Dear Team Dorico
Here are some questions and observations derived from 3 days of trying to set up expression maps in your program.
1 - If I add a playing technique in the playing techniques list in Write Mode, why does that technique not appear in the techniques list in Expression maps?
2 - Why can I not change a playing technique from Direction to Attribute in the Expression maps dialogue? This would seem to be fundamental, no?
3 - WHY IS THAT FUNCTIONALITY IN ENGRAVE MODE? AT ALL?
-
Why does the custom playing technique that I created (IN ENGRAVE MODE!!!) not seem to be the same one as appears in the Expression map. The one in expression maps works. The popover doesn’t.
-
Keyswitches based on CC commands work about 50% of the time. And in highly unpredictable ways. For those of us that have set up entire systems based on CC commands (because we don’t want to see extraneous notes in our sequences and because CC will event chase in our DAW and keyswirtches won’t, this is particularly annoying.
For a program which prides itself in logicality and a streamlined approach, you’ve created a thicket of complication. Please, please please take another look at your implementation of key switches.
Best,
Ed
You need to understand the difference between playing techniques, and playback techniques.
Playing techniques are what you see in the score. Playback technique are in expression maps.
There isn’t a one-to-one correspondence between them. For example in the default “common” techniques there are three playing techniques, “con sord.”, “mute”, and “with mute” which all reference the same playback technique, “muted”.
That answers your question 1. The other questions seem to have the same basic confusion between the two different things. If you still have problems when you understand the answer to question 1, try asking again.
For question 2, you can’t do that because expression maps don’t contain playing techniques (see the answer to question 1)
For question 3, sorry, I don’t know what “functionality” you are referring to.
For question 4, you can’t create playing techniques in engrave mode, though you can change their appearance in the score.
For question 5, apart from stating that what you did doesn’t work reliably, it’s hard to understand exactly what you did - but I guess part of the problem was not understanding the basics of how the playback system works.
See How to Use the Playing Techniques Editor in Dorico Pro | Getting Started with Dorico 2 - YouTube for a basic tutorial.
If you want to set up a complete set of expression maps for a sample library, this shows the whole process Expression Maps and Playback Templates for Spitfire BBCSO Discover | Discover Dorico - YouTube