Hey all,
Ok having a problem with expression maps. I downloaded the Babylonwaves Cubase Expression Maps (latest version)
I created a new score
Added 1 Violin 1
Went to play mode and instantiated BBCSO and loaded the violin 1 patch.
Went to Expression maps and loaded the Violin A
Went back to play mode and clicked on the gear and made sure it said violin > SFSCO violin expression map
clicked save end point config. All good.
I created 8 measures populated them with some notes and playing techniques (legato, colegno, pizz)
8ā¦ Doesnāt work it wonāt trigger anything.
Created my own and only used Col Legno, legato, pizz.
Recreated the above steps using my newly created expression maps
It works WOW it worksā¦ NOPE.
The problem I am having is as follows.
4 quarter notes in measure 2. First two have been tagged with Col Legnoā¦ Second two have been tagged with pizz.
In play mode if you reveal the playing techniques lane you get erratic behavior. Sometimes the very first playing technique is labeled for every note. Sometimes the only way you can change it is by changing the note value.
Right now Pizzicato is the only articulation that can be switched on.
Ideas?
Dorico (latest version)
Spitfire BBCSO (latest Version
Mac Pro trash can
You can import Cubase expression maps, but not everything in the Cubase map is implemented in Dorico.
Hoping that a set of Cubase maps which claim to support ā34,860 Articulations, 3,882 Templates, 213 Supported sample Librariesā will ājust workā in Dorico is cough optimistic.
liquidDorito, as far as I know youāre the first person whoās tried to use these expression maps with Dorico. Iāve never set eyes on them myself, so Iāve no idea how theyāre set up, but I would be very surprised if they ājust workedā with Dorico. One crucial missing piece, for example, will be the lack of mutual exclusion groups, i.e. letting Dorico know which particular expressions cannot be used in combination with each other. You might find that setting up some simple mutual exclusion groups get some things working, but Iām afraid I have no experience of working with these expression maps, so I canāt say.
Is there any way of either Steinberg or Spitfire Audio creating a dedicated expression map for Dorico and BBCSO? If not, could I have some guidance on how to create one myself? In addition, could you also label the MIDI CCs with the corresponding parameters, rather than just the numbers (port, vibrato etc.) because it makes the software unnecessarily difficult to use otherwise?
P.S. I donāt own Cubase (although I wish I did!).
We donāt have any plans to produce an expression map for Spitfireās BBC Symphony Orchestra library, but we would be happy to provide support to our friends at Spitfire if they wanted to have a crack at it.
Iāve been having the same problem in Cubase with the BBC library the last week since Iāve bought it but I just managed to solve the problem.
It was quite simple but not so obvious: C-2 in Cubase is recieved as C-1 in the BBC plugin. So if you set all your trigger notes in the expression map one octave down from the keyswitch you want to trigger in BBC it will work.
In the expression maps in Dorico the lowest note I can enter is C-2, but Spitfireās BBCSO still thinks that is a C-1.
If I enter a ā0ā in keyswitch actions in expression maps it gives me a C-2, entering -12 in expression maps still gives me a C-2 midi note for keyswitching.
I just canāt get it to work.
I tried transposing in the spitfire player, that didnāt work.
I tried switching middle C to C4 and C5 from C3 in expression maps but that didnāt do anything.
Did you have to switch all the keyswitch settings for each instrument in each instance and keyswitch of the Spitfire player? Thatās the only way I can see it working right now and thatās a lot of programming.
I can get keyswtiching to work fine in Digital Performer but canāt get it to work at all in Dorico.
Hello dear colleagues,
Well, still the Expression Maps, and the overall playback in Dorico, needs serious improvement. I have already warned that
the need of creating of Mutual Exclusion Groups and Combined Playing Techniques should be replaced with normally working
playback system, which doesnāt ask the users to create something more than simple KS, CC or Prog. Change, to the articulations
available in the library patches. Everything else should happen automatically.
