I helped convince a buddy to switch Dorico. He is a well known percussion arranger and composer. He is in the middle of a writing project, and we are having a DIFFICULT time getting the suspended cymbal to work correctly and worse… consistently.
To make things simple we have 3 samples we want to trigger “loud cresc (short, medium, long)”
We created a percussion map that triggered all of the appropriate sounds, we have the correct percussion playing techniques assigned. Everything was working, except the tremolo kept re-triggering the sample (perhaps to be expected as the tremolo in theory divides a note into rhythms). So we try to ditch the tremolo for writing purposes. Successful with the playback and the correct sounds. Well, the school wants parts ASAP, we go back through and add the tremolos so that the students know to “roll” on the cymbal. Writing continues. But when trying to create the playback file for the students and directors to reference, all of the cymbals are playing back with re-attacked cymbals because of the tremolo. We could remove all tremolos, and try to go back re-apply them prior to printing parts and scores. But that seems so inefficient. So we decide to get in and tackle this issue.
After searching the forums, someone said they found a work around (with a different library) by creating an expression map and having the tremolo trigger a dummy key switch. This worked for them, so we gave it a shot. It seemed to work. Back to writing and using the tremolo. The re-triggering problem arose again with also sometimes not playing at all. So we go into the percussion map, we add tremolo to the percussion technique. Under the percussion playing techniques, we add the 3 stroke tremolo, and we now reference the new “tremolo + loud cresc long” playing technique. The percussion map now references “tremolo + loud cresc long”. This seems to work, until it doesn’t about 2 minutes later.
We end the Zoom call. I play around on my machine. I’m having the exact same issues he is having. More searches on the forum, and I see that someone found that there is a difference between roll and buzz roll. So I think perhaps the issue is the playing techniques should include roll and not tremolo. We correct the playing techniques and percussion map to show “roll + loud cresc long”. Success! Except that when you input the note or click on it, it plays a different sample (cresc mute). Pressing play MOSTLY plays back the loud cresc long sample. We have the same techniques setup for short and medium as well.
He is having issues with sounds not triggering properly. We zoom call again. We just ended the previous call 5 minutes ago. The “long” sample is too long, so he wants to change to the medium sample to see if its length better fits. He is having issues triggering the “loud cresc. medium” it is playing back nothing. It has the exact same settings as loud cresc long. We go round and round. And cannot figure out why this isn’t working.
Is there anyone who has had this issue before and knows how to resolve it?
My suggestion would be a way to just “disable” the tremolo on an as needed basis. I know this isn’t just an easy thing to do. But the current method is getting very complicated and confusing with providing mixed results.
Robby