Hello Dorico team,
I’m having serious problem with creating expression map entries for Muted Brass, for BBC SO Pro.
I’m using two solo horns (with con sord. above) in a project and when I add Muted+Legato for Muted Long, Muted+Staccato for Muted Staccatissimo and Muted+Marcato for Muted Marcato inside the set for Horns and Trumpets, Dorico stops triggering any maps for the Horns.
No way to make them work as exprected…
I will be very thankful if someone is able to help me with this problem!
I was working on this yesterday for a new version of the template and I don’t remember finding an issue - maybe I didn’t try the right combinations.
If you have a Dorico file that shows the issue, please send it to me at j.barron@steinberg.de
Thanks
@John_at_Steinberg hello,
Thank you very much for the reply!
A sample of the problematic project is already sent to you with more information about some other situations. I hope my message will be helpful in order to get more improved BBC SO Playback Template.
Thank you for the hard work!
@John_at_Steinberg hello again,
I would like to ask you something about the next update of the BBC SO Pro template.
Please, think about to provide us a VE Pro 7 compatible template, too. We did such request before here:
In this topic I had asked you to help us with the Divisi and Double Stops (they can be performed Legato) in VE Pro, because it’s a bit tricky job.
I use the three additional articulations plus an extra entry for the standard “long” mute with a slur in case you want the legato marking (obviously there is no actual patch for this). All works OK as far as I can see. Have a look at the screenshot below.
@dko22 hello,
I did exactly the same additional Expression Map entries as you and when Con Sord. text is involved, alongside with other articulations like legato, staccato and accent they just doesn’t work.
I have no idea what is the reason?! Maybe I need to create more specific entries?!
we do seem to be doing the same so I’m a bit puzzled (unless there is a difference with Pro which there shouldn’t be as the articulations are the same) . If John doesn’t get to the bottom of it, perhaps you could post your EM for the Horns and Trumpets and I’ll see if I can find anything strange.
@dko22,
I had already sent a sample testing file to @John_at_Steinberg, last night.
I hope he will be able to figure out how to make it works as expected. Still the first official Core and Pro templates are pretty basic. I hope the upcoming update will include much more entries to cover more available situations which may occur!
Hello colleagues, @John_at_Steinberg had sent to me the updated version of the Expression Maps for the BBC SO Pro (Thank you very much, John!). Now the Muted Articulations work as expected.
Currently the only missing that I have are Combined Techniques like Legato+Thrill( to trigger Thrill patches mid slur, or at the end of legato/slur) and Legato+Muted (which triggers Long Muted). @John_at_Steinberg told me that, in his opinion Legato+Тhrill sounds a little bit dis-joined to him, probably that’s why he left the performance of the thrills to Dorico, which sounds too robotic.
Personally to me Legato+Thrill sounds fine, not dis-joined, but still I decided to investigate a little bit the issue that appears to John. I have noticed that if there is Legato/Slurred passage and Legato+Thrill is involved in the middle, or at the end, the thrilled note is slightly dis-joined in the Play Mode > Played Durations. The tiny midi note overlapping, which is typical for the slurred notes missing.
I suggest a small Feature Improvement here!
When Combined Techniques like Legato+Thrill are involved mid-slur, or at the end of the phrase the triggering of the normal Legato patch should be disabled, but the midi note overlapping must be preserved!
I hope John and the team will think about to improve this situation!
After all when we are using such libraries, like BBC SO Core, Pro, or Orchestral Tools - Berlin Series, we need as much as possible decent sounding Audio Exports which can be then included into a final product.
If we need just to score for live musicians, then we can just use NotePerformer.
Hello. I was going to put together some examples (Dorico and audio) of the trill differences and see what people thought, but if you have time to do the same that would be great. Then we can see if/what we or Spitfire can do about it.
Hello @John_at_Steinberg,
Thank you for the reply!
I will share some some files tomorrow, too.
I had sent a friend request on FaceBook, so we could discuss some E.M. related ideas there, too.
it’s a general rule that with the libraries which include half-decent trills - which certainly include the BBC – you should use them whenever possible as the artificial trills sound exactly that in the vast majority of cases. I agree with Thurisaz here that it’s worth putting entries in the EM for legato+trill and haven’t seen major problems. Of course there is a slight gap between the trill and the next note in the middle of a legato phrase but that seems unavoidable even with a lengthening of the trill or disabling of the legato.
