Help with the String Sound Banks

Dorico
1

Good morning. I am writing an SATB piece with string quartet. This is my first time writing for strings. I have several issues I’m not able to resolve. It’s difficult to proceed until these things are addressed. Thank you in advance for your expertise.

  1. I don’t know which sound bank to use. I found voices I like - GM053. The strings i chose are not to my liking and they are twice as loud as the voices.
  2. The strings I chose have a delayed entrance. I need for the strings to come in on the beat.
  3. The dynamics in the entire piece are not working. I have a long decrescendo and it’s not applying at all.

I did turn off “Automatic polyphonic instrument voice balancing” in playback options but it didn’t seem to do anything. I looked at something “humanize” but I don’t know what that might be. Below are some screen shots of what I have on my Mac.

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2

It looks like you are just selecting instruments in the VST, rather than just applying a Playback Template.

The problems that you’re having with dynamics are probably due to the wrong Expression Map being set for the sample instrument that you’ve chosen. (Again, using a Playback Template would fix this.)

The “GM” sounds are comprehensive, but pretty low quality, compared to Olympus Micro or Iconica. (Or even HSO.)

It’s possible that the Iconica strings have some delay in attack. You may find the HSO ones better.

3

Thank you Benwiggy. How do I select the right playback template? I am selected the ICONICA sketch, HSO, HAlion, Sonic Sel, Olympus, GASE. But the voice sounds are not what I want to hear. How do I select the choir sound I want w/o deleting this sound bank? And I do not know how to use the Expression Map. :frowning: