I know this sort of thing has been discussed before but I remain rather confused as to the simplest procedure in the following situation (with potentially other similar ideas to follow): I have a patch called performance trills. This means that the trill must be written out in full and a new p.t called simply “trill” be created to use the appropriate patch. So far so good. For the notation, however, I simply want to use the normal notated trill. Not sure if a new temp staff needs to be created for a new instrument and one of them hidden --of course only for the single trill note(s) – or if there isn’t something much more elegant and simple which I’ve entirely forgotten about?
As far as I know, there are two options for trill playback : a generated trill by Dorico (which sends the signals describing the notes to the VSTi) or a trill message sent, if you have a vsti that has that playback technique for trills. It seems to me like the first option would be the best for you, since you would not have to explicitly write out the trill.
I think Marc is right. Let Dorico generate the notes, and add a hidden playback technique to switch on your performance trill option. You can control the speed of the trill notes in Dorico, including speed changes if you want, and it is smart enough to tweak the speed to make the end of the trill match up correctly with the following note and/or grace notes.
Sorry, I don’t quite get this, guys. To allow the performance trill option to do its stuff, playback must be active. If playback is active then it automatically overwrites anything from the specific performance trill p.t I have defined. This is not the same as, for instance, how I deal with portamenti where it is fine to switch off the Dorico generated one and substitute the p.t — here if you do this then only the single note will remain as there is only one in score. Is it possible I’ve overlooked something here?
UPDATE
actually it gets stranger. It seems that generated trills automatically call the default legato patch. This is across the board in VSL irrespective of instrument, library or expression map. Is it the same for all VST’s (assuming of course there is a mapped legato patch)? Ironically this mean that in my particular example that a generated trill automatically calls the performance trill because the legato patch includes speed control which moves to performance trills for fast speeds. In other words, it works without doing anything at all!
Hi dko22,
I think there must be something slightly awry with your custom playing techniques. I use generic PT’'s that have no relationship to the actual articulation and which I consequently then hide in the score. I tried using the Performance Trill Patch from the VSL Solo Strings and was able to successfully trigger it with my custom PT and and it worked as expected. Dorico generated a wonderful trill and nothing was over-ridden. I do not have anything named ‘trill’ in my list of custom PT’s, however. I’m not sure whether that would make a difference. For the regular pre-recorded trills from VSL I do suppress the trill sign, otherwise like you, I get the trill sample being trilled. I wish I could do the same with tremolo’s, but unfortunately you cannot suppress them at present. My solution there is to create a ‘Staff below’ and program things on there, hide it and then suppress everything on the staff that will appear in the actual score. I would try creating a new PT called ‘b1’ for example, and try using that to trigger the performance trill patch…and maybe try deleting your PT named ‘trill’. Hope that helps, but maybe you’ve figured it out by now or I’ve also misunderstood the problem. All I can say for sure is that it works at my end as expected, so it should hopefully work for you too.
Hi Andy,
the interesting thing here is that this now works as I’d originally intended by doing nothing more than activating generated trills which switches to my default legato patch which in turn activates the performance trills through VSL’s speed automation. No p.t’s or anything.
On the wider issue, your suggestion of creating a “staff below” is exactly what I had in mind but couldn’t remember what it was called or where to find it. This gives the following for the relevant bars 40 and 41.
One issue stands out. Hiding the staff creates a system break automatically. Creating a system break means that a single bar takes the entire line I don’t want a system break but don’t seem to be able to delete it without undoing the hide. What’s the best way to avoid breaking the formatting in this situation?
Yeah, sometimes overthinking the problem doesn’t help to solve it 
The “legato” playing technique probably works simply because it overlaps the notes by a small amount. Many libraries allow a simplified keyboard playing technique to play trills “live”, where you hold down the lower note and repeatedly tap the upper one. That is much easier for non-keyboard players to do than playing a “proper” keyboard trill evenly at the required speed, and it is similar to the actual playing technique for a trill on string or wind instruments.
Hi David,
When you create a ‘staff below’ you should then use ‘remove staff’ from the same menu rather than hiding it using staff visibility. This will not mess with the formatting. One of the cool things in Dorico is that anything on the staff you remove, persists. Of course you must be careful not to leave anything on this removed staff that you don’t want, but I personally find this feature very useful. Fortunately there is always a signpost to remind one of this +1staff. Glad your trills are working as expected!
You don’t have to create the extra staff for just one bar. Create it and hide if for the whole flow if you want. That won’t create any system breaks in places you don’t want them.
Actually, when you remove a staff the signpost will be -1 staff, not +1 staff.
this is totally counter-intuitive. If you remove a staff, you expect the contents to go with it. But no, they seem to stay just as you say. And Rob’s idea is equally functional. Many thanks to both!
PS as I’d rather expected, my “magical” legato is not infallible as it didn’t switch in this fairly old little switch test project. Reason is not using a NoteLength map. When I switch to my new EM, it works as before though I remain slightly puzzled as I don’t have a normal=legato defined. Anyway, this is rather academic as I am unlikely to use the old maps for actual work any more.
I think the logic behind not deleting the music when your remove the staff is for situations where you genuinely have different numbers of staves for an instrument in different parts of the score (e.g. in a modern keyboard score) and you want to adjust which staves are visible. You don’t want a “partial edit” which temporarily hides a staff to delete the music on it, when the next edit is going to make it visible again.
Using the “remove staff” option for hidden playback staves was just a useful side effect, and there is now an “official” way to hide staves that contain music - i.e. manual staff visibility changes.
ok, sounds like a good explanation to me.