All my questions while installing NotePerformer (5) for use with Dorico (6)

[naomi]

Apologies for hijacking this board again. I searched for a dedicated NotePerformer forum online but there doesn’t seem to be one, presumably due to it being such a small and specialized company, & most questions and issues redirected me either back here, or vi-control (I’m not entirely sure what that is). In any case I’m not sure how many of these problems are caused by NP, Dorico, or their interaction, and would like to know if I’m doing something wrong or if there are workarounds for issues.

First of all: can anyone confirm whether this is the intended result of NotePerformer playback out of the box? I swear I’ve heard scores realised with the default NP solo strings that sound much better than this, am I crazy? It’s giving Finale 2004 flashbacks…

Results are otherwise excellent but there are a few other things that aren’t rendering correctly.

Continuous glissando: amazing, A+. However: you cannot gliss to a staccato note; it is always lengthened and doesn’t sound much shorter even if you edit it in Play mode. Trills and tremolos on the target note also play back at the wrong pitch. I assume this is unintentional; can this be fixed with MIDI data?

Portato (tenuto with slur) is articulated correctly but is also always non vibrato. Is this an intentional behavior?

An unmeasured percussion roll with a marcato or accent mark applies the increased volume to every note in the roll. It seems to only be possible to disable this behavior for measured rolls. Fixable with hidden dynamics, but I suspect may be unintentional.

A slur of three or more notes is broken if there is an accent on the second note. This doesn’t seem to happen with notes in any other position, or with marcato instead of accent.

When there is a tied note that is both the endpoint of one slur and the beginning of another one (a fairly common notation up to the 19th century at least; still useful for strings to indicate mid-note bow changes), the second slur is ignored; is this intentional? (This can also presumably be faked with a playing technique)

Also a more general question: does NP or Dorico do anything with up-bow and down-bow markings, or au talon/punta d’arco? More out of curiosity than anything else since I’m used to those indications being ignored by software (and sometimes human performers…)

[arco]

Hello, just a suggestion,
are you able to cut down your score(s) with those bars and attach in Dorico format, so someone here can open it and test?
It might make it quicker to check without having to set up a file and input notes before being able to check the results.

[naomi]

These are issues(/features?) I’ve noticed across every project I’ve tested so far; here’s one created just now with all of them.

example.dorico (1.6 MB)

[wing]

That doesn’t sound like NP to me at all actually. I would try to reset/reapply playback templates, and otherwise maybe reinstall NP.

@naomi

Also a more general question: does NP or Dorico do anything with up-bow and down-bow markings, or au talon/punta d’arco? More out of curiosity than anything else since I’m used to those indications being ignored by software (and sometimes human performers…)

In terms of sound production, no, I don’t believe so.

[naomi]

@wing

That doesn’t sound like NP to me at all actually. I would try to reset/reapply playback templates, and otherwise maybe reinstall NP.

Have tried both options; also tried restarting computer, changing audio sample rate from 48000 to 44100 and then back to 48000, clearing the audio engine cache and so on. I also cut out one of my test pieces to a new file, which also did not change anything. (I chose this piece in particular because it’s one the HALion Sonic Orchestra really struggled with for whatever reason.) Very curious to see if it sounds different on anyone else’s machine.

spohr - String Quartet No. 4.dorico (2.2 MB)

[James_Bondjas]

Prerequisite: I’m using Dorico 6.2 with Noteperformer 5.1.2.

First of all: can anyone confirm whether this is the intended result of NotePerformer playback out of the box? I swear I’ve heard scores realised with the default NP solo strings that sound much better than this, am I crazy? It’s giving Finale 2004 flashbacks…

It sounds similar with me, albeit quite a bit more “spacious”. Have you tried fiddling with the reverb level in the Noteperformer mixer and see if that helps?

Portato (tenuto with slur) is articulated correctly but is also always non vibrato. Is this an intentional behavior?

I can reproduce this but I have no clue what’s causing it. Both portato and slur alone result in vibrato being played, but not with the combination of the two.

An unmeasured percussion roll with a marcato or accent mark applies the increased volume to every note in the roll. It seems to only be possible to disable this behavior for measured rolls. Fixable with hidden dynamics, but I suspect may be unintentional.

I can reproduce this too, but I think it’s pretty much inevitable: any instrument with an accented note will have that note’s dynamics increased by the amount set in the Playback Options menu, for the entire duration of the note (so not only the attack).
IIRC the volume of a note is determined by a combination of velocity and the value of MIDI controller CC11. Decreasing any of these two values manually in the MIDI automation lane in Play mode will circumvent the problem without the need for hidden dynamics.

A slur of three or more notes is broken if there is an accent on the second note. This doesn’t seem to happen with notes in any other position, or with marcato instead of accent.

