In the properties panel you can set the harmonic type to natural or artificial. But both types seem to trigger the Natural harmonic 1playback technique. Why? There is a Artificial harmonicplaying technique!
For sample libraries that doesn’t make any difference it works fine. But the sample library I use has both natural and artificial harmonics recorded, so for me it matters.
Shouldn’t the artificial harmonic type trigger the Artificial harmonicplaying technique rather than Natural harmonic 1?
Currently Dorico’s handling of harmonics is not very comprehensive.
AFAIK there is no pre-defined artificial harmonic playing technique (though there is a playback technique). You could define a custom playing technique to use that playback technique, then tailor your expression map(s) to trigger the appropriate sound. You may need to suppress playback of the notation and hide the sounding pitches.
It probably would be better if we triggered a specific playback technique for artificial harmonics, and this is something on our backlog for future consideration (our ref: STEAM-12417). At the time we initially implemented harmonics there were few if any sound libraries that had sampled artificial harmonics. It would be interesting to know which sample library you’re using, @GustafLundell .
I’d say rather that most libraries sample artificial harmonics but not natural so the entire range is available (although sometimes it may not be clear what they’ve actually sampled as the patches are simply called “harmonics”) . The VSL legacy (Studio) strings do both – not sure if this is what Gustaf is using – and I occasionally use the natural harmonic from the solo strings for instance.
Most of the time, I simply use the existing Natural harmonic 1 playback technique although I’m actually using an artificial harmonics patch for simplicity but if you want both, as Janus says, you currently have no option other than creating a custom playback technique. Would certainly reduce confusion if both types were supported natively – good that there is already a STEAM for this.
Hello @Richard_Lanyon I use Synchron Duality Strings – regular and sordino contains artificial harmonics and the latest addition fx contains natural harmonics.
My workaround is based on the fact that for natural harmonics it is customary to specify which string is referred to, e.g. sul E or IV. So if a string is specified with custom playback/playing techniques the expression map pick the natural harmonics for the specified string and if not specified the artificial harmonics are picked.
interesting-- so you need to get the fx version of Duality Strings for natural harmonics? The main package doesn’t include it? (unlike the previous Synchron_ized versions)