Good morning, I haven’t been able to find away of turning off the automatic playback of tremolos. Is this possible? I’m using key switches (played back from a dedicated, hidden, keyswitch switch stave) to select the appropriate articulation from my sample library.
I’ll be grateful for any suggestions.
best wishes, Ian
Maybe we’re confusing terms here. Tremolos (as added from the Repeats popover) do indeed playback. Is there another kind of tremolo?
And no, I don’t believe there’s any way to silence them, besides muting the entire note. You could create a custom playing technique that looked like a tremolo but did nothing to the expression engine, and manually position it over the note stem.
The specific tremolo I’m talking about is the unmeasured single note tremolo. Dorico plays these back by churning out lots of short fast repetitions. Not much help if your playback of trems is achieved by changing to an actual sample of the instrument playing a term. I’m grateful that the trills do not play back (assuming that, if they did, there would no way of turning them off) It’s always better to use a sample of the instrument actually playing a trill.
FYI, Marc, I’m using a selection of orchestral samples from Orchestral Tools, Spitfire Audio, etc.
It might be that I’ll have to mute the trem notes and add corresponding normal notes (with the appropriate term key-switch) on my hidden key-switch stave.
BTW, I can’t see how the expression map ‘solution’ will ever work for those using these sort of libraries to their full potential.
Best wishes, Ian
Depending on the number of slashes (and the genre of the music) a single note tremolo can be either measured or unmeasured. A measured tremolo is “a lot of short repetitions” (but not necessarily “fast”), exactly the same as written-out repeated notes. But I agree, an unmeasured tremolo would usually play back better with a special-purpose sample.
(Unless you are using physical modelling for playback, in which case there are no samples at all. That hasn’t quite arrived for orchestral instruments yet, but it’s coming - and it’s already here for keyboard instruments.)
I think that unmeasured tremolos are already played back using a keyswitch if one is provided in the expression map eg see the HSO strings. So if you define an entry for tremolo in your expression map, then it should use that and suppress the fallback behaviour of playing many notes.
You are correct about that Paul, thanks. but I haven’t been able to find away to use expression maps effectively - except in the simplest of situations.
In this case the problem is that, ideally, I would like to playback more than one type of trem articulation (‘normal’ and sul pont). Both instances require the use of trem notation - so at least in one case the wrong type of trem will be triggered if I use an expression map. (This issue is much more acute with, for example, staccatos - because there are usually loads of staccato-type articulations to choose from.)
I have tried to use expression maps by creating ‘playing techniques’ that are no more than key-switches - labeled KS12, KS13 etc. - but I’ve never really been able to get this strategy to work reliably enough.
As it is - I find having an additional hidden staves for key switches works quite well and also lets me access various other playback mechanisms that some libraries use.
Best wishes, Ian
In that case you could still define a tremolo playback technique in the expression map that does nothing. This will suppress the fallback behaviour.
That’s definitely worth keeping in mind, thanks
I am by no means an expert in Expression Maps, but can not one sometimes create combined techniques (legato+tenuto) as in
Vienna Instruments expression maps - #11 by Brian_Roland - Dorico - Steinberg Forums.
Would it be possible to make a trem sul pont notation that read the trem slashes and the sul pont as a combined indication? Just a thought that might point someone more knowledgeable in the right direction.
Old post, but since I came across this topic, I’d like to add my experience: I did add an additional trem. expression map and first tried to assign it to the “log flutter” playback (of BBCSO Pro, flutes), then to “nothing” (by using a non-existing key-switch). Both do not work.
The “symbol” that triggers the “long flutter” is actually not any of the tremolos, but the “flz.” from the “Playback techniques” (?). I think that is, where some of the previous confusion comes from. (On the other hand I use Dorico 4 in the meantime, no idea which version was used in 2018 and if it already had a distinction between those 2.)
Still: A solution to this problem would be most welcome!
+1 for this. I am using Noteperformer and want to tell my players “flutter-tongue” along with rhythm slashes. NP perfectly interprets " flutter-tongue, " but the playback gets weird when I combine it with the rhythm slashes. I tried to figure out a way to change the playback of trems or even set the buzz roll to display rhythm slashes, but I still can’t find a way in expression maps to “turn off” the playback for that. I am definitely in over my head. I want it to work!
A very tacky solution I’ve used before is splitting the note in 2 voices:
One voice is a “normal” note, without slashes, and with the “flz” technique (which I then set to hidden). I then hide the stem, ledger lines and notehead. If there’s still something visible or otherwise problematic, I set a custom scale of 1 for that note.
The other voice is just for the visual aspect I want: a normal note with tremolo slashes and with suppressed playback.
The main problem with this is that it’ll ruin the staff condensing of that passage. I’ve only used it successfully with chamber pieces.
I’d love to see a way to deactivate the tremolo shalshes of the winds. I’ve tried to tinker with the expression maps, but they still play back. It’s really strange because I’ve got the intuition it must be possible with the current Dorico version.