Will Dorico 5 allow simple selection of specific notes to apply ONLY note start time randomization?
No, I’m afraid not. You can do note velocity randomisation in this way, using the histogram tool in the key editor, but not note start time.
Thank you. Please advise when one can isolate notes for start time randomization. Then I will purchase the product. (It really should work this way and not commit other notes outside of a selection to process. Studio One allows a fast select and then press the “H” key for randomization of preset parameters.) - An important capability as you often want to randomize only specific groups of notes start times and leave others alone.
Hi Richard,
Are there any new plans to implement “select” randomization of note start times as we discussed in May? (Critical for realism)
Thanks,
Phil Barish
I believe that affects all notes throughout the song or track. Depending on a given passage or virtual instrument library, selected ranges of specific notes to randomize is what I’m looking for to apply realizm. Some note passages require varying degrees of randomization without affecting other notes.
Gotcha
If a subject has been discussed here then we’re aware people are interested in it, but as to when, whether or how we might try to do something about it then we don’t discuss that until it’s actually been done. (This isn’t just to be coy - with programming it’s frequently not obvious how tractable a problem is until you try solving it.)
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Understood - but if I selected e.g., a few notes manually and slightly moved some earlier or later by 2 or 3 ticks, this would accomplish the isolated (spot) randomization/realism that I am looking for. What would be the programming uncertainty in simply providing a macro function to perform that movement automatically by selection and save an exponential amount of time?
That would create “highly competitive” realism…
There’s no such thing as a simple or small change in an application as sophisticated as Dorico: there can be complex interaction with other existing functionality; there is testing overhead to ensure that everything still works as it should; every new option not only increases the complexity of the user interface but also adds cost in translation and localisation; and every thing that our developers work on carry an opportunity cost, meaning that they can’t work on anything else while they are working on this feature.
This is not to say that we don’t plan to add the functionality you’re asking for, but simply to indicate that there is usually quite a lot more to it than you might imagine.
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I understand that. You already implemented auto dynamics with note input, so select-randomization would be consistent with that level of achieving realism. - Awaiting its implementation before I purchase it.
Thank you.
Homophonic legato horns sound too much like an organ in my current project, so I played with Note Start Positions as mentioned above. However, even at 600% (! I didn’t try any higher) it had no effect. I am clearly misunderstanding something, but don’t know what that is. (I suppose I was expecting true randomisation, affecting each stave slightly differently to mimic human playing, but I’m getting the feeling that that’s not what’s meant by this Playback Options setting.)
I don’t think you’ll find the effect is ever more pronounced than it is with a value of 100%, which gives a deviation of something like 10 ticks (and given that a quarter note is made up of 480 ticks, it’s really not a lot). So you might want to make a few manual adjustments in the Key Editor, with the piano roll set to played durations mode.
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Actually… Note Start Humanisation was not working at all between June 2023 and December 2023, for some technical reasons, so it is not surprising you didn’t hear any difference.
It is now working great again and you may want to try again this powerful feature, as Daniel mentioned, a value between 50% and 100% is usually very effective, I end up at 75% most of the time.
Yes, I’d seen that the feature had been temporarily out of action, but my experiments with it were conducted only yesterday, so AFAICS it was operational by then.
Another thing to watch out for is that humanisation can be overridden in the expression map, in which case the value in Playback Options may not have any effect. For example, the NotePerformer expression map overrides the humanisation of start positions to 0%.
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Good Day,
Could you possibly share realistically, when Dorico might support MTC (or other precise) sync? - Long or short horizon? - Thanks…
Respectively,
Phil
The Dorico Team does not announce new features until they are sure they can deliver them, which means we don’t normally hear about new additions until just before or on the day of a new version release.
Indeed, we typically don’t talk about features until and unless they are implemented and we know for sure we can deliver them, because we prefer to avoid disappointment in the event that something unexpected happens that stymies the delivery of a particular feature.
In the case of MTC sync, we need to do some work both in Dorico and also in the audio engine, so it’s not a trivial effort. It definitely remains on our radar.