@Lillie_Harris, @dspreadbury, et al.: If I’m not mistaken, the online manual has an outdated graphic for the Playback Options dialog (different ordering under Dynamics; no Polyphonic Instruments included — recent new feature, yes? Version 5.1?):
Also, searching for playback options polyphonic and polyphonic instruments return (in different orders, of course) only several brief passages (one followed by Anthony’s brief tutorial) about the Polyphonic Instruments options. Am I just missing something when I search?
If I haven’t just been careless, and given that this newer feature has a somewhat extensive list of options, any plans to enrich that section at some point? (Perhaps John has already done a lengthy live stream video, but FWIW, count me as voting “yea” for having a written break-down/discussion to reference online.)
Yes, it’s a bit outdated. Apologies for the inconvenience.
What sort of information would you like to see? What do you feel unsure about at the moment?
Not really a matter of feeling “inconvenienced” — although I thank you for your thoughtfulness — so much as I thought it might be helpful to report.
Overall effect scaling is (relatively) clear.
Offsets seem less so, at least at first glance:
- Do the default settings mean , for instance, that the top note in the upper (?) voice is played back 1/5 of a dynamic step (assuming “equal temperament” of p-to-mp, mf-to-f, etc.) louder than all of the other voices, while all of its other notes are 3/10 softer than those in all other voices; or does this mean shaping within the individual voice (which I assume is reserved for the separate Pitch Contour Emphasis feature)? This would seem like an odd behavior.
- Do these outer-voice settings get applied to inner voices identically when contrapuntal rules are engaged?
- Farther down the list it appears that single notes in the middle are all 6/10 of a dynamic step softer — than what? There seems to be a lot of “looped relativism” that could be explained.
Impact scaling is reasonably clear, but again, the link to the separately-set pitch contour emphasis feature under Humanize could be clarified.
And how, exactly, is the final slider for Use dynamic curve to emphasize effect relating to the Dynamic Curve parameters? Is it modulating the entered curve power, min and max values? Both?
And finally, how does all of this interact with user-entered (OPT/ALT) “polyphonic dynamic markings”?
I certainly can appreciate a “just-try-tweaking-stuff-and-listen” approach, but I do think that as time allows, fleshing out the discussion of this (very cool!) new feature for users could be valuable and helpful. A fuller tutorial video could show the user not only adjusting things, but demonstrate anything that shows up visually as a result in the key editor, all while we’re hearing the results.
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In general, the “offset” described here is by how much the dynamic of the note should be increased or decreased relative to its current dynamic. The notion of the current dynamic does take into account any adjustment made by pitch contour emphasis, because that is applied before polyphonic voice balancing. You are correct that e.g. 0.2 dynamic steps means one fifth of the difference between, say, forte and fortissimo.
I don’t believe these settings apply directly when the option for contrapuntal rules are used, since the intention then is that to some degree all notes are “melodic”. Really what Dorico is trying to do there is identify themes and bring those out, so the analysis is more “horizontal” than “vertical”.
The option Use dynamic curve to emphasize effect determines whether and by how much the polyphonic voice balancing algorithms are allowed to modify the resulting dynamics. Normally the dynamic you hear is of course scaled by the dynamic curve, so the change in output “volume” (for want of a better word) is not linear as the dynamic level changes linearly. When this slider is set further to the right, Dorico has more freedom to modify the output “volume”.
If I remember rightly, Michael added this because otherwise the changes in dynamic between successive notes could sound a bit excessive and lumpy because of the larger gaps between adjacent dynamics on the power curve. If you don’t want to allow Dorico to modify the output “volume” at all, drag this all the way to the left.
Speaking for myself, I cannot claim to understand every part of the polyphonic voice balancing and contrapuntal rules features. I had long and serious conversations with Michael about whether we could reduce the options we present in the interface down to essentially an on/off switch and a slider for the overall impact of the algorithm. He wasn’t completely persuadable on that point, but I do think that in general you don’t need to look much further than the Scale overall effect by option.
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Thanks for that thorough and forthright response, @dspreadbury. (I wonder if a good compromise between you and Michael would be to tuck most of the settings inside a “chevron-ed” Advanced Options frame (if that’s the correct term), as occurs in other places?)
One last Q: Is (as I suspect) Dorico processing all of this “pre-Expression-Map,” so that it will behave similarly across different libraries?
I’m definitely interested in playing around with these new features, and listening forward to hearing their effects!
Yes, all of these adjustments affect the calculated dynamics for the notes, which are then realised according to the volume/dynamics types defined in the expression map.