Daniel promised that they are going to improve this side of Dorico, to work better. So, we need to be patient. The Team will
make it works as it should.
gzapper, I donāt have access to the BBCSO player here on my home Mac, but you need to make sure that you follow the same convention for which octave number is used for middle C. Middle C is either C4 or C3, depending on the whim of each manufacturer. This is why thereās a switch in Play > Expression Maps to allow you to specify whether you think of middle C (MIDI note 60) as octave 4 or octave 3. Although you can move the octave in which the keyswitches are located in the BBCSO player, there will no doubt be a default octave, so you should use that in your expression map.
I think my issues with the BBCSO expression map from Cubase are much deeper. Iām digging deeper into the manual to see if I can understand it all and make it work.
First, yes, setting Middle C to C4 does put it in the right range. There are a lot of other issues with the cubase expression map that made it so it just seemed not to work.
For instance, the cubase expression map doesnāt have a ānaturalā technique for strings, so it wasnāt switching back to a default key switch.That just confused me and I thought it wasnāt sending the right range for keyswitching. So that means adding in more techniques and as you noted above, putting in exclusion groups. Thatās taken a bit of reading of the manual to see how it works.
I spent a few minutes trying to figure out why I canāt add āarcoā in expression maps but now realize that I donāt need to as Dorico already sends the ānaturalā key switch when āarcoā is notated. Hopefully Iāll figure out all of that as I go. But Iām not clear where those instructions lie in the program, so its a bit of a hit and miss.
The BBCSO has really nice monophonic legato patches which work great as ānaturalā unless youāre righting double stops or chords for your sections. Not sure how to do that other than specify ālongsā or another playing technique that does the key switching.
Essentially it means Iām really starting over with the cubase BBCSO expression map. Iāll give it a stab and if its working well enough Iāll post it back up here for others to check. Assuming that I can even run the full sample library on my 16gigs of laptop ram.
Thanks for your help and hope youāre keeping healthy in these weird times.
Endpoints - It looks like I can save endpoints but canāt figure out where you could load them from. (playback templates?)
if they are for playback templates, can you save master endpoint that stores all instruments? BBCSO uses a separate player for each instrument, which means way too many VIās and endpoints to save
Expression maps - are they project specific only? Once I build a BBCSO expression map its not available in any other projects?
will it show up after a playback template is saved? Not sure the hiererarchy.
Playback templates - is this really the way that it should be built? Does a payback template include expression maps and endpoints?
And if this is the way, then you have to load a full instrumentation at once and canāt just add instruments and their expression maps?
they are a bit tricky to edit, I accidentally clicked twice on a template and erased a days work
Currently, there are two levels of granularity when saving Endpoint Configurations: you can save the configuration for a single entry in the plugin rack, via the Endpoint Setup dialog, or you can save the configuration for all plugins at once (via the icon at the bottom of the VST Instruments panel). This is just the first phase that creates the ābuilding blocksā. The next part is that you combine the endpoint configurations together to create a Playback Template. This gives you the flexibility of using one plugin for strings, one for wind, etc, or maybe you want to use a dedicated cello plugin for a solo player, but then render everything else with NotePerformer - thatās pretty trivial to set up.
In terms of how to create endpoint configurations, this depends on the size of the ensemble, the combination of instruments and whether a single plugin plays multiple instruments or just one. If you commonly write for one particular ensemble size (eg āFilm Orchestraā, āString Quartetā), then I would suggest creating a Dorico file as a master template, and set up all the plugins and expression maps in that document as you wish, and then export the endpoint configuration for all plugins at once. If you write for a variety of different ensemble types, then a better approach may be to create several template files, each with a separate section: brass, wind, strings, and then you can combine these together when creating and endpoint. This I think is the most flexible approach, and also means that if you have a score with (eg) a few more horn players than normal then it doesnāt create way more plugin rack entries than it needs to.
Itās currently not possible to edit Endpoint Configurations (thereās not much thatās editable within them - for the most part theyāre just a dump of the state of the VST plugin itself), however, I think that you may find old Playback Templates may be in the Recycle Bin/Trash, so check there if you think you may have lost work.
I had actually watched that video but probably forgot chunks as I was trying to get into expression map programming. It was good to watch through it and confirm the process.
Really the hierarchy is:
Playback templates
Endpoint configurations
Expression maps
So when people ask for expression maps really they should ask for shared playback templates, since it includes so much more programming and expression maps. That makes the entire process much clearer.
