Expression Map Maker

[refinedgoals]

I made a mapper to create Expression Maps for Dorico. This is mostly useful for folks who have a lot of mapping to do.

You can find the mapper and more info on this VI-Control thread.

Dorico Mapper

Hope it helps someone!

-Sean

[David_Tee]

Unfortunately I’m on OSX so this won’t work for me - but I’ve taken a look at it in the Mac version of Excel and it looks really good.

Having ground my way through God-knows-how-many Cubase Expression Maps and now working with Dorico Expression Maps, I’ve grown used to laying it all down on a spreadsheet first. Fewer mistakes that way and clear sight of what needs to be done. The idea that I can just hit a button and have it converted to a working map is genius.

A question: How does the spreadsheet fill out the Expression Map Data section of an expression map? If I recall correctly, the Name / ID is significant.

The only suggestions I could make are including the Midi Note (C-1 etc.) along with the keyswitch - just by way of a check - and somehow enabling the technique columns to be lookups based on Instrument / Technique type. God knows how you do the latter…

[refinedgoals]

David,

I’ve always hated all mapping GUI’s with a passion. A table is effective for editing large amounts of data. Fewer mistakes AND it’s easy to mass-edit my entire template once new samples come out and I want things (new and old) working in a cohesive way. It’s insane to mouse-click through this much data. Anyway, to your points…

Mac-friendly:
A couple years ago I revised the VBA code for a Mac user on VI-Control (for my Cubase mapper). It worked for him, but he had to do something different for the output directory for the files. That should be the only hold-up. I’m not in a position to mess with it as I used someone else’s computer just to add the macro to this file. I don’t own office, but I do have a mac, so I might eventually look at it.

The Data Section:
In short, it’s easy to add more data section input if that’s why you’re asking. If you just want to understand it… the macro unhides a similar worksheet with the entire xml markup for Dorico (easy for me to adjust). Maps get copied there, formulas combine the xml the way Dorico does, then the macro saves them as “.doricolib” files. I’ve used the same “mass concatenating” method to automate mouse clicks and keyboard input to do things like creating 1000 instrument tracks in Studio One. Pretty crazy.

Note Names:
Trust me, you don’t want this. I made a Notion mapper once (which I’ve apparently lost ???) which had two columns. Note number for mapping, and a column next to it that did a lookup on the note name to make life a little easier. In the end, it made it more confusing because not every program uses the same octave numbers. There’s no real standard. Anyway, I’d do something with one instrument, then another… and start making mistakes. I’ve since just gotten used to thinking in note numbers. Never have problems now. So that’s my advice if you use multiple samplers. If you’re a one-library guy, then a lookup or a cheat sheet can help. Here’s my old cheat sheet from my first Cubase mapper… https://i.imgur.com/8BnqKZo.png

“and somehow enabling the technique columns to be lookups based on Instrument / Technique type”

What do you mean by this? Are you talking about converting “Portato” to “pt.portatoloure” for Dorico? I included a poor-man’s formula for this in the mapper. At an old job I wrote a macro that does the most amazing find-replacing you’ll ever see. This stuff is all easy. The problem is inconsistencies in your data. For a friend, I recently scraped the Orchestral Tools helpdesk site for all their techniques, mapping everything Dorico can play for all their libraries. There are some inconsistencies in their data and musical considerations to make that it’s just easier to do it without a lookup, match or macro. In short, this question can be a dangerous rabbit hole.

If you want to customize the Data section let me know and I’ll add some fields for it.

-Sean

[alin89c]

@scoredfilms, thanks for this post. The application for the expression map maker is very promising, but I think there’s a problem with the Articulation Manager - v3.xlsm file. When trying to export for Cubase, I get this dialog window:

Am I doing something wrong?

[DanMcL]

Oh this is lovely. I’m not sure the motivation though, Dorico has a simple and easy to use system. The only issue I have is navigating the different dialogs across the Modes, but Daniel said, I believe in the next version, there will be a new menu for settings that combines them all, which will simplify it, and perhaps also allow multiple dialogs to be up at once (which would be hugely helpful since you need to navigate several to get from a notation to an output).

Is this really easier, especially considering it can break on the next Dorico update? Or maybe the format is stable but from long experience the fewer tools the better. I’m not criticising, I was about to make a spread sheet of all the BBCSO patches and techniques for reference, but I’m not sure having an extra tool would be a good idea.

[Mute]

This seems extraordinarily useful.