Hello,
First of all, thank you so much for implementing the pitch-bend option in midi export, it is already saving me loads of time in making mock-ups of pieces with electronics in Ableton.
However, when I export the midi, it seems to sometimes mix up the pitch bend and note-assignment combination for quarter tones. For example, when writing a C quarter-sharp, it will give pitch bend data for a semitone down, but it will export a C midi note instead of a C# (for example, see m. 29 of the attached files).
The really odd thing about this is that in the piano roll in Dorico, the C-quarter-sharp shows up as a C with midi pitch bend data doing -50c, but it sounds like a C-quarter-sharp, not a C-Quarter-flat. So what’s going on here?
When exporting MIDI files, Dorico has to map between its own representation of pitch and the more limited MIDI representation. This means snapping the pitch of the note to a 12-EDO value and then applying a suitable pitch bend. I’ve not audited the code in detail to see exactly what it does, but based on some other investigation I did recently (regarding this thread) my understanding is that Dorico cannot necessarily preserve the written pitch of the note in the score when exporting MIDI, but instead focuses on trying to preserve the sound – which is typically the most important thing when you’re working with MIDI.
Daniel and I have looked into this a bit more this morning and we think we’ve found an unintended difference in what Dorico does for playback and what it does for MIDI export - we’ll see if we can fix this in a forthcoming update.
Sorry to revive an old thread - but if I am understanding this correctly, it will cause me to upgrade from Dorico 3.5 to Dorico 5 immediately.
If I enable the pitch-bend option in Dorico 5, does that mean that my exported MIDI will reflect the composed microtonal inflections inside of a DAW such as Ableton? I have been trying to figure out a way to get this functionality for a very long time.
If I switch the playback to pitch-bend, will that affect the complexity of the microtones I am able to use? For instance, if there are a number of different microtonal accidentals on pitches in a single chord? Sibelius had issues of this kind and it was the reason I switched to Dorico several years ago.
Welcome to the forum, @sha340. Yes, when you export MIDI from Dorico, if the microtonal playback method is set to use MIDI pitch bend, those pitch bend instructions will be included in the exported MIDI.
You can install Dorico 5 on your computer (assuming it meets the system requirements) without upsetting your existing Dorico 3.5 license, so I suggest you give the 60-day trial version a try to be sure everything works to your satisfaction.