The option should be under Playback Options > Timing > Note Duration > Tenuto
Thank you for your reply. I found the settings for tenuto, but not for portato.
So what MIDI signals trigger portato for those? A Key Switch? Have you told Dorico to send that KS?
No midi event, it’s information for how long to play a note, similar to staccato. That is, when the NoteOff event should come.
I remember getting confused right away when trying to figure out what portato meant. It turns out it does depend on context, both in terms of the cultural mileu of the use of the term, it’s musical and instrumental context, and the intended meaning for any particular library.
I have seen it as a non-legato under a slur, a note played full length but not legato, a staccato-tenuto. I have seen it as a slight emphatic. Etc., etc.
It seems to me that one fundamental divide in the use of the term is whether a wind or string instrument is being played.
I have noticed that even between libraries by VSL there is not necessarily consistency in the effect of a Portato articulation. Some have a lightly emphatic attack, others do not.
So, you’ll need some sort of notation to indicate the technique, and then a means of effecting a shorter length note when the notation is active? Yes?
The mark used for portato already exists in Dorico. It is the tenuto mark above a staccato mark. So it would be enough to add a setting for how long to play it, just as there is a setting for how long to play staccato.
There is no playback option for this. You’ll need to fiddle with an expression map. The simplest way is to create a combination entry, e.g.,
You need to ctrl/cmd click both techniques in the expression map editor and then you can set the “Length” percentage to something like 75. That should work.
Edit: There is also a Portato playing technique that is wired to the Portato/Louré playback technique but that technique isn’t represented by tenuto/staccato, rather, just a text direction.
Thank you, this is complicated for me, but I hope to understand what expression maps are soon.
Most players interpret tenuto over staccato as similar to marcato - slighty separated, depending on your instrument. (You say tenuto, I say…)
Portato is noted by a tenuto (or staccato, not both) mark under a bow direction marking (slur) - that is, a separation of notes with no change of bow direction. Which makes me wonder, how does Dorico interpret a bow direction (‘slur’) marking in strings? Portamento I usually see marked with a gliss (straight line) sometimes with ‘port’ or ‘portamento’ attached. You first need to extract it from the olive.
Quite. I had portatoes for dinner last night. 
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… in a spicy portamento sauce.
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A slur is treated as an “Internal Effect: Legato” and each note except the last note of the slur is give a playback duration of 105% to ensure that the notes overlap just slightly.
Not what exactly I wanted to hear - the default mode of string performance is legato, so I was hopping the answer was: nothing. I expect bow change to be highly esoteric thus library specific - how many libraries even have bow change? None? lol. But my usual library over-interprets legato and I have to continue to strip it all out in my DAW.
Adler (Study of Orchestration), pg 18 disagrees:
“If no slurs are marked (non legato), each note requires a change in the direction of the bow […]”
The default of the libraries I own is “Sustain” which I sometimes use for legato…
I was hopping the answer was: nothing.
This is a playback option Library → Playback Option → Timing → Note Durations (change to 100%, hit Save As Default) and your hope becomes a reality.
how many libraries even have bow change?
East West has up/down bow samples and bow-change legato.
I was reading an orchestration book a few years ago, and as with most of them which start with the string section, it quite literally made this mistake a few times in the first chapter, referring in the section on gliss and portamento as “portato,” and in the section on bowing techniques what they meant to be portato as “portamento.”
It was also littered with similar such confusions and incorrect information I know to be wrong as a string player. I ended up tossing the book.
That indeed portends poorly.
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Change of bow direction does not obviate legato. As to Adler, read the next paragraph. An imperceptible, inaudible bow change is legato. The slur mark indicates change of bow direction and duration under the bow. Techniques are there to tell the musician when not to play legato, the default if no other mark is present. The libraries don’t play ‘legato’, they are imposing a portamentoe, as Dan Quayle once famously wrote on a chalkboard.
The problem all these orchestration treatises share is the practical fact that any decent string player can change bow direction without the listener being aware that it has happened.
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No. Default bowing technique for unmarked notes for string players is detaché.
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Of course, and Adler says almost those exact words in the following paragraph.
Tim Davies: “Remember, the default is to connect and play legato, so unless you have told them to play it another way, or there is some other context that would lead them not to play that way, the word is unnecessary.”