I have a sample library (VSL) which includes samples for percussion rudiments such as flams, drags, and press rolls.
How do I get Dorico to interpret the notation, say for a drag as shown, and play the preferred sample rather than building the ornament from separate hits?
Am I on the right track in defining playing techniques, playback techniques, and percussion maps as appropriate for the ornament? I still don’t know how to get Dorico to interpret the normal grace note notation for this situation, and to play the drag sample.
I’m still a little confused by your description - I can’t even recall if there is already a Playback Technique for grace notes - but have you tried just turning off playback of the grace notes and adding a hidden Playing Technique on the crotchet?
Yes, having thought about it a bit more, that looks like a workaround that might be effective. I haven’t tried it yet. In fact, it would be the first time for me to suppress playback of any item at all.
It’s still an indirect sort of solution though. Ideally what I’d like is to have Dorico interpret the notation and go directly to the drag sample like it does for a trill or other articulations. Maybe I’m just asking for too much.
An intermediate solution might be to set up a command key macro (Lua script) to mark the grace notes as a drag/flam/whatever and make the needed adjustments in the background instead of making me think about a kludge to make it work.
I’ll let you know if it works, and if it satisfies my notational desires.
For ornaments I use indeed this techniques using grace notes. It triggers the samples accordingly. For sure, like in the case of trills (m2/M2) I use articulation to trigger the related samples. Would be nice indeed to have Dorico interpreting in play mode the ornaments automatically
So, I set up a playing technique and playback technique for a flam, adding the appropriate detail in the percussion map for the instrument to trigger the sample.
Playing the note on its own without the grace note, I had success. I did the same with a drag, and both notes played back as desired.
I also adjusted the playback start offsets so that the sampled ornament played before the beat in both cases, although it was mostly guesswork as I can’t find any explanation of the meaning of the numeric values for the setting. (Is it milliseconds?) It worked nicely after a bit of trial and error testing.
However, adding the playback-suppressed grace notes before the sounding notes did something to the playback so that the ornamented sample was replaced with the default ‘natural’ key.
There are a couple of ideas that I haven’t yet had the time to try.
Putting the grace notes and the main note in different voices, still having the playback suppressed on the grace notes, or
Switching it up so the last grace note triggers the sample, and suppressing the main sounding note.
The grace notes have playback suppressed and the main notes have playback start adjusted with a negative number so that they play the flam before the beat.
However, it seems to matter when the notes are entered. If the grace notes are entered after the main note offset is adjusted, they seem to mask the offset and the playing technique, making the note playback as if neither exist, I think. In other words, the grace notes and playback start offset don’t seem to behave nicely together.
It is of course not the official percussion notation for these techniques but I use 1 stroke tremolo for flam, 2 stroke for drag, Z stroke for buzz roll or other roll technique and 3 stroke for XF roll for the VSL SY percussion instruments. That works well.
What I do have an issue with is that in some classical scores like for Beethoven Symphonies tr (so the tremolo articulation) is used for rolls instead of the note repeat strokes. I haven’t been able to make this work using the correct roll samples without workaround.
Addendum: Any additional articulations such as a slur, tie, or accent, interfere with the playback of the sample, so that the fallback (natural) is played.
It’s something I still want to work on, but I have’t the time right now.
