Automatically importing glissandos from Midi to Score

Question addressed to an expert:

Will a glissando supposed to be on 2 notes on scores with the gliss tag,
& that appears like one note+bend, in a midifile, appear like normal 2 notes
with the glissando tag during automatic importation from a midifile
to the resulting Dorico’s (visual) score

So i wouldn"t have to add each glissandos myself on scores
after the importing process … .

--------------- Original Message ---------------

By: steinbergussupport@yamaha.com
Received: 1/21/2025

Yes, Dorico can capture MIDI file symbols.

Welcome to the forum, @ukrainianconsular. Dorico cannot automatically notate glissandos from MIDI files.

perfect, i have to look elsewhere.

ps: in 2025, after 35 years of score editors programmation, neglecting
a serious aspect of workstations records called glissandos from aquired
by programmation or the joystick & forcing users to write them all the time
is extremely impressive, & not anything complicated to accomplish in terms
of coding.

Adieu.

That is impossible to know for us users, and likely untrue.

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Really ? maybe you need to learn music a bit more or take lessons in a conservatory.
In midifiles, a portamento is a slide starting right from the BEGINNING of the note, a GLISSANDO is a joystick bending that never STARTS from the beginning of a note, so you know the length of the first note when the glissando starts. makes sense ?

i won’t argue this with you & quantization must be exact to avoid taking a glissando as a portamento, cause the slide will ALWAYS OCCUR from the start of a note.

Learn music before making statements that don’t even sound like assumptions,
before telling people it’s impossible & then likely untrue.

i’ve no time to argue inconsistent negativism.

Now who is making assumptions?
If Daniel says something cannot be done, I expect he knows the program better than those of us who merely use it.

Dear @ukrainianconsular, I wasn’t talking about the different types of glissando/portamento (I know the difference), but about the assumption that it would be easy to code the interpretation of glisses from a MIDI file. The point is: no one but the developers can estimate how difficult it is to program it, and in any case, you have an official confirmation that, at the moment, it isn’t possible yet.
In my years in conservatory (yes, I actually studied music), I’m afraid I never used a joystick, but a bow on a couple of strings. You bet I know my glissandos and portamentos, love them.

To end in a positive, constructive tone: you made it clear to the developers that you would like to see better interpretation of glissando information when importing a MIDI file. That’s a very valid feature request.

  1. Assuming it’s not easy is a form of reluctancy “not adding” to the major
    expectation of an important instruments “tag” on scores… & there’s been
    much harder to code before even introducing that “import” feature.
    & yes it can be done mr derek, the preacher of free negativism
    & lazy thoughts avoiding actions.

  2. “I’m afraid I never used a joystick” << It’s simple, the glissando is the midi
    code named “BEND” of the “joystick bending” process. that starts at a point
    after the start of a note. if that code starts TOO close to the beginning
    of the file again, it’s a portamento.

  3. In instrument interpretation the slide goes up to the next note, even if the
    “BEND” midicode’s final value is limited (+8191), as much as the joystick
    is limited in the process of changing a specific amount of half tones & tones.

So in that case, it invalidates my first statement that a second note
of 2 notes (the principle of a glissando) must be “guessed & created”
on the score if the BEND code appears before, cause that second note
right after the BEND codes, should be indicated & present in the midifile,
so that second note has to be naturally imported, instead of
“guessed & created”, since the midi architecture doesn’t allow
that BEND code to go beyond +8191 or below (-8191) to show
the amount of half tones or tones that have been added
or decreased in the glissando process … .

There’s a chance we both may be suffering from writing in a foreign language (I’m Dutch), and not be able to exactly express our ideas and feelings. I don’t want to be negative towards anybody. And it’s not clear if you’re addressing @Derrek or me here.
It’s clear you are dissatisfied with Dorico’s MIDI import feature regarding glissandos. I’m sure there are clever developers on the team who might be able to improve that feature, but we don’t know how difficult it can be, and when (or if) they’ll be able to work on it.

As I said, as a classical musician, I know the difference between a portamento and a glissando, but personally, I’m not interested at all how they’re encoded in MIDI, because in the music I make, I never use MIDI.
Therefore, I don’t have much to say about the technical details of importing MIDI, like what kind of pitch bends are used, except that we can’t know how complex it is to program it. That’s all.
Maybe there are MIDI experts on the forum who can contribute valuable insights, but I doubt the developers themselves will engage in a discussion how to do their work.

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