Per-switch delay for note end-time

[RRComposer]

Hello colleagues.

Before Dorico 5.1.40, the per-switch delay in an Expression Map would only offset a note’s start-time.

In this pre-Dorico 5.1.40 thread (October 2023), @dspreadbury wrote the following in a related conversation.

@dspreadbury

I’ve also made a note that we should add an option to apply the delay to the ends of notes as well as to the starts. I know that in e.g. Cubase the track delay option applies to every MIDI event on the track, but things in Dorico are a bit different: it felt to us that the main goal was to adjust onsets to make notes sound at the right moment and not to interfere with the rest of the positions. But it would be possible to add this if required.

However, from Dorico 5.1.40 (to at least Dorico 5.1.51 which I’m currently on), the per-switch delay offsets the note’s start-time and end-time regardless of whether we want it or not. (Dorico_5.1.40_Version_History.pdf)

Playback
Per-switch delay. When the current switch defines a Delay value, Dorico now offsets both the starts and ends of notes in the affected region; previously, only the start of the note was offset. In addition, changes of dynamic played using MIDI CCs are now also offset by the appropriate amount to coincide with the start of the note.

So we don’t have the option that was postulated; the offset of the end-time is now forced.

I can see why offsetting both the start-time and end-time is advantageous in some cases (such as repeated long violin swells, for example, to prevent overlap), but I think there are other cases in which it is not.

I’d been wondering why audio gaps had started appearing in my project. In my case, I have a sample of a guitar string slide into a note (which I had been offsetting via the delay so that the slide “hits” the note on the beat), but now the note stops playing before the next note is played, and an audio gap is created.

Other than manually adjusting the end-times, is there a workaround or another option that I’m missing?

Alternatively, are there any plans to open up both options in future releases? A checkbox for affect end-time also or a textbox for both start-time delay and end-time delay would be grand.

Thank you.

[benwiggy]

Would extending the Length % of the notes in the same Ex map that you add the delay be a possibility?

[RRComposer]

That’s an interesting suggestion, @benwiggy. I hadn’t considered this before, because I assumed that Length % would move the end-time by an amount relative to the note length, as opposed to Delay which absolutely moves the end-time, irrelevant of the note length. This would mean that such a compensation wouldn’t be consistent for all note lengths.

However, after looking into it, I think there is an absolute component to the Length % parameter. Here is a quick passage with Length % = 200% and a doubling tempo at every bar.

You can see that the extension of the “written note duration” is also doubling, so the “real-time duration” extension will be constant (ie absolute), which means that this could compensate for the delay.

However, there’s something strange going on for the last note. For the pattern to continue, I would have expected the “written note duration” to extend to the end of the bar.

I also don’t think that these results are consistent with what is claimed in the help file.

Length %

Allows you to modify played note durations, which overrides the default value; for example, if you want the selected switch to produce short gaps between notes.

• For notes a quarter note or shorter in duration, the value applies to the entire note.
• For notes longer than a quarter note, the value only applies to the last quarter note of their overall duration.

I think I’d like to look into this more deeply, comparing different tempos and “written note durations” to see what aspects are absolute and what are not.

For what it’s worth, here is an example of why this change to delaying the note end-time isn’t working for my guitar string slide.