I have the following setting in playback options for beat stress dynamics:
Now Dorico generates the following (humanized) dynamics curve in CC1:
I would like to “cut” one of the peaks. Apparently with the select tool it is not possible to select any point in the curve to drag it down, so I use the line tool to cut the peak:
Is that the recommended way?
Depends on your sample library I think, they all work a little differently. Cutting peaks as you say - that’s Dynamics? looks too labor intensive to me, I’d just draw or ‘line’ in some lines. Some people get finicky with the exact curve but I don’t find it terribly sensitive. As a former orchestra player in practice it’s not super finessed at the chair level either, you go for the peaks and quiet parts and otherwise its about getting the notes and tuning. JMO
Is CC1 being driven by the Dynamics in the score? If so, you could place a lesser dynamic on that particular note and then hide it. You would have to put another dynamic immediately afterwards to restore the previous level and maybe hide that one too. It won’t be as flexible as using the line tool which I believe is the only alternative.
to me what you’re trying to do is probably too finicky as @DanMcL suggests. In fact, many libraries don’t take kindly to any sort of “humanised” dynamics as it can cause very uneven playback and conflict with any intelligent note transitions which are programmed. I always zero these settings. I think they’re mainly designed for the supplied Halion (or other older and more basic libraries) to make it sound a bit less mechanical but if you’re using something else, I suggest switching it off and using the line tool or drawing curves when appropriate.
Thank you all for your comments and wisdom.
I agree this way of working is too finicky and I’d rather like to avoid it if possible. It was just that this velocity change was very noticeable in the audio (as also others were), and wanted to get rid of it whilst keeping the “humanized” velocities.
I’m still in the learning/experimenting phase, trying to understand what are the implications of different Dorico configurations.
At some point I will start working with Noteperformer (waiting for release of NP4), I guess that will substantially reduce the need for manual finetuning.
