I’m working on some horn charts (I’m quite new to Dorico) and after noticing some timing issues with the default samples (the attack of the brass instruments sounds delayed compared to the saxes) I managed to add a delay to the expression maps to get them to sound in time. With the trumpets and tuba delayed by -20 and the trombones by -35 the playback sounds much more in time.
What I’m wondering now is whether there’s any way of saving these settings as default? It’s gonna get very tedious to have to change these settings individually for every single chart. I’ve tried looking at exporting expression maps but that seems to apply only to individual instruments so doesn’t seem like a good solution.
Welcome to the forum!
You’ll need to wrap this into an Endpoint and create a Playback Template. This saves basically everything that has to do with playback (expression maps, VSTs, play(in|back) techniques etc.).
Many of us have experience with this so if you have any additional questions that video doesn’t answer, fire away.
EDIT: This is a series which you’ll find on the Dorico youtube channel.
Thanks for this, although I still can’t seem to manage to get this to work, somehow. This is what I’m doing:
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Add a delay to the trombone sound under the ‘edit expression map’ menu
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Click on the ‘endpoint setup’ button (the cog) and save the endpoint configuration
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Go to ‘playback template’, duplicate the ‘auto’ template and under ‘add manual’ I select the endpoint setup that I’ve just created
If I do all this then open a new file and load the playback template I’ve just made, the delay doesn’t appear in the trombone (under ‘edit expression map’).
Is there something I’m missing?
Make sure your custom endpoint is at the top of the list when editing the playback template (use the arrows to move it up). This will ensure your endpoint is preferred over others below it.
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For your out-of-the-box consideration – different articulations for each instrument will have slightly different attack rise time. Do you have the proper articulation selected, and have you considered adjusting the attack timing in Halion Sonic for the lagging instrument? I believe Dorico SE, Elements and Pro may use different variants of default instruments so my apologies if this advise may not apply to your case.
I tried this but it still doesn’t seem to work. I feel like the next step is to take a deep dive into the manual to try and figure this out, I’m not sure what else to try.
I’m not really sure what you mean by selecting the proper articulation, I haven’t edited anything in terms of playback sounds at all (besides trying to fix this problem) so it should all be on defaults. I get the timing issue regardless of whether I’ve notated the notes with or without articulations (staccatos, accents, etc.)
I was a bit surprised that I got this issue, apart from this everything seems to work very smoothly with Dorico and I’ve been very happy with it so for.
Can you screen grab your Auto template and paste it here, e.g., mine (untouched):
Seem to be the same as yours.
So your new endpoint isn’t included and hence, your custom expression maps aren’t loaded for the respective instruments. You might want to create a new playback template instead of modifying Auto, add your endpoint, then under Automatic, throw in any other endpoints you need, Iconica et al.
Okay, now that seems to be working!
I created a new template, added my endpoint configuration and then added HALion below it. Thanks!
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