Expression Map questions

Dorico
1

I am trying to set up a large universal Expression Map for all my VSL libraries and I am really impressed what is already possible in Dorico 3.5!

However, I have come across a few questions and problems that I could not resolve, yet:

  • as far as I understood from older posts there was no way in Dorico so far to use glissando lines to trigger a dedicated playing technique (even if one adds additional symbols) that would play a continuous portamento or glissando (instead of the chromatic Dorico generated version). Is this still the case in Dorico 3.5 or is there a workaround?
  • there are many playing techniques (including portamento and glissando, but also portato/loure, laissez vibrer, loose, …) that I would like to use and that I can assign in the Expression Map, but for which I have no idea by which symbol in the toolbox or in which other way these actually get triggered
  • when a playing technique is controlled by the length of the note it seems that for tied notes (e.g. a 1/16th note tied to a whole note) the playing technique corresponding to the short note seems to be chosen, so that it cuts short
  • the Dorico generated measured tremolos are very nice, but again for note-length controlled playing techniques, Dorico chooses the one corresponding to the length of the note representing the entire measured tremolo (e.g. a whole note), whereas it should rather choose the one corresponding to the individual notes played by the measured tremolo (e.g. sixteenth notes)
  • I don’t see a way to trigger dedicated samples for grace notes, or is this possible?

It would be really great if in future Dorico versions the Conditions panel in the Expression Map would be extended. Useful conditions would e.g. be:

  • velocity (this would obviously be great for all kinds of applications, but recently the VSL unfortunately started to release (merely) separate patches for different individual velocity layers and this way one could take advantage of all of them)
  • note intervals (i.e. the pitch difference between the previous or next note - this way one could automatically trigger special repetition patches or any kind of different sampled intervals, like grace notes, glissandi, …)
  • tempo (the VSL includes e.g. sampled “fast repetitions”, i.e. fast measured tremolos that are included in various bpm-versions and this way they could be selected automatically)
2

Use a line for the gliss and a custom Playing Technique that triggers your playback technique in the Map.

For a library that I use, I worked out that using Dorico’s ‘step’ gliss with judicious portamento produced a reasonable slide.

3

there are many playing techniques (including portamento and glissando, but also portato/loure, laissez vibrer, loose, …) that I would like to use and that I can assign in the Expression Map, but for which I have no idea by which symbol in the toolbox or in which other way these actually get triggered

The handoff chain is

  • Engrave Edit Playing Techniques A playing technique is tied to a Playback Technique in this editor. See lower down, also you can edit the glyph and/or text
  • Play Edit Playback Techniques These are the playback techniques to use, edit or add to
  • Play Expression Map The Playback Techniques are triggers in the expression map

On conditions the release notes mention the addition of boolean conditions, like “this AND that” kind of logic. Triggering on other things like velocity would be great, as you mention.

Interesring is I’ve found a series of commands in the Key Commands, “Duplicate Plug-in”, Plug-in Rack, Save Endpoint for all Plug-ins, Setup Plugin-In Playing Techniques" which don’t seem to be presently used. Hmmmm

4

I don’t myself have any VSL libraries which support a real sliding glissando but I use portamento frequently. Simply create new playing techniques for it (and any others you may have available) and add the keyswitch to the Expression Map. Then create a gliss/port symbol but disable the playback. Similarly with the p.t, just set to hidden. Basically you have one symbol for the score and one text p.t to control the playback. Only remember that a playing technique persists until you cancel it whereas the port or gliss symbol is just usually between two notes.

Dorico cannot currently support gliss/port natively but it’s generally better to use the sampled patches when available. A good example is trills which are built into Dorico but the sound is generally rather artificial (though some like generated trill because of the extra intervals and variable speed available)

5

Thanks so much to everyone for the help, really appreciated! This forum is great :slight_smile:.

I had not figured out, yet, that one can edit the connection between playing and playback techniques in the Engrave menu. This sounds very flexible - thanks so much for the tip RetideMusic.

Even though my VSL Expression Map is already rather extensive (around 500 definitions) I did not dive into creating my own playing techniques, yet. However, this a good idea dko22 and indeed sounds like a viable workaround - I will check it out.

Dorico apparently automatically selects the legato playing technique to play trills. I programmed the legato in the Vienna Instruments player to select the dedicated performance trill articulation (selected at the fastest playing speeds). This works very well (for me indistinguishable from the recorded trills) and as you write is more flexible. I hope Steinberg will implement more such phrases like mordents, … in the future.