Guitar Playing Techniques not appearing in Expression Map picker

Dorico
1

Just starting out with Dorico, coming from Guitar Pro and running into a few issues setting up my virtual guitars.

When looking in the playing techniques panel, I don’t see Hammer-ons / Pull-offs

pt guitar panel
pt guitar panel580×680 24.6 KB

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So I tried adding a new Playing Technique and noticed that Hammer-ons & Pull-offs were already there.

Can these be added to the quick access panel?

pt editor
pt editor1920×1344 122 KB

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Then when I tried creating an Expression Map to take advantage of the Hammer-ons / Pull-offs in my Ample Guitar VST, I don’t see these Playing Techniques available.

Any idea how to get those extra Guitar Playing Techniques (or custom ones) in this picker?

expression map
expression map1510×1384 154 KB

2

Hammer-on and pull-off are input using the Shift+O popover or via the Ornaments panel in Write mode, as described here:

From a playback point of view, Dorico uses a legato playback technique, so you can assign the desired based on Legato in your expression map.

3

Thanks for the tips. It wasn’t intuitive at first that there are canonical playback techniques and custom ones that build on them (e.g. Hammer on), but I get it now.

Within my Guitar VST, there are distinct modes for Legato slide and H/P’s, since they sound a little different (see screenshots below).

When building an expression map, is there an equivalent for each of these in the canonical list of playing techniques, so that when I score a legato/slide vs H/P the sound switches the VST to the right one?

legato
legato1042×576 213 KB

hp
hp996×546 192 KB

4

No, there aren’t I’m afraid canonical playback techniques for either hammer-on or pull-off, but you can certainly add them yourself, and then define combinations in your expression map for legato plus your custom hammer-on and pull-off techniques. To actually trigger the playback techniques in the score you will need some kind of playing technique that maps onto your custom playback techniques, but these can be hidden in the score using the Hidden property so that they don’t clutter up your score unnecessarily.

5

Thanks for clarifying.

Since H/P’s are such a primary technique for guitar, is there any chance these can be added to the canonical list, so they can be mapped later?

6

We would need to change the way they’re handled in playback, but yes, of course, in principle that can be done.

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