HI hope someone can help. Trying to create an expression map for Spitfire Studio Strings. Have set the base key switches and articulations correctly to respond to the playing techniques within Dorico. The Strings is responding to this and switching to the right articulation. However more often than not one key switch is not canceling out the previous one and I’m and getting two playing together eg. Legato/spicc Tremlo/legato Have looked through the manual for the String program and can’t find any reason why this should be the case. Also played the same passages with HSO and did’t have the same problem.
Did you use Add On switches by chance instead of base switches? Maybe you could export the expression map as a library and post here, and another set of eyes might spot it. We can at least try anyway.
HI
Used base switches what I was doing was very simple. Can’t work out how to send file won’t let me upload in current format New to all of this
Hi Peter — you need to be clear on one or two concepts. First of all, there are two types of playing techniques, a) “attribute” which applies only to the specific note it’s applied to and b) “direction” which applies until cancelled. Attributes tend to be articulation markings like “staccato”, “marcato” etc and Directions written instructions like “pizz” although it’s not a hard and fast distinction – the actual type you can see and edit if you go into Play–>Edit playback techniques.
Add-on switches are very useful when there is a constant background instruction at a different level which doesn’t conflict with the instruction of a Base switch. For instance in VSL Dimension Strings, you can choose the player grouping like “divisi 1” which can happily use all base switches. Often “con sord” can be used the same way or in some libraries " legato" where there are various different legato combinations. Spitfire don’t use these in the BBC libraries so I guess not in the Studio Strings but I don’t know for sure.
The main reason why two patches seem to play together when they are not supposed to is simply that there is no instruction in Dorico telling them not to. If you want to ensure that a “direction” switch does not conflict with another, you must put them in the same mutual exclusion group. That way, Dorico will know to switch when it meets the second one instead of looking for a map entry to tell it what to do when both are found in combination – a map entry which probably doesn’t exist.
Hi
Thanks for that.
Had been using what appears to be Directions so will check Play->Edit Playback Techniques. Tried putting all the base switches I created in a mutual exclusion group but no change there maybe did’t do it right. Will check out everything you outlined
thanks again
Peter
HI
Couldn’t sort out the key switches but looking through the Spitfire Manual found that you could use control changes on CC32 instead. That with what you told me regarding putting something in score to cancel a direction ie. mute off after con sord nat or arco after pizz really helped and the seven basic articulations in the programs seem to be switching perfectly
thanks for your help
Peter
it’s remarkable also how often putting the reset"nat" or “ord” in the score can sort out these sort of problems when situations arise which are not covered by the exclusions in the Expression Map. Anyway, I’m glad you seem to be making progress!
In case anyone is interested, I’ve created a UACC-based playback template for Spitfire Studio Strings.
The template includes a UACC-based expression map for all the techniques supported by Studio Strings. I’ve sent the dynamics to CC1 and CC11, and not used Volume (because I don’t use note volume in my style of composing).
The attached zip has the template file, the nkm file for loading the patches into Kontakt in UACC-lock mode (though you don’t need this if you load the template in Dorico - it sorts all that out), and a blank Studio Strings project.
This last file is included because I created a custom playback technique for tremelo (called Trem. in the Playing Techniques for Strings in the Write tab). I found this was needed because there appeared to be no way of mapping the standard tremelo technique to the corresponding UACC command. So if you want the instrument to play the tremelo (rather than Dorico creating the tremelo), use this playing technique.
Hoping this might be useful.
Tony
UACC Spitfire Studio Strings.zip (3.7 MB)
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