Custom Playing Technique not showing up

Dorico
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#1

Hi everyone, I’m trying to create a custom playback technique so that I can trigger the portamento patch in Kontact for Spitifre Studio Strings.

In Engrave I have created a new playing technique. I’ve tried this several times, but no matter what the new technique is , it doesn’t show up in expression maps. After a lot of reading I can’t seem to figure out why the new technique is not showing up in expression maps.

I’m not too picky about what the technique has to say or look like. I just want it to be be able to send a program change to Kontact. I have not been able to achieve this yet.

Thanks in advance for any help!

#2

When you created the Playing Technique in Engrave mode, did you associate it with a Playback Technique in the Dialog? You won’t ever see the Playing Technique in an expression map, but the Playback Technique that you associated with the Playing Technique.

Also checking is this still the same project? (Talk about exporting later)

1 Like
#3

Hi Gdball, thanks for the response. I associated the new playing technique with portamento up. Still don’t see anything with the new name in the expression map.

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#4

I assume you mean it doesn’t show up in the Expression Maps for other projects? To enable this, you just need to click on the star in the “Edit Playing techniques” dialog you’ve just shown which says “save as default”. What it actually does is “save for use in other projects” and I do wish it was called what it actually does.

#5

No, it doesn’t show up on the expression map of the session I’m working on. I’ll try hitting the star and see if that helps.

#6

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I named the new playback technique mm portamento. I don’t see it in the m or p section. Am I doing something wrong? Sorry if I’m missing something obvious.

#7

Also I did star the new playback technique and it didn’t help.

#8

no, it only works for other projects if it’s working OK in the current one. I’ll go through what you’ve written so far and see if I can work out what you’ve missed.

#9

ok, my guess is it’s simply that you’ve used lower case for your p.t. The listing is case sensitive so “mm portamento” will not appear in the same place as “MM portamento”. I used to do this quite a bit in my earlier attempts.

#10

And clicking the star in one file will make the “default” available in future project, but IIRC not in existing projects.

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#11

I’ve occasionally noticed that custom playing techniques require a restart of Dorico to show up. IIRC I raised this on the forum a while ago. When I was creating an expression map a couple of months ago it was still the case.

It could well be that I was doing things in the wrong sequence but whatever, restarting would display the technique I’d previously inputted.

1 Like
#12

Ok, I tried renaming with Capitol letters and restating. The playback technique is still not showing up in the expression map. Should I contact support directly? Think this is a bug?

#13

It’s unlikely to be a bug. Please just attach the project (just the relevant part demonstrating the problem) and I/we’ll check if anything doesn’t seem quite right.

#14

Thanks for looking into this. Really appreciate it!

#15

your new playing technique is now MMportomento, right? If you hover over this p.t, you’ll see something like the screen below.

MM portomento .

Although the name of your new technique is MMportomento, the actual playing technique used is “portamento up”. Perhaps it’s clearer looking at the second screenshot showing the details of your technique.

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The name of the actual technique is what appears in the Expression Map, not the popover text which is more the title. And it is there! You’re far from the first person to make this mistake – I also learned the hard way and Dorico doesn’t help by using the terms “playback technique” and “playing technique” rather confusingly.

I had suspected this and it’s what @gdball also suggested earlier on

1 Like
#16

Aha, ok I see. I didn’t understand this earlier. Thank you! So, if I understand correctly, I set portamento up in the expression map to trigger a program change. Now, what articulation is going to trigger that in the write window? Using the gliss line set to portamento won’t work right? I have to choose the MM portamento from the common category?

#17

ok, I got it working. Thank you everyone! Such a big help. Nice community here. It’s refreshing compared to some other forums.

#18

glad it’s working. Incidentally, I’m curious exactly how the portamento works with the Studio Strings. In modern Spitfire libraries like my BBC SO, it is usually activated just be setting to velocity of the notes to between 1 and 19 which means there is no need for a keyswitch at all. But I couldn’t find reference to this in the Studio Strings manual so it presumably works differently? And if you set a port or gliss in the score, you must disable playback otherwise just a run of detached notes is created. I expect you’ve already discovered this.

#19

Yes, I noticed that when I set a note to portamento or gliss it played detached. This is why I was creating a new playing technique to trigger the separate portamento patch. I can’t seem to get a gliss to trigger a program change. Is there a way to achieve this?

The Studio Strings doesn’t trigger true portamento on the general articulations patch. To get access to the type of string slides I wanted (ala Bollywood) I had to use the legato portamento patch. I’ve tried changing the velocity of the general legato patch to between 1-19 and it didn’t give me the slides I wanted. I guess a lot of people aren’t doing this? I seems to me people would want access to this.

#20

with Spitfire Strings and the BBC SO for instance, Portamento is activated through the legato patch but with velocity 1-19 so there isn’t actually a separate legato portamento patch. Does sound like the Studio Strings is different.

The gliss/portamento articulation in Dorico has no playing technique associated. So you do need to use your custom p.t. You can hide that in the score and show the gliss or portamento but disable the playback. Gliss playback as a slide rather than a run is not yet supported in Dorico though it’s definitely on their radar for implementation. This means that the rather good glissandi in NotePerformer if you happen to have it don’t yet work either in Dorico. Spitfire has no sampled gliss in any library I’m at all familiar with

If you do a search there have been quite recent threads discussing workarounds, usually involving using the pitch bend feature.