Expression map experience and suggestions

Dorico
1

Did my first full score using Vienna expression maps and VE Pro with 11 instruments. Except for the actual playback not responding to expressions in many cases (as discussed elsewhere), the setup was pretty straightforward with a few issues that I’ll discuss below with some comments and suggestions. But overall a good first start.

  1. Dorico does not respond to VE Pro play/pause button. Not a big deal, but this would be useful as I spend most time mixing using the VE Pro window as the focus.

  2. Dorico Mixer: Please add a way to reset faders to a default value (e.g., double click resets to 0 dB, alt-double click resets all faders).

  3. When using VE Pro or other similar plugin which has extensive mixing capabilities, it might minimize confusion to be able to disable the Dorico mixer. Just provide a master volume instead of a full mixer.

  4. Names and channel numbers in the expression map setup. See attached image. As you can see in the image it’s difficult to associate an instrument name/midi channel with the expression map without expanding the Dorico instrument to see the midi channel number. So, if we could have a midi channel at the top level this would help. Better yet would be a way to deal with the naming in the expression map window. It would be nice to be able to associate an instrument name with an expression map since many maps can deal with multiple instruments. It’s not clear from the map window which instrument is which other than by midi number.

    expression map naming.png
    expression map naming.png1430×1246 145 KB

2
  1. I’ve no idea what the mechanism is for this - maybe Ulf, Yvan or another member of the Hamburg crew know about this
  2. Perfectly sensible suggestion
  3. You can do this by toggling the channel filters on the mixer to not show the Instrument channels
  4. I agree that it can be difficult to know what is loaded in each channel. We may be able to show a list of the Instruments routed to it that would give extra useful context.
3
  1. Well, it works in Sibelius 7.1.3, so someone there must know. :wink:
  2. Ah. I see. So if I disable FX, does that mute reverb automatically, for instance?
  3. In the expression map window, if you can show names instead of midi channels that would be great. Of course it needs to deal with unique names in the case they have the same name but different midi channel and also deal with a single Dorico track driving more than one playback channel.
4

3 It’s a filter on channel visibility so hiding FX won’t silence it
4 Indeed, you are correct - there isn’t a 1:1 Instrument to Channel mapping. I don’t think it would be too difficult to show instrument names there.

5

Hello, I really appreciated the 1.0.10 update ! Many thanks to the team.

However, my Cubase expression map imports failed. The reason is simple : I use different midi channels for different articulations (for instance with 8dio Adagio I need one Kontakt midi channel for Legato, one Kontakt midi channel for the “short” articulations - idem with 8dio Requiem where I need to differentiate Long and Short).

But it seems that with Dorico only one VST instrument and midi channel can be mapped. So I cannot use my VST instruments properly.

Did the Dorico team plan to map a VST instrument (with all its midi channels) to a Player instead of a VST instrument AND a midi channel ? And to implement midi channel selection in the expression map ?

6

See my reply in the other thread you mentioned this in