Hello,
when specifying that notes should be played legato with a slur, the playback duration is extended according to the Note Duration setting for Legato notes in Playback Options. Default value is 105% to make the notes overlap.
However, legato can also be specified by the word legato, that exists in the Playing Techniques panel and trigger the same Playback Technique (pt.legato) as the slur. But this way the note is not extended according the Playback Options, but to 100%. Why? It should be the same as for slurs.
Yes @dspreadbury, that’s obvious. But is it meant to be that way? Both ways are valid notation, so shouldn’t both work the same way?
However the duration is affected by the legato playback technique. With no playing technique the duration of Default notes is used (default 95%). But with the legato playback technique they got 100% duration. So the duration is affected, but you can’t control how.
I even tried to set the Length % in the Expression Map for the legato playing technique to 105%, but that setting is ignored. That setting works for other playing techniques.
This is a regression in Dorico 5. In Dorico 4.3.31, the legato playing technique lengthens the played durations of notes to 105% of their written durations just as a slur does.
That’s right – and to me that is indeed inconsistent. Another rather odd thing is if you create a p.t for its opposite, staccato, using the normal playback technique which is correctly set as an “attribute”, all subsequent notes are staccato with 50% duration until cancelled which means the playback technique has mysteriously changed to a “direction”, although one could argue this is just Dorico being intelligent!
I mean I don’t care personally as I nearly always use the articulation markings but for those who prefer to write out the instructions, some unexpected results may occur, it seems.
They are not equivalent. At least for strings, the word legato alone will not make them slur multiple notes under a single bow stroke. If they are skilled players (and they read all the textual instructions, which isn’t a given even with professionals) they will minimize the gap between notes and the sound of the bow’s direction change to a point where the untrained ear can’t tell the difference. But the only way to get actual slurs is to write slurs.
You are right @hrnbouma, the only way to get actual slurs is to write slurs.
But what we talk about here is legato more generally, or the playback technique pt.legato as Steinberg calls it. It’s called just legato, not slurred legato, and it is trigged by both slurs and the playing technique (word) legato. So it shouldn’t mean slurred legato specifically.
Most sample libraries require overlapped notes to perform legato transitions. That’s why the word legato must also lengthen the notes to overlap, as the slurs do.
In the string library I use I have access to four different recorded legato transitions, all requiring overlapped notes. But sometimes it sounds better to use a sustain patch for legato. So I use custom playing techniques and playback techniques to handle what legato type I want in every single place. I only use pt.legato to get the notes overlapped.
Just my 2 cents here: This behavior caused a TON of confusion in this thread even leading to a feature request that could have been avoided mostly. I became aware of this thread only recently (so no unfounded bias) and I think the PT should have behaved the same way as slurs. Or at least please provide the option for such behavior. As to why just not use slurs, please check: How do you write detailed orchestral lines without causing clutter?
Even if you argue that global playback setting should only affect explicit slurs, it still doesn’t make sense that every option works for the “Legato” technique in expression maps except Note Length. Please take a look at the example here where delays work and do affect Played Durations, but Note Length doesn’t, regardless of how large the value is. I think this is explicit enough to be interpreted as “Yes, please. I want my legatos to have 200% length” yet gets ignored:
One possibility I can think of is that this might be intentional if they might be handling the note length differently for the last note under a slur vs. notes internal to that slur. I would have to start Dorico and compare to be sure (I can’t right now because I’m in the middle of a big Cubase project that has to get done). But it could explain the reasoning for disabling the note length effect in general for that playback technique, if position within a slurred group should have an impact.
Check to see if you have two back-to-back slurs (ex. 8 eighth notes in a 4/4 bar, one slur for the first four, one slur for the next four), if the last note under each slur has a different length than the rest.
And you might need to have it use an expression map that is configured to extend the length of the “legato” playback technique by a reasonable percentage that it would be visible (ex. a “legato” base switch length override to like 120% or something).
