David, thanks for the info on UACC KS, I’ll try to incorporate that tomorrow. At the moment, although even just with UACC things seem ok, there are some bugs that I can’t get my head around. Sometimes the playing techniques are working, sometimes not. Strange is that on the Write page I’ve got the techniques I need (and they do work individually) but when I sequence some of them, they are not getting copied through to the play page. Here is the difference between the two pages. All the techniques I’ve used work fine on their own on a short flow.
Simon, you almost certainly need to define mutual exclusion groups in your expression map, so that Dorico knows that when you specify a new technique, any existing technique should be removed, unless you have defined that as a specific combination in your expression map. Dorico doesn’t know that one technique should replace the other rather than adding to it, unless you explicitly tell it to.
Simon, I’m probably taking the wrong approach with this, but for the moment I’m using Direction and Attribute as the key drivers of how long a technique should last. Even articulations that will commonly last a while - Con Sord., Tremolo etc. - I put down as Attributes and, like you’ve done, use an extension line to determine the length. Essentially, I just end up with Natural and Legato categorised under Direction. So long as natural is defined ( your Arco?) it all seems to work OK.
The issue, of course, is how they work when they’re supposed to be working together but as I said earlier, I’m unable to make that happen in the libaries I’m working with so I’m steering clear of Mutual Exclusion Groups at the moment and just laying down a path via UACC KS to enable it in future. If you take Libraries like Spiftire or East West, you could be dealing with upwards of 20, even 30, individual articulations per instrument so it’s a real head scratcher, not to mention a serious amount of time involved, to define all the acceptable and unacceptable permutations. And when you consider that libraries like Spitfire and Project Sam encourage you to view any permutation as sonically acceptable …
Thanks Daniel & David! That’s given me more things to try out, and the mutual exclusion groups may be just what I need. I tried using the UACC KS on Cubase first, as I’ve been working with Cubase for over 30 years, so I know it well, and even so it didn’t do what I wanted it to do, and probably because of the same reason … I really want to get these Spitfire Strings working in Dorico, as I’m really keen on changing my workflow around after years of MIDI VST Instruments programmed first in Cubase and then exporting to another notation software.
I’ve been going through the same issues trying to do expression maps for spitfire’s BBCSO. Exclusion groups are really key. The trickiest part is confirming what shows up in expression maps and what playing techniques they reference. Like ‘bowed’ in expression maps aliasing ‘arco’ in playing techniques. Right now that takes a bit of experimentation to see if you’ve got everything covered.
You can check in the play window if you view the playing techniques lane to see if your edits work. I’ve found that helps. Also seems like some smaller edits in expression maps aren’t enough to update the file for dorico. I’ve taken to adding a technique or control and deleting it to get it refresh the playing technique lane.
Once you get exclusion groups correct then you can just notate it as you would for a player, not a sampler, and it works.
On the subject of updating - Dorico only recalculates the playback data when it ‘prepares’ playback (ie when you press play or switch to Play Mode). It hadn’t occurred to me to make it refresh after editing expression maps too - I’ll make a note of that. Anyway, if you start and stop playback just by pressing Space twice then that will recalculate it, or there’s a dedicated Refresh command that can be used if you’re in Play Mode, which I think is bound to F5.
Simon, I need to correct something I said earlier.
That’s incorrect - that’s how UACC works. UACC KS works by assigning articulations to different velocity values for just one keyswitch note. You can define the note yourself but if I recall correctly, Spitfire sets the note as C-2. Different articulations can be played simultaneously if the same note is scheduled to be played twice at different velocities. As Spitfire say “The main advantage of UACC KS over UACC is that you can layer articulations by overlaying the notes of the key switch on the piano roll.”
When playing the libraries live, you can layer Spitfre articulations by shift-clicking on the next articulation, thereby adding it to the previous one. To the best of my knowledge that approach isn’t available in any Notation program or DAW’s expression map builders.
Thanks Guys! The MUTUAL EXCLUSION GROUPS got it sorted! David, for now I’m probably going to stick with the UACC set, the UACC+KS is beyond my scope and needs at the moment, even though I did manage to get it working in part in Cubase yesterday. so I’ll do a first set with UACC and then look into the extra KS later.
Has Steinberg given any thought to offering Expression maps as separate add-ons, say for $25-$40 per library? This stuff seems so tedious that I don’t want to deal with it, but I would be happy to pay extra to buy well-done maps for the things I use, for example Addictive Drums and Addictive Keys, especially if this was more or less seamless between Dorico and Cubase.
I know this is a lot of work, but this would make Dorico and Cubase more valuable and useful right out of the box, plus generate some extra revenue for Steinberg.
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Amen to that. I also have no interest in fiddling around with creating expression maps. I would happily pay $25 to be able to use complex libraries at the click of a button.
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I’d rather pay the Steinberg team to actually develop more notation capability, but YMMV.
But if somebody else wants to start the equivalent of the Sibelius “soundset project”, that’s fine. (Though that now seems fairly moribund for new developments).
The other “minor” issue is that there is no protection on expression maps, so in the real world you are only likely to sell one copy, and the rest will be pirated!
How long does it take for an experience user to create an expression map for, say, Spitfire woodwinds?
