I am constantly fighting the nonsensical ways in which piano velocities change throughout a score. I’ve experimented with the Playback Options regarding Dynamics but can’t seem to override what’s going on. My biggest problem is that the piano part starts out with velocities around 70, then around half-way through the velocities drop down to around 45 and continues that way, then it recovers somewhere near the end. I have one mp dynamic marking at the beginning and no hairpins. I did notice that the abrupt change happens after that up-stem voice on top shown in the screen print. BTW - on playback, that 16th note line will be very loud or very soft, seemingly randomly. I’m just going for playback here, so I don’t care about the engraving and any adjustment would be fine. Any ideas?
Hi @Steve_225, did you try deactivating Playback options >Dynamics>Polyphonic Instruments>Use automatic polyphonic instrument voice balancing?
Thanks! Yes, if I deactivate voice balancing the immediate lowering of velocity after the fill goes away but then everything sounds like banging. Dorico normally does a decent job of bringing out the melody (which I have on top) and the other balancing, it’s just that my fill voice appears to take over as the melody line and then all subsequent voices get quiet. I tried other voices for the fill, but the problem persisted. My workaround is to put the fill in the melody voice and let the pedal do the work of sustaining the melody. Then the abrupt changes go away.
Hi @Steve_225, it would be very interesting if you could upload just a couple of bars of your Dorico project (as a duplicate file) that still show the unexpected behaviour. Maybe there are other ways to obtain what you need.
Well, when I change the voice back to what is was I can’t recreate the problem. I have my melody in up-stem voice 1 and the right hand fills in down-stem voice 1. When I added the little fill above the melody I made it up-stem voice 2. That voice seems to have taken over as melody and everything after that got quiet (velocity-wise)… until playback hit a similar up-stem voice 2 later in the song and reset the velocities back to normal!
Here’s a score that does something similar.
With You Sheet Music.dorico (1.5 MB)
Check out measure 23 - you suddenly can’t hear the melody (only the bass clef line). I also noticed that the default Concert Grand Elements piano patch is really nice but way too quiet at the default mixer level. Dorico Pro 6.
Well, as pianist I would probably also bring out the Bb-C-Bb line in the left hand (as Dorico is doing in bar 23), but if you would like the upper line of the right hand to be always the “melody”, yo just need to increase the slider Likelihood of melody being at top (as I suggested in my previous screenshot):
Yes, the inner lines are generally far too soft, however, tweaking the settings as you suggested seems to be the solution. Thanks for your help.