Monophonic Legato and Orchestral Tools

Anthony Hughes’s excellent series on expression maps has been very enlightening even for those of us with at least some experience making expression maps.

In the most recent one released today, Anthony discusses monophonic legato and uses the Spitfire library to demonstrate how, when the monophonic legato is enabled, it is turned off when double stops are played.

I tried to duplicate that behavior in the Orchestral Tools Berlin Strings library and failed. Could someone please demonstrate how to use the monophonic legato switch with Orchestral Tools? Here’s what I did.

I set up a simple expression map for Berlin Strings Solo Violin 1:

Init = C#0 — This is “Expressive sustains imm” and plays multiple notes

Natural = C#0

Legato = C0 —This is “Expressive sustains imm + LEG.” I checked the monophonic legato box.

If I write slurs over single notes, I get the legato playback technique. However, if I write slurs over double stops, I also get the legato playback technique and the playback is wrong. The only way I can get proper playback of double stops is to select the slurs over the double stops and suppress playback (and extend the notes by hand).

What am I misunderstanding about the monophonic playback switch? Or, does monophonic legato not work with Orchestral Tools implementation?

Unless the double-stem notes are divisi (not marked there) both would need to be bowed (slurred) together on playback.

Thank you. However, in Anthony’s example in the video, he uses only one slur on the double stops. But I did figure out what was wrong!

When I first created the expression map, monophonic legato doesn’t work. However, if I save the file and re-open it, monophonic legato works perfectly (with one or two slurs entered).

I don’t know why this is the case but at least I know now how to get monophonic legato to work. BTW, I have created three test files to ensure that this behavior is consistent — and it is. If I want monophonic legato to work (at least with orchestral tools solo violin), I need to save the file, close it, and reopen it.

Thanks again for your help.

1 Like