Bowed vibraphone with Dorico and Noteperformer

[GoldmanT]

I’m looking to use bowed vibraphone, and found this old thread but can’t make head nor tail of it.

Are there simple steps to adding a ‘bowed’ text to the score and having Noteperformer follow that?

Bow vibraphone in Noteperformer 3.3.2

IIRC the easiest way (avoid modifying the ExMap) is to set up the bowed instrument on its own channel (use override in the NP mixer) and then just change instrument in Dorico to switch between bowed and normal playing.

[MarcLarcher]

On the top of my head it should be as easy as inputting a playing technique that says Bowed and that triggers the bowed playback technique.

[Edit] : I’ve tried and if failed. The documentation says this can be overriden through CC18=30, well, it does not work. The expression map does not contain any “Bowed” event, so I created a line with that value of CC18 and it does not trigger anything on the vibraphone playback techniques lane. The trick to use the mixer submenu does work. Quite annoying.

[GoldmanT]

Thanks for trying - I’m using Elements so I don’t think any of these custom playing techniques are available anyway, so I’ll just stick to adding text and ignore the playback.

[fratveno]

I’ll make up a file that shows this procedure when back in the studio in a few hours. Maybe NP understands ‘arco’ (?)

[MarcLarcher]

@fratveno

Maybe NP understands ‘arco’ (?)

Just tried it now. It does not. But you’re right, arco is triggering the bowed playback technique. I don’t understand why Vibraphone won’t react to that cc change.

[Janus]

It seems to work for me. (I hijacked a playing technique that I never use and created an add-on for the NP expression map)
vibraphone.dorico (513.0 KB)

[MarcLarcher]

You’re right. Adding Bowed on tailpiece as an add-on to the NP expression map (with cc18=30) does work while doing the same thing with Bowed does not
Sometimes, you just can’t get it… I’m curious to know whether anyone here has an idea about that. In any case, many thanks, @Janus!

[GoldmanT]

So that plays back fine in Elements, but I still don’t think I can access the expression map if I don’t have Pro, to make the same change in my piece.

Can I just change the CC value at that point in the score to get the same effect? If so, how would I do that?

[MarcLarcher]

You should be able to inport your work inside fratveno’s file (and delete its flow), so that you benefit from the expression map it contains.

[lucas_r_r]

We have discussed this before. Daniel gave a good reason:

Customise the Expression map for NotePerformer: is it possible?

There’s a special case for the ‘Bowed’ playing technique that causes it to fall back on ‘Natural’, which it does because that’s normally a helpful behaviour for e.g. string instruments. I suggest you create your own custom playback playing technique called e.g. “vibraphone bowed” or similar, and use that both for the playing technique appearance and the switch in the expression map, and then you should find everything starts to work.

[fratveno]

My post quoted above was for a solution with no need to fiddle with the NP expression map, playback or playing techniques.
Apart from the obvious name adjustments, the sole thing to note is the instrument override (vibraphone bowed) in the NP Mixer, channel 2.
bowed-vib-NP.dorico (480.7 KB)

[GoldmanT]

Thanks, I imported the flow and have opened the CC18 graph for the vibes but can’t work out how to place a new value? I can click into the window and draw a square which then disappears so I assume I’m in some kind of selection mode, and need to switch to a write mode?

[MarcLarcher]

You shouldn’t have to change anything in the Key editor. The bowed on tailpiece playing technique should handle this automatically.

[GoldmanT]

Ah got it, thought I had to still set that up but it’s ready and working, thanks.