Hello crew behind Dorico,
After watching the following video:
Some questions came to my mind.
I’ve seen that we can route up-stem and down- stem voices to different ports and channels, which is great.
Well, let’s imagine that we have Violins 1 devided into 4 voices depending on the rhythm we may have up and down stems.
My first question here is:
Can we assign every single note to separate voice, and then to route every voice to it’s own port and channel?
In this case we’ll end up with 4 voices routed to 4 ports and 4 channels. But we could have more voices to devide in.
My second question is:
Can we assign Expression Maps per voice?
According to the 4 part voicing example above we may want to assign different E.M. for every voice.
My third question is:
In case we would like to combine two, or more, violin libraries, from different companies, for example Orchestral Tools and Spitfire Audio, to perform this Divisi in 4 /very commonly used to avoid artificial sounding effects/ .
So, how can we make the expression maps to work properly for every library ?
If I have previously created expression maps for Orchestral Tools they won’t work properly for Spitfire Audio and vice versa. Dorico doesn’t allow direct mapping, per voice and articulation as Overture 5.6 does.
All that should “just work”. You might find it easier to write your 4 parts on two (or four) divisi staves instead of squashing them all onto one staff.
You assign the voices in the score to VST instruments, Ports and Midi channels. You do the same for expression maps. So each voice in the score can be played on a different VST with a different expression map if you want. You need to create an expression map for each library (and probably for different types of instrument within the library).
I don’t see how that is any different from “direct mapping per voice and articulation”. it’s just a different way of doing the same thing.
For the first question yes - in the play tab, expand the part in the left had panel, There is a greyed out little button on the left side of "all voice: for each instrument. Click it, and it enables you to assign a different VST, port and channel for each instrument.
For the second question yes - you can have different expression maps per voice IF you assign a different VST. You can’t have different maps for different channels of the same VST - those get assigned once per as far as I can tell.
For the third question - I haven’t found a way to do that one. Some libraries like EWQL let you do that within the player - but not as far as I know across libraries.
For whatever its worth - I feel like when I blend them like that it is less than ideal. If I’m being that picky, I kind of want a second (to be hidden later) staff just to control where and how they blend. I’d be very happy if someone here knows a better way.
You can’t “make one expression map work for two libraries”, unless the libraries happen to have identical keyswitches for the same articulations, etc, but you don’t need to.
Just make an expression map for each library and assign them to the MIDI channels in Play mode.
This is no different from the way the HSO samples work already - every orchestral instrument in HSO has its own expression map (and they are mostly incompatible with each other), rather than having one huge expression map for the whole library.
Rob, gdball hello,
Thank you for your reply! I’m planning to join the Dorico family soon. Your answers are helpful to me!
I’m using the VI blending technique almost always in order to avoid any digital artifacts and organ-like sounding issues
which are very common for almost all libraries. Also the blending gives more life to the overall sound. So it’s very important.
For example when I have two oboes playing together in unison, or other intervals, they are always from different libraries.
Or if there is a Divisi in the strings,
at least one of the voices is performed by different library.
Would be really nice if someone could make more detailed video about the expression maps, including blending of libraries!
