I have to tune almost every note of the Piano part of a score to get a minimum sensible playback, no matter I use NP or other VSTs. If I turn off the humanize playback, I also have to tune every note. I see there is no sign or effort from Dorico in improving the humanized playback for keyboard instruments, and also very little complain from users, wonder how do people usually make their piano playback works?
When you say “tune” what do you mean - I don’t want to make assumptions that waste your time. It might help to mention how you entered the notes, because sometimes there is a different discussion ie of manual versus a midi or xml file being imported. How are your playback options currently set?
Dorico has very elaborate humanisation features for keyboard music, and in fact plays back keyboard music much more musically than any other notation software. This is what the pitch contour emphasis and polyphonic voice balancing features introduced in Dorico 5 are all about.
I am talking about the velocities of each note of the Piano part in an orchestral score. If I play as-is, the left hand sounds extremely soft. If I simply adjust dynamics, both hands are adjusted and do not help. Also, the second voice of the right hand also sounds very soft.
This is what the pitch contour emphasis and polyphonic voice balancing features introduced in Dorico 5
I guess I am missing something. What options could I turn on/off to improve?
I imported the score from a MusicXML file. I guess I didn’t change the playback options. Here it is.
I kinda suspected something like that. I think you sometimes get more than you bargained for in terms of I dunno, velocity or a “something” in certain imports that effectively makes Dorico shrug and and say “okay, if that’s what you want me to do.” If you want to test that hypothesis, maybe enter a few of those bars by hand in a brand new project? At least maybe get you pointed at the problem source. You will probably want to enable polyphonic balancing. And there are others options like humanizing rhythmic feel, played duration, legato etc. that might be relevant.
If you’ve imported the material from MusicXML, there shouldn’t be any overridden velocities, so you should indeed be hearing Dorico’s interpretation. You have pitch contour emphasis enabled and polyphonic voice balancing disabled. Try experimenting with those options.
Have you also written regular dynamics on the staff? If you don’t, all the dynamics will be in the range of mf. If you want a wider dynamic range, write the dynamics you’d expect the human performer to follow, and Dorico will do the same.
The staff has not much written regular dynamics. It relies on the humanize interpretation.
There are a few written dynamics imported specific for a voice like this. Not sure if it causes troubles. I couldn’t find an easy way to rewrite dynamics for voices in Dorico.
I just tried to enable polyphonic voice balancing. It is significantly better but does not eliminate the needs of manual adjusting. May I ask how to adjust the dynamics curve and written dynamics of individual hand and voice?
Really, you shouldn’t need to do any manual work of this sort at all.
Can you upload the document, so we can see what’s going on?
Here is the minified score:
I tweaked velocities of many notes and turned on polyphonic voice balancing so it is a lot better now. Nevertheless, there are still some issues I have not yet tackled:
Bar 20 - 34 – No phasing
Bar 47 – Chords are often too loud
Bar 51 – The “F” note in right hand is too soft
Bar 67, 95 - 102 – The left hand is obviously louder than right hand although they are both marked “mf”.
bar 20-34 sounds to me correctly phrased for the most part with the expected emphasis on the higher notes.
bar 47 – perhaps a bit loud but the chords are correctly regarded as the melody
bar 51 sounds correct in context
bar 95-102 again the whole point in that the Dorico algorithm can distinguish between melody and accompaniment and I would say that again it’s done it correctly.
I don’t find the feature perfect and have myself posted when one or two things have clearly not been quite right, especially earlier on but I must say, in general, in all your examples it has the right idea. Anyway, there’s absolutely no such thing as a file which doesn’t require some editing of dynamics (and that includes NotePerformer whatever some might say to the contrary). In general, the polyphonic voice balancing is an impressive achievement which reduces piano editing by at least 75% in my experience and if you’re not too fussy, perhaps even by 90%
I understand some editing is needed in order to match my expectation. That’s why I am asking how to adjust the dynamics curve and written dynamics of individual hand and voice. And then Ben said I should not need to do any manual work.
So I now repeat my question: how to adjust the dynamics curve and written dynamics of individual hand and voice? Or the only way is to edit velocities note by note?
well as the piano always uses velocity, you simply drag individual notes or groups of notes up and down in the key editor velocity lane. I don’t agree that manual work is generally unnecessary, though I do think that with appropriate humanisation settings it can be greatly reduced. The dynamics curve you can simply experiment with. As a very general rule, increasing the dynamic curve power and minimum/maximum dynamic level increases the contrast and dynamic range. Which settings are appropriate depends entirety on which piano VST you are using and how it is set up. Just one example — my VSL Fazioli and Steinway pianos have a completely different default dynamic response.
If you are finding that Dorico already identifies the melody correctly, but is emphasising it by the wrong amount, you might consider adjusting some of the options underneath the overall “Use automatic polyphonic instrument voice balancing” checkbox. “Scale overall effect” will basically increase/decrease the effect of the whole feature. The various options labelled as “Offset …” are the amount of emphasis/de-emphasis for the melody/bass/other-voice notes.
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This is the reason I made this post. I edited velocities of most of the notes of the Piano staves, then I changed to another VST, then I found the velocities do not sound good anymore and edit again, then I again changed to another VST, and again does not sound right, oh my god! It would be nice if I can transform with dynamics curve instead of velocities of individual notes.
Actually I think Dorico does not identify the melody correctly. For example, in bar 95 - 102, there is no melody in the Piano part but at other instruments (I removed them from the score but it does not make a difference to the Piano playback). It wrongly identified the bass line as melody. Anyway, I found your suggestion on tweaking these options can overcome the issues and is closer to my expectation. Thanks for the response.
Anyway, I hope there is a better utility to facilitate manual editing in Dorico in the future!
If you want to adjust the dynamics curve overall - for all dynamics, not just the polyphonic voice balancing - then you can do that with the controls at the top of the Dynamics page of Playback Options. Reducing the “Dynamic curve power” will flatten the dynamic curve, so that the change in the middle of the dynamic range is lesser and the change at the extremes is greater. Reducing the minimum or maximum levels will mean that the range of MIDI values will be spread over a smaller range of dynamic values.
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