I am having a brain freeze about a combination of accent and tremolo in expression maps. Was it always as I describe it below or is this new? Help!
In Dorico 5, a specific “Accent+Tremolo” entry created in Expression Maps is ignored and replaced by an Internal Effect. It splits the given note into two parts. Monitoring the MIDI output, Dorico 5 is triggering the dedicated Accent patch first and then immediately a “nat” patch and completely ignores the dedicated expression map entry.
I’ve made two tests by now, with the same result. Older files play this entry incorrectly too. But I don’t have Dorico 4 anymore and can’t recall if it’s always been like that. Anybody knows? Thanks!
Watching the MIDI out monitor carefully, it seems that Dorico 5 is sending out 3 messages sequentially instead of just the one for that specific marking:
the intended expression map entry (accent+tremolo), then Note On
Dorico only applies the accent to the first note in the tremolo, since you don’t want every note in the tremolo to be accented. This is a new behaviour in Dorico 5.
Thanks for this - makes sense, of course! But isn’t this behavior supposed to only happen in the absence of the dedicated playback technique defined specifically for the tremolo with an accent?
I have a recorded patch- sustained tremolo with the accented fist note and even though I did create a pt for that, it doesn’t work in playback - neither plain bowing, nor sul tasto nor sul pont. The workaround/script Dorico employs instead (internal accent plus the unaccented tremolo) sounds very unmusical.
Is there any way to override the built-in effect in this case?
I think for the time being your only option would be something a bit grim, like creating a playing technique that looks like an accent articulation and which triggers pt.accent, which you create with the same duration as the tremolo note.
I made a custom pt called “sp accent”, replaced the text in it with the accent glyph and used that instead of the standard accent in the Expression Map.
Took literally two minutes and it works perfectly. Thank you
I wanted to follow up on this as opposed to making a duplicate post about the same topic. I n my attachment below, I hear the accent only being applied to the first tremolo. Is there a way to fix this in Dorico 5?
Not at the moment, no. As discussed in another thread on the same topic, we’ll need to introduce a new playback option to bring back the behaviour prior to Dorico 5.1, which we hoped (vainly) would have been received universally as an improvement
I do quite like that the accent is applied only on the first note of the tremolo, and that it will take a staccato and put that on all of the trem notes.
It makes sense from a performance perspective for strings.
For those using a key switch for accented tremolo samples, don’t you just want the full length of each note to get triggered (instead of having Dorico generate the repeated notes)?
