Modular synthesizer setup notation

Dorico
#1

Hi Folks,

Loving Dorico so far, really revolutionary … so the project I’m working on includes synthesizer and in addition to the music I’d like to notate the synth settings. There’s a proposal for a modular synth notation system which I like at PatchAndTweak.com. These are available in a bunch of PNG’s which can be inserted in the score.

vca.png
mixer.png
In practice you use them in a block diagram like this

Screen Shot 2020-09-13 at 12.09.52 PM.png
Screen Shot 2020-09-13 at 12.09.52 PM.png933×652 42.6 KB

Dorico has graphics frames but it might be cumbersome for this. Any thoughts, and has anybody done this?

#2

I tried three different browsers and none of them displayed your linked page properly. Not a good start.

Isn’t this just a graphic image so far as Dorico is concerned? If you want to attach it to a particular place in the score, you can make it into a (very large?) playing technique…

#3

Sorry, I just checked again and it’s correct - http://patchandtweak.com/symbols/

If there’s some odd configuration you can do a google search for “Patch and Tweak” and find it. That’s an excellent book too by the way if you work with modular.




Isn’t this just a graphic image so far as Dorico is concerned? If you want to attach it to a particular place in the score, you can make it into a (very large?) playing technique…

Yes exactly, but I imagine this can get ugly as there’s a lot of graphics, just wondering if anybody has gone down the road and if Dorico can handle it (e.g. bug free), and any tips.

#4

If you have Fontlab or similar, you could turn them into a font.

Jesper

#5

This doesn’t look “correct” to me, in MS Edge and Firefox. (Internet Explorer gets it differently wrong)

MS Edge.png
MS Edge.png1175×1046 146 KB

#6

If you have a lot of graphics that make a page look bad, you first need to solve the graphic design problem of how to lay out the pages so they look less bad.

If you attach a mockup of what you want to achieve, it would be easier to think how best to do it in Dorico.

#7

One can scale symbols in the symbol editor to a desired size.

#8

Thanks for the help guys. Follow up to this, Rob’s idea of making it a playing technique works great, here’s a simple triangle wave into a bandpass vcf
patch.png
It’s ugly, I made a custom line which needs work. Some tips for

  • Import SVG graphics for scalability
  • Add them as playing techniques, under Keyboard, named “synth MODULAR WHICH” e.g. “synth vcf bandpass”
  • This will take some time to do. For those above I scaled to 15, and then offset to 7.5 (half) which looks about right
  • Make a custom horizontal line, or use existing, doesn’t matter much
  • When writing just add all the elements as playing techniques, along with connectors. You’ll get a mess of items
  • Go into Engrave mode, click the top option (the note adjust), then click your elements and move them around into a block diagram you want

This editor and capability is amazing, but it would be nifty if I could tweak it a little bit (e.g. thicken). Otherwise these stock features can do some amazing things. I’m a notatation guy, most synthesists do some stream of consciousness thing but this needs to be more deliberate.

Thanks folks, amazing forum!