I’m new to expression maps and I’m trying to create a (personal, opinionated) expression map for VSL Synchron-ized solo strings. Specifically, I’m trying to get a typical lively, aggressive, nearly harsh string quartet sound in fast passages marked ff. For the ‘Velocity Crossfade’ (Vel.XF, CC1) setting in the Synchron player, I want to use the full upper half (values 64-127) for velocities ppp - ff. See the attached screenshot. (I’m further using CC11 to create more dynamic range, but the lower half of the Vel.XF fader sounds too gentle and ‘airy’ to me.) I never use more than ff so I would really like to map ff to the absolute maximum dynamic in the Synchron player.
My question is: is there any combination of settings in Dorico Playback options, Dorico expression maps, and Synchron player settings that would give me a dynamics curve like in the attached screenshot?
Another option for me is to use the marcato and ‘harsh spiccato’ patches from the VSL solo strings library for passages marked ff, but I see that immediate dynamics in expression maps do not yet work (?t=182789). Is there a workaround for this?
Thank you in advance.