In this case, I’m not sure if real time control over ADSR and such will please you, you might well prefer to simply choose a totally different Trombone sound. You can indeed mix and match instruments from any plugin or library you like in a given Dorico project…
…But for future reference on Sonic instruments in general…
You can ‘learn’ whatever CC you like for given control in Sonic.
Make sure the stave you wish to work on is the active one.
Right click a control…you’ll see the options.
Send the CC you’d like from your MIDI controller.
If you don’t have a MIDI controller handy to send anything with you have a couple of methods to get around this.
Approach 1
One way is to first make sure your Sonic Instance is open and the instrument you wish to work with is in the foreground. Right click the control you want to learn a CC for and choose “Learn CC”, then pop open the expression map editor for the stave.
Go to the Natural base switch in your expression map, enter the CC you’d like to use in the Actions: list. Tap the ‘audition’ (little play icon) button. That should send the CC to Sonic, and the controller should be learned at this point.
Trash the CC you just put in the Natural Actions list once you’ve gotten Sonic to learn it.
Approach 2
Rather than ‘learning a new CC’, you can assign it to one of the 8 Quick Controls at the bottom, as those have some default factory CCs attached to them. Since Sketch isn’t using them already for this particular trombone, it’d be a good approach. In this example, I’ll put Attack on CQ3, and Release on QC4.
Quick Controls can be forced to learn a different CC, but out of the box they have some defaults.
QC3 is cc73, QC4 is cc72
You can find the list of factory MIDI controller defaults here:
Automation and Factory MIDI Controller Assignment • HALion Sonic Help • Reader • Steinberg
Once you’ve set up a QC, you can adjust quite a few things about it back in the EDIT/PROGRAM tab.
From experience, one of the first things I’d do is make the expression map pretty Vanilla to start with. Sometimes all those alternate articulations are just ‘too much’, or ‘all wrong’ for a given musical context.
Typically the first thing I do with any expression map that came with Dorico as a default for sampled instruments like those in HSO or Sketch is:
- Disable the legato base switch if it has one!
- Disable any entries for ‘on note articulations’. Staccato (.), Stacctissimo ('), Accent (>), Tenuto (-), Marcato (^) etc.
Basically all I have left working at first are base switches for Natural, and possibly any ‘very specific’ articulations such as “Vibrato, Non-Vibrato, Muted, Pizzicato, Tremolo, Spiccato”.
There are some things that can be adjusted in the “Playback Options Overrides” pane of an Expression Map that’ll apply and override the global settings. I.E. Duration of Staccato/Marcto/etc. Dynamic increases/decreases for various score markings/instructions, and so on.
Later, I might gradually try to get those fancy key-switches back into the mix, and sounding more like I want them to sound.
The reason for this is…those sampled key-switching articulations can be pretty ‘tempo dependent’ in a lot of libraries. They might sound great at Adagio, but horrible at Allegro.
Sometimes they don’t even sound like samples from the same player. At least not in their default states.
Sometimes the gain staging and panning/depth (mic position or whatever) from one articulation/key-switch is pretty different from the rest, thusly it sounds pretty awkward and out of place. In a lush ensemble arrangement, such oddities and artifacts might not be all that noticable, but in a solo setting, they can be quite cringe-worthy. These things are often ‘correctable’, but it can be time consuming to figure out what to tweak, and where it is.
Using the fancy ‘extra key-switching articulations’ usually need some manual refinements by the user to play nice in a given score, and every single score may need ‘different tweaks’. Until you get to know a library pretty well, with all of its idiosyncrasies it can be pretty time consuming to go after that ‘ultimate mock up performance’. Sometimes you even need to just make a fresh stave, and apply totally different things with a completely new expression map for different flows/passages/movements.
Some of your issues are inherent in the sample itself. Toying with the attack and release settings for a given articulation might help some. You can even have different values for this for each base switch once you’ve learned a CC for it (or assigned it to a QC and use one of the default CCs).
Same for Legato. You can experiment with the key-switch for it. It’s pretty subtle in this particular library, and Dorico is weird with legato at present (can’t delay it so the first note in the phrase gets the full attack, and the rest get the softer one. Perhaps in the next release the delay parameter will work again.). If there is no legato switch in the expression map, Dorico will simply do an ‘overlapping’ effect with subsequent notes. General MIDI style.
Yes, you can tone down Staccato and Marcato with a lower max value for velocity.
For a big virtuoso sort of ‘Solo’ in an important mock rendering, The Iconica Sketch trombonist might be the wrong guy for the job anyway.
There are a few things you can experiment with to shape up that Iconica bone, but personally I’d recommend keeping it as simple and vanilla as you can at first.
I know the differences are far more subtle if you just disable those key-switches for Staccato and Marcato, but still recommend it at this stage.
If you are writing etudes or something for solo instruments, and you want sounds that all of your students will have with a free copy of Dorico Elements, let me know. I’ll poke around and offer some ideas on setting up such templates.
As for the Marcato entry issue…there are a few ways to get those on the score out of the box.
One way would be to use the Housetop (^) marking over each note that requires playing Marcato. You could select several notes at one time and apply it, or you can do it note by note.
If a marcato base switch exists for Marcato in the end point expression map, Dorico will apply it. If not, it will use the Global defaults found in Library/Playback Options, or in the Overrides pane of the expression map if enabled there.
In Dorico Pro, you can also create your own custom Playing Techniques/Instructions, or ‘edit’ existing ones.
They can be an ‘attribute’ that applies to individual notes, or a ‘direction’ in line or sim. style which can apply to a number of notes in a series.
Here I’ll make a new Marcato Instruction, with a ‘continuation’ line…
I’ll drag a box around the entire group of notes I want to maintain the Marcato style, then click my new Playing Technique in the right pane. I end up with this…
I’ll add a base key for this in the expression map.
Note, I needed a second Marcato node because this one is set up as a sticky ‘Direction’, where the other Marcato is set up as a ‘note attribute’.
Playing Techniques can come a number of varieties. They can have ‘sticky’ properties, that toggle a node in and out of the expression list. Or they can be ‘temporary’ sorts, that only apply to a single active/playing note at the time. In our case above, I made one that will ‘stick’ with notes that live under that dotted line. Provided I had at least 2 notes selected when I entered my new Marcato playing technique, I get that line, and if I select the marcato entry, I get a little anchor point that I can use to extend or shrink that line at will.
You’ll also discover in time that you can make base switches in an expression map that require multiple nodes to set off.
I.E. Legato + Muted+ Staccato. To make those happen, you hold ctrl while selecting them in the pop up.
Just a FYI for future reference.
I’m attaching a modified copy of your project that includes the new custom lmarcato playing technique discussed above. In this case I’ve kept all of the expression map entries active and simply scaled back some of the maximum dynamics. I set some delay on that legato keyswitch (don’t think it works right now, it has in the past and should again at some point). I rolled the ‘release times’ back for each of the articulations somewhat (not with CCs or anything. Just set them one time in the Sonic UI). I’ve also scaled back the global dynamic curve to 1.2.
It’s not much improved, but perhaps seeing what little I did will be of some help…
trombone 3.dorico (607.7 KB)
What it sounds like…