Again I can reproduce this, but this can be circumvented by adding the “détaché” playing technique, which was introduced some versions ago in Noteperformer. You can always hide the text of the entrance of that technique if you don’t want it to appear in the score but only want its playback effect.

When there is a tied note that is both the endpoint of one slur and the beginning of another one (a fairly common notation up to the 19th century at least; still useful for strings to indicate mid-note bow changes), the second slur is ignored; is this intentional? (This can also presumably be faked with a playing technique)

That I can reproduce as well, but in this case, I think the problem lies in Dorico.

From what I’m seeing, by attaching the slur to the last note of the tie, you’re basically telling Dorico this:

The possibility to attach a slur to the last note of a tie chain is something that was only recently introduced in version 6.1 I believe.

But by doing this, I see in Play mode that this interrupts the Legato playing technique and forces a change to the Natural playing technique, whereas exactly the opposite is desired, since you’re adding a slur.

If I attach the slur to the first note in the tie chain by dragging, or if I set the slur property to “First note” (which basically does the same), Dorico stays in the Legato playing technique.

Noteperformer merely plays what Dorico instructs it to do here, so if Dorico says “Natural”, it’ll play the notes separated.

This smells like a bug to me.

[asherber]

@James_Bondjas

The possibility to attach a slur to the last note of a tie chain is something that was only recently introduced in version 6.1 I believe.

This was actually introduced in v1.1, AFAICT.

[James_Bondjas]

You’re right asherber, thanks for correcting me.
I had actually looked for “tie chain” in the version history to see when it was introduced and found a match in 6.1, but I failed to notice that it was actually an improvement in Tablature with regards to tie chains That’ll teach me from wanting to be too quick.

[Janus]

@naomi

Also a more general question: does NP or Dorico do anything with up-bow and down-bow markings, or au talon/punta d’arco?

Whether NP (or any other VST/Sound Library) responds to a combination of markings in Dorico depends on three things:

1. Can the VST/Sound Library do something different for each of these markings?
2. Is there an entry in the Expression map that will trigger this difference?
3. Do the Playing techniques marked in the score connect to the Playback Technique combinations in a way that will trigger the entry in the Expression Map?

[naomi]

So I was able to request and install the previous version of NotePerformer (4.5) and thus have a better idea of my questions/problems now.

@James_Bondjas

It sounds similar with me, albeit quite a bit more “spacious”. Have you tried fiddling with the reverb level in the Noteperformer mixer and see if that helps?

I did try this, but the difference seems to be in the base sounds. This is the NotePerformer rendering at 0% reverb:

Version 5.1

Version 4.5

Version 4.5, while clearly synthetic, still sounds sort of like a string instrument. Version 5.1 does not, except in staccato playback to an extent.

The main issues to me sound like a much more compressed and nasal (and sometimes seemingly artifacted) nature of the base sound, which seems to lack most of the higher harmonics typical of a string instrument, and the legato attack specifically, or lack thereof. If there were a way to revert to the 4.5 base sound (or something like it) but with all the other 5.1 improvements that would be much better.

Solo strings in version 4.5 are much more reverberant by default but setting the reverb to 25% (which is what generally sounds about right to my ears as a former string player etc):

This is about an equal amount of reverberation to the 5.1 version at the default value of 50%. At this value legato playback sounds kind of like an electric organ for whatever reason:

Obviously neither NotePerformer nor any sample library is going to sound like live musicians, and the improved sound in 4.5 is somewhat cancelled out by the less realistic interpretation. That said, main purpose of NP seems to be giving you a preview of what balance, sound and interpretation might be like, which means that sounds can’t be distractingly bad—whereas the 5.1 solo strings definitely are. (The 4.5 piano is also distractingly bad but Dorico’s built-in one can be substituted in most cases.)

@James_Bondjas

Again I can reproduce this, but this can be circumvented by adding the “détaché” playing technique, which was introduced some versions ago in Noteperformer. You can always hide the text of the entrance of that technique if you don’t want it to appear in the score but only want its playback effect.

Interesting, would not have guessed that would work—détaché and slur should in theory be mutually exclusive, but it does seem to cancel out whatever effect caused the accent to break the slur, so a useful workaround for now.

@James_Bondjas

I can reproduce this too, but I think it’s pretty much inevitable: any instrument with an accented note will have that note’s dynamics increased by the amount set in the Playback Options menu, for the entire duration of the note (so not only the attack).

This may be a Dorico problem, as the effect only happens when you notate a percussion roll with a trill. If you use an unmeasured tremolo, with the correct playback option checked, only the attack is louder. So you could fix with a non-playing back trill combined with a hidden tremolo.