Hi there. Many of us over the years have requested seamless glissando playback, but for some reason deep in Dorico’s guts, it seems like making this option (which already works on much ‘worse’ notation programs out of the box) is challenging.
Since default playback of gliss. through a string or woodwind instrument just goes up the chromatic scale (i.e. along a path of discrete scalar steps): Would it be easier to make glissando playback through the currently defined tuning system’s scale rather than seamlessly? If so, users could define their own tuning system (for example, in quarter-tones, etc.) and the glissando playback would sound much closer to a ‘real’ glissando.
Just an idea - with huge hopes that Dorico 5 contains seamless glissando playback.
The Dorico Team is reluctant to insert stopgap solutions to features, preferring instead to implement features in stages if necessary. As you have pointed out, a glissando can have a different tonal meaning in woodwinds than strings (or piano or harp, et al.)
The glissando function is admittedly incomplete to date, but it is no doubt on the Team’s To-Do List.
Without any knowledge of the technical/programming structure within Dorico, it seems to me that such a feature would indeed be ‘in stages’, rather than a stopgap solution.
For example, Dorico already plays back harp glissandi according to the harp tuning. It can also do black/white key piano glisses, right? A true seamless slide on a violin, however, can still not be played back.
I’m just wondering if the discrete steps of a custom tuning would be easily implementable with the architecture already working in Dorico to produce harp/piano glissandi.
From my understanding, a harp or piano glissando involves discreet notes simply playing a scale.
However, a glissando on a string instrument would require more than that. It requires the use of some form of pitch bend.
I suspect that programming to apply tiny amounts of pitch bend, then reset, then bend, then reset… a continuous row of commands required to create a gliss on a string instrument, is going to be a LOT harder to implement.
Speaking just from the libraries I’ve used, some had very limited distances for pitch bend, often no more than a major 2nd. Others could bend as far as my pitch bend wheel on my keyboard allowed. The latter DID sound like absolute crap however, since as you got away from the initial note the sound was being altered significantly to change its transposition.
