. Use it for short notes, accents and individual note dynamics.
Tip
A performance starts with the mod wheel position just before its first note. If you draw a CC1 curve in your DAW, start it there, not halfway through the first note.
Dynamics carry over like keyswitches: Vienna Performer looks back up to 10 seconds before the first note of a performance for CC1. If it finds nothing there, the performance starts with the default dynamics. So place your keyswitches and dynamics close to the passages they belong to.
Small CC1 changes: Vienna Performer ignores small CC1 changes on purpose, so that slight jitter in your DAW's automation does not trigger new renders. A CC1 change only leads to a new render when the value moves clearly into another of the eight dynamic levels (ppp to fff). Changes within the same level, or just across the border to the next level, keep the existing render.
Expression (CC11) controls the volume of the rendered performance. It does not change how the performer plays, therefore changing it does not use any credits.
CC1 changes the performance itself. After changing CC1, play the passage again with Capture on and render it again.
CC11 is applied to the renders at any time. You do not need to capture the passage again after changing it.
Legato: let the notes touch or overlap slightly. Vienna Performer connects them and cleans up the overlap.
Detached: leave a small gap between the notes.
Staccato: make the notes shorter and leave a gap before the next note. The shorter the MIDI note, the shorter the performer plays it.
Notes outside the instrument's range are left out, never transposed.
A real musician makes a small sound (a breath, a bow movement) before the note. The renders include this, like stems from a recording session. Do not place the first note at the very start of the project; leave a bar or so before it for most realism.
Check before you spend credits
Turn Autorender off, play your part with Capture on, and check the Performances view: are the notes, the dynamics lane and the technique lane what you intended? Then render.