I’m considering a Dorico purchase but I have a couple of questions about the BBCSO templates as the ability to use these to my needs is a big selling point as an owner of that library.
First - I gave these a quick whirl in the Dorico 3 trial (against a couple of the sample scores included) but I found that by default the expression maps seemed to be using strange articulations - e.g. for detache violin crotchets it was defaulting to the spiccato/staccato articulation (not 100% sure which), where I expected it would use the legato patch as standard, resulting in some fairly odd playback. Is it anticipated that a lot of custom expression mapping is still needed to get these templates to work effectively?
Second - is it configured (or even possible) for expression maps to trigger things like the portamento note transitions in the legato patches, which are dependent on the velocity of the target note, based on appropriate markings in the score? Or do these nuances require manipulating the piano roll information in the Play screen?
I had also expected the EM’s to use the flexible legato patches as standard which is why I already changed it for the strings where the problem is the greatest. I find that the switching to staccato using Note Length parameters at “very shot” does in most cases work appropriately, though. For where it doesn’t, create a sostenuto or similar p.t to call up the “long” where required.
As for portamento, as there is no separate patch or, thus far, conditions based on dynamics as opposed to note length, I can’t think of a better way of doing it than in the piano roll. Remember that the portamento seems to vanish above around 15% or around 17/18 on the MIDI scale so your primary CC1 must be lower than that. To increase volume, simply increase the CC11 secondary as required.
PS welcome to the forum - there are some disagreements over the BBC SO libraries in Dorico (I recently got Core) but if you just think of trying to emulate what you do when playing live in the notation environment, you can get good results though I’m still experimenting and learning.
Hey - thanks for the welcome and your suggestions. I’ll give them a try. I don’t anticipate being able to reproduce what the samples can do in a DAW environment but I’m still experimenting with my workflow and trying to assess whether the musicality of working in a DAW is preferable to the utility of working in notation software for my own creativity - I think if I could get close with the playback in Dorico I could achieve the best of both worlds.
I doubt the BBC library is the easiest to get to work with notation software as it seems more than many others to be designed for live performance. There are plenty of discussions on these forums between DAW and notation enthusiasts and many who would like better integration with Cubase. But if you do decide for Dorico (and I wouldn’t even think about any other notation software for the BBC), I think you may end up pleasantly surprised unless there are specific performance issues on your system which one or two seem to have found. Dorico’s playback features have developed considerably even over the course of v.3 and in theory you should be able to emulate what you can do in a DAW even if some operations made be more cumbersome.