Dorico 2 - Custom Expressions - Missing?

Dorico
#1

Okay, Dorico 2 is a revolution in scoring. That has to be said up front. OMG. Just OMG.

OMG!

Please bear with me. I don’t have 2.0 yet and won’t have it until the end of June. I’m working with someone else who has it. So I may be slow to try any instructions given by anyone and thus slow to reply to this thread.

Custom Techniques
Can I create a playing technique called “bob” and give it a CC or Keyswitch in the Exp. Map? In this thread (https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=138851) it looks like someone else is doing this and hitting a problem with assigning a MIDI output. But when adding a technique in the Technique Editor, it doesn’t show up in the Expression Map editor in order to assign a CC or Keyswitch. It only appears in the Playing Technique UI panel.

Technique Timing
In Dorico 1, the placement of playing techniques on the score is a bit odd for MIDI playback. If I mark “Natural” (cc 33, val 0) then “Spiccato” (cc34, val 46), then it’s not reliable. If I move Natural to the beat before, it works just fine, but then it looks odd and technically it still screws up playback for that prior beat. Is there a way I’m missing to fine-tune the timing of technique changes?

Thanks in advance!

-Sean

P.S. If it’s relevant to why I’m asking… Earlier this year I made a mapping standard (and several Kontakt scripts that allow it to work) that makes Spitfire’s UACC look like a joke. It has thousands of articulations mapped, extended techniques most don’t know exist, for any library, in any mappable DAW/Notation program. It’s the ultimate “one to rule them all”.

#2

Yes you can create a custom technique. The slight confusion is that there are two separate but related concepts. Playing Techniques refer to the underlying technique being expressed (arco, pizz, open/closed, etc). Playing Technique Appearances are how those are represented graphically or textually in the score. The reason between the two is that a technique such as ‘mute’ or ‘open’ might be expressed in text for some instruments, but by a symbol for others.

So if you’re creating a custom object you need to create the appearance and then press the ‘Edit’ button in the ‘Playing Technique’ line to create the corresponding underlying technique. You can now open the expression map editor and select your new technique in there to attach it to a custom MIDI message.

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Can you attach a small sample that shows the timing issue you mention? If you don’t want to have it on the public forum then you can mail it to me at p.walmsley(AT)steinberg.de . Currently there isn’t a configurable value for how long before a note playing techniques are played. I think it’s about 10 ticks at the moment. This is something that we’ll hope to improve in the future.

#3

I tried the same and have problems, too. There seems to be a bug with custom Playing Techniques in Dorico 2.
I achieved to add two new Playing Techniques (with own “Category” and “Group”). Unfortunately in Playmode in the “Playing Techniques” lane my newly created Playing Techniques aren’t shown correctly. First Dorico always showed “Natural”. Then after deleting and recreating several times my new playing techniques, I achieved, that my first playing technique appeared. But as I applied the second one to a bar or two later in the score, it is shown (in Playmode) with the name of the first playing technique I created.
Nevertheless, I added a new Expression map, but the desired program changes aren’t done. Somehow the first one worked once, but not reliable (and the 2nd didn’t at all). I’m quite sure, I did everything right.

#4

After some more time of investigation and this little sentence:

Every EM must contain a Natural technique for default playback (no Actions needed)

which I found here (sorry for not finding it before posting):
https://www.steinberg.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=246&t=135922&start=25#p737952
, I could manage to achieve what I wanted.
I now understood, that dorico always sets “Natural” for all notes which aren’t “tagged” by a Playing Techniques. So I had to add “Nartural” in my expression map together with my new custom playing techniques.
The only thing which stays strange is, that the “Playing Techniques” lane in “Play”-Mode most of the time shows “Natural” even though the playing techniques in my score work correctly doing their defined program changes. I would love them to reflect the score…

#5

Update on point 2: The timing issue was due to something on my end and is fixed now.