Flageolet violin

Dorico
1

A violinist who now uses Sibelius asked me if the following is possible:
You write a note with flageolet and Dorico plays that sound.

Do you need extra sample libraries?

I myself have no idea because I never write for violin.

2

It works with Noteperformer as far as I know.

Jesper

3

In principle, yes, although as yet not every possible harmonic is handled correctly. For example the touch-sixth natural harmonic, quite common in solo string music (e.g. B at the 2/5 node on the open D string to obtain the 5th partial, a high F#), will not work. There has been some discussion about it on this forum, and I hope the developers will add it eventually.

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4

Thanks @PjotrB and @jesele I will go back to her with this answer.

5

if you look at it from the point of the sample libraries, there is generally only one harmonic (flageolet) recorded for each tone, although in a few cases, both artificial and natural harmonics are sampled where appropriate. From this point of view the notation is irrelevant – the answer is Dorico can play what the library contains (and more basic ones don’t contain harmonics at all).

However, @PjotrB has also made a valid point that there are certain notated harmonics which are not handled correctly. In this case, a natural harmonic corresponding to the actual sound you require could be notated but hidden and the actual notated artificial harmonic you want in the score shown but with playback disabled.

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6

Yeah, it’s most likely a better job for synth-based or sample modeling libraries in the future. For traditional acoustic sampling, it becomes a problem of exponential magnitude when you start to consider sampling every possible natural and artificial harmonic on every string multiplied by every possible playing technique or articulation of each one (for the most optimal buffet of options that is). The closest I’ve typically seen are a simplified selection of natural and artifical harmonics, sustained longs, detaché and shorts/stacc (I know VSL Studio Solo strings has these options, but even that is rare!). As soon as you want artificial harmonics played sul pont trem, you’re outta luck :wink: Though I haven’t found any decent sample modeling library to achieve these kind of “extended” options either, so hopefully maybe someday. Until then NotePerformer is probably the closest!

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