Hi friends! I’ve just purchased Tallinn; a lovely library! Has anyone made an expression map for this? Just curious. Thanks so much!
1 Like
+1!
Or any tips on how to do it myself (I can’t figure it out by watching the tutorial video)
Good morning James,
I don’t own but I took a brief look at it, because who can resist taking a look at a new library? 
The first thing to ask probably is whether you the Kontact based or Sine based version?
Assuming it is Sine based, under options there is (supposedly) a Controller Map which shows which MIDI cc are used to trigger features of Sine or patches loaded into Sine. Yah? Knowing what “switches and levers” you want Dorico to “pull” on Sine is maybe more than half the battle. It looks like for example that Sine has just one MIDI CC for “articulation switch”. which would make me think that different values for that CC trigger different articulations as some libraries do with the Mod Wheel. Whether I’m right or wrong, the first part is to experiment with the library and figure out what you need Dorico to do.
Once you have written out on paper (that’s my recommendation) that okay I want Dorico to send the value 0 on midi CC70 for no vibrato, value 20 for light vibrato, value 255 for molto vibrato etc. or whatever on strings - then I think what’s in the Dorico manual will seem a lot clearer.
There is great community here, but I find even for those expression maps that have been shared, that getting what YOU need for YOUR writing makes the (laborous) task of knowing exactly what your library can and can’t do pretty key to then making it do what you want.
Anyway, nice to meet you James.
Hi folk. I agree - I really love this choral library.
I’ve created a playback template for Tallinn SATB choir, which includes expression maps. I should say that I’m by no means an expert at this, so please forgive any faults. That said, this is how it works…
Create a new SATB project, and then import the attached playback template. It will load the Sine VST and assign SATB to channels 1 through 4 respectively. It will also load all the choir techniques in Sine, including syllables long and short, sustains, mmhs, longs, wides, each of which is assigned to a keyswitch. It will also load a Tallinn Choir expression map into Dorico, as well as playing techniques labelled Tallinn Syl., Tallinn Sus., Tallinn Mmh etc. If you go to the Write tab, you will see these new playing techniques appear under the Choral tab on the right. To apply a technique, just click on a note and and then choose a technique to assign. Its name will appear above the staff.
In the expression map, I’ve directed the dynamics to CC1 (dynamics) and CC11 (expression). (So I’m not using Volume to render the dynamics.) On my setup, the choir sounds a bit quiet, so I’ve set the CC1 and CC11 minimums to 50.
This all works for me, and I hope it’s useful for others.
Tony
Hmmm. I’m trying to upload the template, but the forum doesn’t appear to allow template file types to be uploaded. I’ll leave it for now, then. If there’s interest in the template, I’ll find some way to make it available.
3 Likes
Wow! I’d be very interested in your template! Daniel, is there a way he could share this with the community? Thanks so much!
Try compressing the file ( .zip format ) and then uploading that.
Thanks so much, TBB! Can’t wait to try out your template!!
I thought I’d add a quick note about my experience using the Tallinn choir. I still like it a lot, but here are some miscellaneous changes I made to fix some sound issues I had:
-
Because there’s lot of room reverb anyway in the samples, I turned off Fx Reverb in the Dorico mixer
-
The expression map I’d created sent dynamics to CC1 and secondarily to CC11. However, I was getting weird sudden volume changes between Syllables Long and Syllables Short. I traced this to sudden changes in CC11. Anyway, I’ve changed the Syllables Short to not use secondary dynamics (i.e., it doesn’t send to CC11) and this fixed the problem.
-
I found that dynamics are very sensitive to settings in the Sine player. I enabled Soft Low Layer for all choir voices and set the Legato volume to +0.5dB.
I have to say that I find the Sine GUI is not the most intuitive. There are lots of things that can be changed, but it’s not always clear what they do.
1 Like
A quick postscript to my Tallinn Choir post…
- I found that turning off secondary dynamics in Dorico didn’t fix my problem with Syllables Short sounding much louder than Syllables Long. However, adjusting the volume dial in Sine did fix it.
- I also routed the SATB voices through separate channels using the mixer in Sine so that the faders in Dorico worked properly.
- I felt there were too many S syllables, so I turned off all but one in the Round Robin in Sine.
The net of all this is that I’m pretty happy with the result. (A piece I wrote using this library for the voices here.)
If anyone is interested, I’ve attached the Dorico expression map and the Sine config file in the attached zip.
Tony
Tallinn Choir.zip (10.3 KB)
Thank you so much! Can’t wait to try it out!
1 Like