I’ve been chasing my tail for 45 minutes trying to enter guitar fingering slides. Perhaps the solution would be obvious to me if I were actually a guitar player.
I am creating music that will be expressed via midi, in my DAW, so am not concerned with the engraving aspects of indicating a slide: I’m only interested in the sonic aspects. I’ve been back and forth through all the slide documentation I’ve found, multiple times, but I have found nothing achieves the desired effect.
The closest I’ve managed is by use of a glissandi, as shown, but they play back chromatically rather than continuously. Upon playback, I distinct notes rather than continuous change of pitch.
I’ve tried several Halion Sonic electric guitars with the HSSE Nylon Guitar VX Expression Map, without success.
Dorico won’t play the “slide in” slides prior to the chord, but you should find that you can achieve pitch bend-based playback for the glissando lines: activate the Playback type property and set Continuous.
Usually not Halion, but the instrument you are using in Halion, will offer a number of articulations for different sounds and those are normally activated playing determined midi notes or, easier, determined keys, simultaneously with the sound note you want. I haven’t worked this way in Dorico, though, as I normally write short pieces and use Noteperformer for the interpretation.
The reason your example project does not produce a continuous glissando is because the notes at the ends of the glissando are 3 semitones apart, and the default pitch bend range is 2 semitones. If the first note is raised from B to C, you can hear a continuous glissando.
To allow continuous glissandi for the Jazz Guitar of up to an octave, go to the HALion Sonic VST, show the Edit page, show the L1 page, and change pitch bend (PB) Down from -2 to -12 and Up from +2 to +12:
Then in Dorico, go to Library > Expression Maps, select Default in the left column, click on Express Map Data in the right column, and change the Pitch bend range from 2 to 12:
Thank you johnkprice. I followed your instructions, and they worked for the sample I provided.
When trying the same on the file I’m working on, I still getting note by note playback, rather than pitch bend, though I think I’ve correctly followed the steps you indicated.
I have attached a measure from the piece I’m working on. Perhaps I’m doing something wrong. gliss slide2.dorico (2.4 MB)
Unfortunately, it seems that Dorico won’t use pitch bend to create continuous glissandi between the notes of two chords. The tedious workaround is to put the notes at the ends of each glissando in a separate voice and activate independent voice playback.
Derrek is meaning that you can mark John’s post as the solution in this thread. It is not only a courtesy, but also it helps others when they search for solutions.
My intent was to help others when searching for solutions, since both of @johnkprice 's suggestions comprised the actual solution:
enabling a larger pitch bend range through editing the particular string instruments in Halion, as well as allowing the larger pitch bend range in the expression map that is used with that instrument.
in the case of setting up glissandi between chords of Halion string instruments, a further step is necessary: enabling separating each note of the chords into their own voices.
TLDR; my initial goal was to help steer others to both parts of the solution, which I had hoped to accomplish by labelling my own answer ‘the solution’. Clearly that was a faux pas: doing so denied acknowledgement of @johnkprice 's role in providing the solution.
If I had to do it over again, it would have made sense to credit the second answer.
BTW: I’ve referred to ‘string instruments’, since these seem to be naturals, when it comes to glissandi. I’m not sure how other Halion instruments deal with glissandi, such as trombones, etc.
PS: I’m not sure how all this relates to non-Halion instruments.
Sorry for suggesting that you could use pitch bend for glissando in this instance – as the person who actually did the implementation work for this, I should have had a clearer memory of it! As John rightly points out, when there are multiple notes written in the same voice, Dorico always uses a chromatic glissando, because pitch bend applies to the whole channel, and would therefore affect all notes. Unless all of the intervals happened to be the same, this wouldn’t produce the right result.
No problem at all. I’m sure it’s hard to stay on top of every single thing you work on, especially given the many many things you’re always working on.