Even if they get a small handful of buyers, I’d think it would be worth their time.
Too long. Quite often in the middle of the process I find myself wondering whether it’s all worth it. At times it feels like pulling teeth and it never, ever feels like anything other than programming.
That said, I’m with Rob - I’d like to see further development in Dorico before this. Mind you, if I didn’t have Note Performer, I might feel differently. Babylon Waves don’t seem to be interested in developing Maps for Dorico, how about NYC Music Services? I’ll bet they could do a good job.
The people who ought to be developing expression maps are the library manufacturers themselves IMO. But if they can make good money selling to the generation of users who think the state of the art is doing all the hard work themselves in a DAW, maybe there isn’t much incentive for that - yet.
Just my personal opinion, but I think the “grand design” of Dorico is only just beginning to emerge in the current version. At the start there was a very “hair shirt” approach to strictly following notation conventions. A second “layer” is now starting to appear with condensing changes, bracket and barline changes, Daniel’s hint about staff hiding changes, etc, but there is still plenty to do there before Dorico gets to the stage where “you can easily do anything you could do in S or F by dragging stuff around on the page, but in a consistent way across the whole project and recognizing the semantics of the notation”.
And then there is the whole ball game of scripting, which in itself could have a huge impact on playback…
I just wish Dorico had Expression Maps for Iconica a Steinberg product. Initially (IIRC) Dorico had not developed playing techniques sufficiently to make such maps worthwhile, but I hope that soon Dorico and the Iconica Team can work something out.
Hi,
can someone help me? I am working on Dorico 3 and would like to use the East West Hollywood orchestral sounds for playback. Unfortunately, I can always hear the same sound with every instrument.
It would be nice if someone could give me instructions.
Greetings
Michael
Hi Michael,
You might find this useful - MiloDC has put together some maps for East West Symphonic Orchestra. Although the sounds are obviously different, the way the two libraries are set up are very similar.
You can find find Milo’s post [u]here[/u] :
Hi David,
thanks for your help, that’s very nice.
I’ll have a look
I understand what you are saying. On the other hand, IMHO at least, the realization of expression in computer-based music is one of those “next frontier” things. Steinberg finds itself in a position where it can lead on this, but that is frustrated by:
- The difficulty of coding expression maps (and maybe the difficulty of applying them as well)
- A lack of consistency between Dorico and Cubase that will work against a goal of seamless operation between Dorico and Cubase.
I’m not criticizing. I’m simply observing that where we are today is that there are basic rudiments in place and a really dedicated hobbyist can roll his or own solution. Surely this is not where anybody would really like this to be. It seems like something significant must change if this part of the product will ever become mature and generally useful to the average user.
I don’t have the answers. Let me ask the question. Why can there not be an industry standard for expression maps along the same lines of VST?
An observation at this point: the difficulty with Expression Maps is that they are only one part of the puzzle. They are not necessarily just a list of key switches (though many are). They communicate to Dorico the capabilities of a particular sample set (which playing techniques do I support?), and the way to achieve it (which keyswitches/controllers for each technique? how are dynamics rendered?).
The other aspect though is the plugins/sample libraries themselves. Every orchestral/jazz/guitar/drum/choir/organ/etc library has it’s own set of unique features/quirks. Every library has a slightly different way of accessing the palette of available sounds. Different libraries from the same providers have different methods of addressing the sounds. Different patches from the same library can have different methods of addressing the sounds. Many libraries can be used in a very free-form way – I’ll bet that no two VSL, Hollywood Strings or BBC SO users use them in quite the same way. So every time someone asks for an expression map for eg Hollywood Strings, then quite often the expression map itself is of limited use without either an accompanying preset file, playback template zip file or at the least, instructions on how to set up the library in the appropriate way.
Toto, I don’t think we’re in General MIDI any more.
The issue surrounding Cubase vs Dorico expression maps, is that they are really quite different. The main utility of Cubase expression maps is that they provide a level of abstraction above raw keyswitches, so that you can see in the Cubase UI the different articulations, and manually choose between them. It’s also possible to trigger articulation changes from items in the score (pizz text, staccato dots, etc), though only a small minority of the expression maps I’ve seen use this. There is no standardisation to the naming of articulations - they are just arbitrary labels that probably will just correspond to the labels in the sample library. The intent with Dorico expression maps is that they do map playing techniques in a consistent (though limited) format.
So the challenge for us is to work out how to codify the Dorico expression map format so that we can address as much of every sample library as possible, and accommodate the respective quirks/features of each, whilst also trying to keep it as simple as possible. Rest assured that we are quite aware of the pain points in using different sample libraries and we think long and hard about how we can make this easier for everyone, whilst also giving the power users what they need.
My own 2p: I think it’s helpful to think not just in terms of ‘Does anyone have an expression map for X?’ (because it’s never quite that simple), but rather to think in terms of the ‘recipes’ for how best to use a particular library. eg ‘I find for EW Hollywood Strings that it works well to load the Vln 1 KS into ch1, Mod shorts into ch2, Legato into ch3. Here’s a simple expression map that uses channel switches to access the short and legato articulations’. Once you’ve learned the pattern for how best to set up a library for your needs, create an endpoint configuration for it and then it’s there to be re-used.