It also makes it clearer how I should have programmed exclusions in expression maps though there is still one level of programming there that isnāt entirely clear to me. In the video the example of picking āpizzicatoā and ābowedā are shown. Between ābowedā as a technique and āarcoā as a written instruction is one level of instructions that isnāt entirely clear. I had looked for āarcoā in expression maps and just didnāt program it in since I couldnāt find it, but understand that the term ābowedā covers this and other techniques now. Similarly there isnāt āmulti tongueā as an option or ātonguedā so wasnāt sure what to pick in expression maps. That leaves me with a bit of guesswork, unfortunately.
This is all because the program works so well, I have to say. I would have normally just written charts and suffered through poor playback but now that this is even possible Iām considering writing cues directly into Dorico. Thatās kind of amazing.
Apologies that itās not obvious about the relationship between nat, arco and bowed. āArcoā is the name of the Playing Technique object in the score, which triggers a Bowed Playback Playing Technique (aside: we may rename these just āPlayback Techniquesā to make this very slightly clearer). The Bowed technique is an alias for the āNaturalā technique. In Expression Maps the first step is to create the entry for āNaturalā, and then add pizz, legato, etc.
Weāve tried to cover as many bases as possible with the set of underlying Playback Playing Techniques, but the set wonāt be complete. Not all of them have corresponding score objects in the Playing Technique panel, however this still allows you to define your own desired P.T. appearance but trigger a known Playback Playing Technique (and if you canāt find one thatās suitable you can create your own too). I can see that we define Double Tongue, Triple Tongue, Flutter-tongue, Slap Tongue, Tongue and Finger Click, Tongue Click, Tongue Stop. But not ātonguedā or āmulti-tongueā. Iād suggest that you select one that seems the closest - in most cases it doesnāt really matter unless you are sharing expression maps and playback templates with other users.
Iāve been plugging away at BBCSO expression map and have it working pretty well but not perfectly. The library is really too much for my 16b gig macbook pro and it takes a good 5 minutes for it to load up enough to work, but when it does its really very satisfying. The library sounds great and the samples really do represent realistic playback, like ppp on brass not as quiet as on strings, in ways that really are closer to balancing instruments by dynamics and parts realistically. Its probably close enough share with those who would want it, and maybe with some community work it could plug the wholes Iāve missed.
There are still issues that I havenāt figured out, some playing techniques just wonāt show up in the techniques lane in the Play window for parts. So far its cuivre, flautando and harmonics. Iām pretty sure its not exclusive techniques issues, but not positive. And there is a bit of taste in choosing which way to represent some techniques, as in sometimes the marcato sample isnāt as nice as Doricoās interpretation, but in some settings it is. But overall its really much more satisfying to write and hear good playback.
The correlation between Playback Playing Techniques and Playing Techniques is still a bit tricky, I havenāt really used ālegatoā as playing technique, instead its just the ānaturalā setting which is fine as long as Iām not writing double stops. Choosing a tongue technique is a bit of guesswork and its just something to be aware should the parts go to players. I donāt know if its possible, but a chart of aliases might be handy.
In the Expression Maps window I wish there was a button to fire off messages to test your programming instead of having to go write some examples, play them and watch the plugin window to see its working.
If anyone else is interested in my still fairly rough but mostly working BBCSO expression map, message me.
Weāre aware that thereās a lot more to do on expression maps, and we hope to address some of the shortcomings in the future. In terms of the aliases, thereās really only a very small number. Legato is used under a slur, Con Sordino is mapped to muted. Flautando text should map to the flautando playing technique. Notes with the Harmonic property set should map to Natural Harmonics 1 (Natural Harmonics 2 isnāt used at the moment).
Spitfire just announced reduced versions of this library which may make it more responsive. Their core library is probably perfect for scoring.
If I use ādouble tongueā for the spitfire āmulti tongueā sample, does that mean with the aliases that if I use any of Triple Tongue, Flutter-tongue, Slap Tongue, Tongue and Finger Click, Tongue Click, Tongue Stop then Dorico would fire that spitfire āmulti tongueā sample?
).
So, we need to be patient. The Team will