I welcome the improvements in the playing back of harmonics and both the ability to make points constant or linear and the new dynamics lane (once I’d worked out what exactly it does) are potentially real time savers. One thing I had hoped for in 3.1 was proper implementation of glissandi where instruments like brass or strings can actually play them at least in libraries which support them – NotePerformer, for instance, does it very well.
Unfortunately I don’t see any improvement here and wonder whether I might have missed something? Granted it’s perhaps not the easiest thing to implement but it’s such a core playing technique, and not only in jazz, that I thought we might have something by now.
You only have to look through the Version History to know that Dorico’s development team work extremely hard. It’s a searchable PDF; searching for “gliss” doesn’t give results re: realistic playback, so no, you’re not missing anything.
I agree that gliss is a core playing technique, but lots of people have lots of different priorities, and the development team can’t work on all of them all the time.
It’s not necessary to look through the version history to see how hard the development team are working – I’m fully aware of that! And everyone has their own pet list of priorities, many of which I’d never use, far less find essential. But as such a good job has been made with most other core playing techniques already, this seems to me to be the one that by now sticks out like a sore thumb. Of course that’s perhaps only my opinion but after all, I’m sure the team don’t mind hearing what individuals prioritise even if there are hundreds of others who all want something different.
You are right in saying everybody has their own pet list.
On my list gliss playback would certainly be lower priority than a good implementation of something equivalent to Sibelius “play on pass” for repeats, for example. Not to mention ornaments other than trills (and even trill playback could do with some more capabilities, for baroque music…)
Realize that gliss means different things to different instruments. Initially Dorico did not implement gliss playback at all.
IIRC they have added a white-key-only (or according to key-sig) gliss, perhaps most appropriate for piano, and a harp gliss attuned to the pedal settings of the harp.
That seems like progress, steady, if slower than some would like.
What is still missing is, of course, a true string/trombone continuous gliss. I’m sure that will be forthcoming amidst other features users are hoping for. https://steinberg.help/dorico_pro/v3/en/dorico/topics/notation_reference/notation_reference_glissando_lines_playback_r.html?hl=glissando
And people should also realize that the “notewise” glisses that have been implemented are implemented with a fast series of note=on/off commands. That’s one thing. The continuous or portamento gliss would (I believe) be done through the mod wheel MIDI controller, and that has its own set of complications that are completely different from sending a bunch of notes in rapid succession.
In other words, it is natural that this would be two different programming projects.
Indeed, a harp gliss which has already been implemented is completely different from the continuous slide gliss which is what this thread is about – apologies if that wasn’t clear from the outset. We already have a pitch bend controller lane and indeed with NotePerformer which seems to have an octave pitch bend range, you can get quite close to a passable gliss simply through that. I’m assuming that pitch bend gliss is what’s planned (except where there are specific sampled slides such as in some VSL instruments which could simply be invoked through a keyswitch). But I may be underestimating the complexity here in which case I’ll do what I can to improvise in the meantime.
It’s certainly not at all my intent to bash the developers who in general are doing sterling work and provide excellent support – indeed that was a major incentive to switch to Dorico as the team (and Daniel in particular) had been so helpful with Sibelius!
having posted this originally, I realised quite some time ago that you can create a playback technique called glissando to map to a gliss patch if one exists in your sound library. This gliss which exists already is only an ornament which has a stepwise built in playback feature. Actually, portamento is arguably more useful. Here there is curiously nothing in Dorico but port. is widely supported in VST’s and I have simply created a new PB technique and mapped to it.
I feel my original post was a bit too negative in retrospect! However, what I really would like is if there was also a port. symbol like the gliss one in Ornaments which could be put in the score and then a hidden articulation could be added for the actual playback. In fact. frankly I wouldn’t really need anything else. But I not aware of a way you can copy and edit the existing gliss symbol – there is no facility to create a new ornament is there?
You can change the gliss text to port. in the properties panel. There’s a filter for gliss lines, so you can even change all in one go. Make sure to use propagate properties so your change is reflected in the parts.
It’ll be very interesting to see how Dorico’s developers automate portamento/continuous/slide glissando playback.
I’m currently implementing it by hand (it’s not too difficult, thanks to Dorico’s excellent MIDI controller design in the Play tab), but it would be sweet to have it “just work” like so much already does in the application. It requires set-up of one’s VSTs, though, and I’m not sure that Dorico itself could do that for every VST. For the Play plug-in (EWQLSO), it’s pretty much on by default (some users might want to tweak the pitch bend range), but for Kontakt (Spitfire), I have to enable it by modifying the scripting on the relevant samples – tricky stuff.
In Dorico 3.1.10, NotePerformer does not produce portamento (sliding glissando) of a trombone. It is not good to make a demo sample.
Anyway, I changed the pitch bend value of the trombone note. It is not difficult to do. However, it takes a few minutes, and it is very tedious if there is lots of portamento. The problem is that every instrument might have a different range to react to incoming MIDI value.
It would be really great if I achieve the portamento without MIDI event.
