How do Timing Playback Options interact with Expression Maps?

Dorico
1

I am looking at Play Mode and trying to understand how the “Timing” settings under Playback Options get applied, and how they interact with the Expression Maps. I added a generic Alto Saxophone instrument and added some notes under a slur. These do not appear to have been affected in Play Mode by the “Timing” settings. I then created an Expression Map which has a “Natural” technique and a “Legato” technique. Once I created the Legato technique, I went back to Play Mode and made sure the Expression Map was applied to the correct instrument (the saxophone) via the gear icon next to the VST Instrument on the right panel. Then I noticed that the “legato” Playing Technique was showing up in the Playing Techniques Lane under the piano roll for that instrument. But the note lengths were not affected. I went back to the Expression Map and saw that, rather than saving my value of 105% under the Length % property of the Legato technique, it had reverted to 100% and set Transpose to “1”. Every time I attempted to change it and then go back and look at the legato technique this happened again.

So I guess my questions are:

  1. When do the “Timing” settings under Playback Options get applied?
  2. Why doesn’t the Length% property in my Expression Map save correctly?
  3. What ultimately takes precedence, Playback Options or the values from Expression Maps (when they are applied correctly)?
2

The ‘Length’ parameter in the Expression Maps dialog is not yet implemented, I’m sorry to say: it’s there because that is one of the bits of data that Dorico imports from Cubase expression maps, but I’m afraid it doesn’t actually do anything yet.

At the moment, values in Playback Options do take precedence over values in the expression map, but the intention is that this will change in the future, and that expression maps will override the default playback options.

As for when the timing settings under Playback Options are applied, the answer is always, unless the note has an overridden start position and/or duration, e.g. because you’ve imported a MIDI file or have adjusted the note directly in Play mode.