Hello, I’m not using note performer, just full Halion library that comes with Dorico 3, but having the same problem with arco to pizz playback:
In the double bass, it’s arco for a few bars from the start, only playing technique messages are ‘tasto’ (my own addition) and ‘non vib,’, but when we get to pizz, it still plays arco. two screen shots attached of the score and the play/midi score views
I tried to solve it by adding nat. in the rest before the pizz as suggested above and elsewhere. This didn’t work, it’s also not useful for other places where I don’t have a rest before the change.
I deleted the midi note while in play mode, as I could see that the playing technique was still nat. despite there being a pizz. message in the score. Weirdly, as there was a second pizz note, the pizz instruction extended from the second forward to the position of the first (despite it now being a rest), then when I wrote back in the first note, it played correctly - but only once… now it’s broken again.
If this problem/bug is trivial, and known, when can it be fixed?
I believe you’ll find that if you select the “non vib.” playing technique and set the ‘Suppress playback’ property in the Common group, the pizz. will start playing without the need for the hidden ‘nat’.
It’s all to do with the knowledge Dorico has about the different dimensions of playing techniques, and whether they can be added on top, or whether they need to replace the ones that are already there. This is something that musicians understand pretty easily based on their learned experience, but which is a bit harder to codify for a computer. Dorico doesn’t know from first principles that, say, arco and pizz. can’t be played at the same time, which is why those playing techniques have to be defined as mutually exclusive with each other in the expression map. Adding “non vib.” should ideally make no difference to playback if no playing technique is defined in the current expression map, but when you write “non vib.” in the score, that’s added to the set of active playing techniques, so when it then comes across “pizz.”, it’s actually looking for “non vib.+pizz.”, and it won’t find that. It likewise doesn’t know that of those two instructions, “pizz.” is more important than “non vib.”, which is something we would all understand, and if it can’t find the requested combination, it will fall back on nothing.
We have plans to enrich Dorico’s understanding of this, and to provide the user with greater control by creating further ways to disambiguate these kinds of instructions, so that Dorico will be able to understand that things like vibrato are in a sense unrelated from the macro-level playing technique that specifies whether to use the bow or to pluck, etc.
In the meantime, there are a number of ways you can approach this, if you wish. Suppressing the playback of a playing technique that has no audible effect is one. Inserting a hidden “nat.” is another. Defining a combination in the expression map that produces the desired sound, e.g. duplicating the existing “Pizzicato” entry but making it use the combination “Pizzicato + non vibrato” is another. Adding “non vibrato” and “pizzicato” to the same mutual exclusion group is another.
Regarding showing multiple playing techniques in a single line, there’s not a great way to do this at the moment. We have the beginnings of an implementation of this, but it’s not exposed to the user at the moment. I think the way it would probably work is that multiple grouped playing techniques at the same position could appear as a comma-separated (or space-separated) list. In the meantime, you might find it preferable to use Shift+X text for some of these instructions, particularly if they don’t currently have any effect on playback.
Thanks very much for the detail explanation Daniel. Actually playback is not so important to me - distinguishing arco/pizz is perhaps as far as what I need (i.e. no need for pont or vib playback).
shift+X text will work for now for multiple instructions but I look forward to it being part of playing techniques popover in the future sometime.
I’ll play around with the playback commands until it actually plays a pizzicato on the first appearance of the command. It’s a bit of a pain though when the idea is so simple.
It’s quite easy to show these sorts of multiple simultaneous PT. Add then second one at a different rhythmic position (in note input), then exit note input and move it to the correct spot using Alt-arrows.
In the example below, I added “non vib” as a (custom) PT to the second beat, then moved it back to the downbeat.
Personally, I always prefer to enter these sorts of things as PT instead of plain text.
Leo, the point was that sometimes putting a PT on a rhythmic position erases the one that was already there. This is a solution for those situations. Maybe the example I posted works, but others don’t.
Only conceptually is the idea simple. It kind of highlights that for all a computer’s speed of calculation, the human mind of a trained player is making uncountable minute adjustments every moment. Both the Dorico software and the capabilities of the live player are a marvel to contemplate.
And I add my thanks to those who appreciate Daniel’s explanation of what is going on under the hood (beneath the bonnet?) of Dorico’s PT system.
Coming back to this issue of arco to pizz, I still have the specific problem that in my project every time I give the double bass a pizz after an arco passage, it only plays the note after the instruction as a pizz. See attachment for screenshot. nb the ‘ord non vibr.’ is just default text, it’s arco before that.
I’ve played around with deleting all the playback text for the instrument, using a nat. at the opening as Daniel suggested, but this problem persists.
If I start a new project with string quartet and make the first note arco and second pizz it plays back fine. Is there something wrong in my files, perhaps?
I’d be grateful for a solution for correct playback as I need to send off a rough audio sample, and without pizz as written it sounds terrible. This and a few other things are testing my patience with Dorico when sib 6 did it fine.
Also, while I’m here, another niggle. The default vertical position of playback technique text is too low (why is it set so low?), but when you offset it by 1 point I notice that adjacent text instructions are not aligned with one another e.g. pizz looks higher than arco presumably because the p in pizz extends the lower border of that text item further down, meaning 1 point change cause it to seem higher than arco. ––Is there a way around this? Again it seems like a minor detail but I don’t want to have to tweak things by hand each time - especially as there is no object ruler function (still?)
You’re welcome to post the file here and let one of us fiddle with it.
Regarding the niggle: it does seem Dorico calculates from the furthest extender, not the baseline. And no, you can’t alter the offset of the PT. I tried.
Following up on this, sorry but it’s a real pain right now…
I’m still having a bit of a nightmare with arco and pizz playback in my first full project since switching to Dorico, just using the HaLion SE package that comes with Dorico 3. In a nutshell it comes down to two things:
pizzicato playback not working or occurring randomly - this is despite much work with trying to use the nat. and other hidden messages as suggested above.
pizzicato playback not working with pizz + tenuto or other markings on the first pizz message for an instrument.
if someone from the team would be willing to look at my project I’d be grateful. I get the feeling it’s screwed up somewhere - if I inspect the playing technique channel in the play view - many instruments seem to do their own thing, it’s as baffling as it is tediously frustrating (never an issue on Sib6).
I’m not after very high quality playback (Dorico can’t do all the techniques I might use anyway (col legno tratto, harmonic glissandi, or just regular glissandi haha)), just decent enough to send off as samples to conductors, producers etc.
You can send the project to me and I’ll gladly take a look. Email me at d dot spreadbury at steinberg dot de. Be sure to be specific about where the playback doesn’t match what you expect to hear.
It may or may not be relevant here (TL;DR) but In my experience, many seem to forget that, as things stand, Dorico requires (combinded) technique entries for every possible combination. E.g. pizzicato affecting a note that has a Staccato marking will require a dedicated entry for ‘Staccato + Pizzicato’ in the expression map in order to behave properly…
I am also having this problem. Trying to reset the expression map to factory settings doesn’t help. I’m on Note Performer. Does it have to do with the use of microtones? Also I can’t attach a Dorico file to the forums?
