Some background (skippable): I am a big fan of video game OST. They were the reason that I fell in love with music and composition. And a big part of my journey has been recreating and transcribing music and trying to make very realistic mockups of them in software. I started with FL studio, and after some time understood the significance of a notation software. You need the rich context from notation and a good software that puts it into use, to create realistic orchestral music that plays back nicely in software. Otherwise you’d need tens of automation lines and keyswitches for the same task. Dorico has been amazing in that regard. The VST support is unbeatable while allowing realistic playback using exp. maps. Still, I am quite the beginner.
With that said, whenever I try to write long lines that contain tied notes WITH long slurs for legato playing, it leads to a somewhat cluttered score that can get quite hard to work with. As an example:
While I understand that some things are unavoidable for a good playback (e.g. fine dynamics controls), I am unsure as to whether the problem is me, misusing ties and slurs that leads to this, or the nature of what I’m trying to achieve.
How do you approach this? Is this normal and a typical tradeoff between elegance and performance?
Some of those OSTs were written without regard to slurs, using pure MIDI editors like Cakewalk. At least, that’s how I did it for Duke Nukem 3D and Rise of the Triad. In cases like these, you’ll be reinterpreting rather than recreating the OST.
One tip I haven’t seen offered here yet: click on the slur line to select it and then open up the Properties panel at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see several options you can use to manipulate the slur, the most useful of which IMHO is the Curvature Type. That will allow you to “flatten” the curve of a slur with a quick click or two.
If I’m correct, Nier Automata’s OST (the one I’m trying to create in the first pic) is recorded live at Sound City Tokyo (source).
And I think I need more explicitness in notation since regular VST software can’t detect where to use legato and where to not. That’s one of the main reasons I’m learning and using notation. The mapping from a good notation to playback can be improved every day with new tech, Dorico updates and higher quality libraries. In MIDI that doesn’t necessarily happen since libraries can be quite different and can go obsolete.
Janus’s recommendations look really promising and I’ll try them!
Thank you all for sharing your thoughts. I decided upon Janus’ proposed solution for this specific case and the bars are much cleaner now. One giveaway for me in the future will be having repeated pairs of tied notes like the Vcs and Cbs lines above.
Of course in this case the effect is elevated due to the entire line being legato.
For more fine grained control while not using “playing technique”, I’ll use the available slur engraving options (flat, height, etc.)
In cases like these, you’ll be reinterpreting rather than recreating the OST.
