Playback control

Dorico
1

Hi,

I’ve been spending a bit more time with Dorico recently and have a couple of questions:

  1. control of playback of individual notes

In ‘Play’ mode I have discovered how to adjust the playback length of individual notes in the piano roll editor by following Anthony Hughes’ video on play mode in 1.1. This has been useful e.g. for a staccato note that was being overshortened on playback.

I’d like to adjust the volume of particular notes (velocity?) or perhaps experiment with midi effects and playing techniques. Looking at this video and the one by John Barron it seems that there is a lot of control possible through the mixer and effects but this affects the entire project, and can’t be controlled on a note by note basis. Is this right?

  1. possible bug in pizzicato playback

In my score (a piano trio) I have a pizz marking, but only the first note is played pizz by Dorico. It then reverts to arco for the next note, even though the arco text isn’t until a few bars later. I looked in the Piano Roll and all the notes do have the playing technique of ‘Pizzicato’ . Has anyone else experienced this, or anything similar?

Thanks,
Govind

2

If you wish you change the default shortening of all staccato notes then you can do this in the Playback Options dialog in Play Mode. You can still modify individual notes in the piano roll if you need finer control.

It’s not currently possible to control the velocity of individual notes yet. We do intend to have support for editing per-note dynamics in the future.

The problem with arco and pizz being ignored under some circumstances is known,and we hope to take a look at it soon.

3

Thanks Paul for the super quick reply.

Great to know that you plan finer control over playback. Is there a workaround for velocities in the meantime, e.g. in Sibelius I could enter dynamics and hide them.I found a suggestion in an old thread “Re: dorico 1.0.20 - signposts for dynamics - not working?” involving setting ‘Show Intensity Marking’ for a dynamic to be off, and setting a prefix/suffix of a single space - is that still the best workaround?

Re the pizz/arco problem, if it’s helpful I’m happy to send my score by email so developers can look at it.

4

I’m not aware of any workarounds, though do try the suggested method to see if it works for you.

The score would be very helpful - please mail to p dot walmsley at steinberg dot de

5

I’ve now managed to fix the pizz/arco problem and this will be in the next update.

6

I know you can’t give an exact date but are you expecting the next major update to be before the end of the year? I think I read there is only one more update before the 2.0 series starts.

7

Yes, we’re hoping to get it out before the end of the year.