Changed dynamics in playback without any changed dynamic markings

[jp.henderix]

Hi, I’m not sure where to put my question on this forum, hope this is okay. I have a composition and halfway through Dorico changes the dynamics in the playback. The bottom part of the piano piece becomes really loud and the melody becomes very soft. I did not change any dynamic markings whatsoever. I don’t know what the problem is. What I do know is that if I change “Scale overall effect by:” in Playback options > Dynamics, something changes, but not in a good way. Then it becomes really flat in dynamics. I’m new to Dorico, so I hope someone can help me out! It’s really annoying haha, so thanks in advance!

[DanielMuzMurray]

Change your scale overall effect settings back and try these:

Resetting playback overrides

Apply Playback Template dialog

[jp.henderix]

Thanks for the quick answer. Sorry, what exactly do you mean by changing back the overall effect settings? Resetting playback overrides I did Playback template is set to the regular Iconica Sketch, HAL sonis, Olympus, GASE, because I like the piano sounds better than NotePerformer. But with NP it’s the same

[DanielMuzMurray]

The setting that you already mentioned adjusting in Playback Options… I just didn’t want to type as much.

[jp.henderix]

Did that now

[DanielMuzMurray]

If this doesn’t work can you attach a portion of your project where it goes from good to bad?

[jp.henderix]

Sorry man, I’m a noob. How do I do that?

[DanielMuzMurray]

It’s up to you how much to attach. A full project is optimal. If not, remove any bars that you don’t need, or any players you don’t need: we just need a project that demonstrates the problem.

Then, attach it to a post here. There’s a little upload button near the font/link dialog where you type.

[DanielMuzMurray]

Here’s a more thorough description of what we need:

@dspreadbury

If you are having a problem with Dorico, the fastest way to get the help you need is to post the project, or a part of it, and not to post a screenshot. If you post a picture, you will almost certainly find that the first person to respond to your thread asks you to post the project. You may be concerned that the musical content of your project will be judged, or stolen. While we cannot guarantee that this will not happen, because of the supportive nature of the forum, this is vanishingly unlikely. There may be copyright or confidentiality restrictions that prevent you from posting the whole project. That’s fine! It’s always better in any case to cut the project down to a smaller size to attach it, particularly because there is a 4MB file size limit on attachments.

To cut down your project, first do File > Save As to save your project under a new name, to avoid making unwanted changes to your working project. If the project contains multiple flows, delete all flows except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the project contains multiple players, delete all players except for the one that exhibits the problem. If the problem is isolated to a particular bar or passage, then use the Shift+B popover to remove all other bars (e.g. select a note or rest in the bar after the problem passage, type Shift+B and enter a huge negative number like -9999 to delete all of the remaining bars in the flow).

Once you have cut down the project to the minimum scope that reproduces the problem, in Play mode choose Play > Playback Template and reapply the default playback template, or choose Silence. This dramatically reduces the file size of the project after you have deleted most of its musical material, because it removes the saved audio engine state.

Finally, attach the Dorico project it to your post.

[Janus]

@jp.henderix

The bottom part of the piano piece becomes really loud and the melody becomes very soft. I did not change any dynamic markings whatsoever. I don’t know what the problem is

Experiment with the Playback Options>Dynamics>Polyphonic instrument… settings.

[jp.henderix]

Tales - dorico support.dorico (994,5 KB)

From bar 19 the bass becomes too loud

[jp.henderix]

tried this but I just want to know why it happens. When I was just deleting the bars behind the point where the problem occurs, it stopped occuring. It’s when the bars came back, the problem came back.

[DanielMuzMurray]

It’s something to do with the first two 8th notes of that bar because removing them causes the problem to go away.

But also, creating them again causes it to reappear.

Not sure sorry!

(It could also be something to do with settings but I don’t know)

[jp.henderix]

Thanks! I’ll figure it out then!

[DanielMuzMurray]

Don’t give me the solution - I don’t have a fix for your problem!

[Christian_R]

@jp.henderix

but I just want to know why it happens.

Hi @jp.henderix, here an attempt to explain this.

basically the polyphonic instrument voice balancing tries to decide what is melody and what is accompaniment to assign accordingly the velocities (or CC controls values).
For some reason, after the fermata in bar 18, Dorico decides that the melody is now in the lower staff. You can check this looking at the dynamics in key editor, that switch their “importance” beginning in bar 19.

In Playback options/Dynamics/Polyphonic Instruments/Use automatic polyphonic instrument voice balancing there are several options. One important one is Likelihood of melody being at top. If you drag the slider to the right (higher), then the assignation of melody in the upper staff is reestablished.

Here a video demonstration:

[jp.henderix]

Thank you so so much!! This is great.

[Christian_R]

You are welcome @jp.henderix.