Problem with legato microtones playback

Dorico
#1

Hello
I have several microtonal passages that don’t playback correctly when they’re slurred.
For instance, in this case:

Captura de ecrã 2018-12-04, às 20.55.31.png
Captura de ecrã 2018-12-04, às 20.55.31.png941×501 37.9 KB

the 3rd note (in all staves) never plays if they have a slur. It playbacks fine without slurs.
In this example:
Captura de ecrã 2018-12-04, às 20.59.39.png
The second and the last notes of the slur never play.
I’m using HALion Sonic SE.

Thank you

#2

Yes, funnily enough I was just discussing this with another microtonalist, Jude Thomas, the other day. I get the sense a lot of microtonal composers know each other, so perhaps you’re already familiar with Jude. Anyway, the reason this fails is that the legato playing technique for the slur is causing the notes to overlap, and both pitches are played using the same MIDI note, so one note chokes the other. It’s not yet clear why only some combinations of MIDI notes cause the notes to be choked, but they do: this has been discussed previously on the forum in this thread. We have this on our backlog to investigate as soon as it’s practical to do so.

#3

Thank you for your response! As a composer, I’m still a beginner in the area of microtonalism, and since I wanted to start with it that’s why I’m giving Dorico a shot, and so far, and aware of its limitations, I’m very satisfied. The only workaround that I’ve found is to edit the lengths in the Play mode, which is a bit cumbersome but it works so far. For me it’s not a game changer, but I’m glad you’re planning on working on it on the future.

#4

Try changing the global setting for legato notes in Play / Playback Options / Timing / Note Durations, rather than editing individual notes.

The default is 105% which slightly overlaps the notes (some sample libraries use the overlap to change the attack of the notes for monophonic instruments, for legato playback). 99% or 100% might work better for you.

I don’t know if the “humanize the start position” option also changes the end of notes (i.e. if it doesn’t change the length of the note but adjusts both the start and end times) but you might want to switch that off as well, while you are experimenting with the note lengths.

#5

One thing that might be interesting to you, Lucas, is that NotePerformer can play these kinds of legato passages back with microtonality with no problems, so you might want to look into getting NotePerformer. I think it represents great value for money.

My suspicion is that this might be a limitation in HALion, but I need to do a bit more digging and talk to the HALion team to establish it for sure.

#6

Nice suggestions! Will check them out!