Mute+legato (obviously using the mute+long patch) I have included from the beginning when I updated my map for the new patches and I haven’t found any arguments against it thus far.
Hello dear colleagues,
I hope you are all doing well! @John_at_Steinberg , I am now having an audio issue when loading the BBCSO Pro Template.dorico. Once the project is fully loaded I’m not able to get sound out of Dorico Pro while using the MIDI keyboard. No matter that the Audio Device is properly set, Dorico indicates incoming midi signal and the Spitfire Audio Player indicates that the instrument is actually playing.
I had tried to change my RME Fireface UFX Buffer Size from 256, to 512 and 1024 samples, but nothing helped.
By the way I’d noticed the same issue with other, lighter, projects when I’m trying to insert plugins e.g. Altiverb in the Mixer.
Probably Dorico needs some improvements in order to work fine with heavy projects hosted internally?! That’s the second major reason for me to ask for Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 Template.
I’m using Dorico on Windows Pro 10 1909, HP Z820 2x 8-Core Xeon E5-2670 @ 2.60GHz, 64GB RAM @ 1333MHz. The BBCSO Pro is installed on 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe m2 SSD attached to PCIe via Angelbird PX1 adapter.
I’m curious what you think John’s VEPro PB template would provide which isn’t already available. For my VE Pro config, I have just copied the existing BBC Core setup into it which is based on John’s PB configuration but with some modifications to the Expression Maps . One thing which could logically make a difference is that the integrated version we already have appears to adjust correctly to the instruments used specifically in that project with no unused spaces (if, of course you don’t need any external instruments which is a big if when even something like the cor anglais and bass clarinet are not available in Core).
I get the impression, both from John’s video about VEPro and Iconica and other threads that with VE Pro, you need to create your PB template which will then load in full, irrespective if some of the instruments are not used in a particular project and it’s not possible to “autofit” to slightly different orchestrations using VE Pro. If I’ve got this wrong, then I’d appreciate if someone could explain exactly how it can be done.
I just don’t have time at the moment to make a VEPro template for BBCSO, sorry, but you can use the expression maps to create your own, or maybe dko22 could share their VEPro file as a start for Thurisaz to use?
I don’t think there would be a major advantage in VEPro especially for smaller numbers of instruments as you would need to load all the instruments every time or at last divide them into an instance per family.
Regarding issues with a particular file not playing back, have you tried re-applying the playback template if it’s just that file that has an issue? Or we’d need to see the file to see if we can reproduce the problem I think.
Hello @dko22,
You can find a tutorial using VEPro with BBC SO in Dorico here:
The difficulty in providing a VEPro file is that it is quite personal as you have to define (and so load) a set of instruments in VEPro.
You can use all the instruments or a subset in Dorico, but it really depends on the instrumentation of your score, and if you want to have a big general template in VEPro (depends on your RAM) or a different VEPro file for each of your scores.
I’m not very smart at all and I’m new to expression maps. I’m also a new user of BBCSO Discover and VEPro 7. But there’s great information in John’s existing videos to help people like me. Last weekend I watched the Iconica video where John discusses a setup with VEPro, and also the video “Expression Maps and Playback Templates for BBCSO Discover”. The first 40 minutes of the latter video (before introducing the PB template) gave me incredibly helpful insights. I realize I have it much easier with the Discover version of BBC SO. Even so, I couldn’t have created my VE Pro server project without the resources Dorico provides. It took a few hours, sometime pausing the video after every sentence spoken by John, but by the end I was feeling exhilarated by my modest achievement. I use VE Pro now with Dorico and Logic Pro X. Best of luck to the OP and I wish you every success creating the best setup for your workflow. I have several times dropped hints to my wife to get me a Spitfire Audio gift card so I can upgrade to BBC SO Core, but I’m still waiting… For now I’m happy.
Anyway, the point of my post is to say thank-you to the Dorico team and to offer any sense of encouragement I can provide to the OP.
