Articulations Setup for orchestra work

I am starting with doing some orchestra scoring. After learning the Expression Maps I’m concerned how to actually work with articulations. I mainly use Vienna VSL Synchron Duality (but have a few others too) that does not seem have ready expression maps. I just checked, just for the Legato the there are 500 different combination. Am I right to understand that I have to manually add 500 expression slots for these with every single combination if I want to use all of them?
For Legato there are these groups: Legato style, Type, Expression, Release and Attack in Vienna for example.
To make it worse, Brass, Woodwinds and Solo instruments have different articulations so I cannot share much of the setup between them. I have tested with doing different groups where I set Attack and Release time separately, but first that did not work and secondly for different articulations the options are different.

The only solution I can think of with my current, limited, knowledge is:

  1. Start with adding the most important articulations and gradually build the library. this will take hundreds of hours to do, but can start small.
  2. Buy Steinberg Halion Orchestra or some other VST that has expression maps already setup, saving the pain.
  3. Make different tracks for different articulations. This seems like an easier way to setup the exact properties, but editing seems harder since your melody will be spread out on maybe 10 tracks with different articulations/expressions.
  4. Only use expression maps for the most common types, and then use key presses for all special cases. It is a bit cluttering to have these notes with the key presses I find.

Any pointers would be appreciated.
Thanks
Andreas

Hi. I know, the amount of articulations and combinations in the VSL Instruments can be overwhelming and seem a little ‚impossible‘.

One solution that I can suggest is that you try using VSL‘s new ‚Flow View’ which is ‚limited‘ to a set of basic articulations and handles some articulation switches with velocity and CC‘s. Like that you can use keyswitches or at least fewer articulations.

Hope that helps!

Thanks, that may be worth a shot. I think the most concerning part is to have to setup all the expression maps manually. Would be nice if that was already ready. I think what I will do is use expression maps for the most important articulations and sort of grow as I need more.

You can also download some expression maps for Cubase from inside the Vienna Assistant. I‘m not sure, if they work fine with the new expression maps in Cubase15.

Otherwise, if you are okey with spending some money for Expression Maps, check out BabylonWaves Art Conductor; a huge collection of Maps for all kinds of Libraries including VSL, and they have been reworked for Cubase15.

Hi,

I checked Vienna, but I see they are from 2024 and early 2025 which means they must be before Cubase 15.
Art Conductor seems like the magic ticket! Thanks for the tip.