What’s up with the way Dorico plays back string tremolos? At least by default, if a line is played tremolo, each note in the line is played so that the dynamic is greatest at the attack, and seems to fade for the duration of the note, creating a “pulsing” effect. This happens even if the phrasing is legato. I don’t think this is a NP issue as it does not happen under Sibelius. Is there a setting (or perhaps a MIDI trigger) that will force Dorico to respect the written dynamic contour of a phrase played tremolo instead of stressing each attack?
I don’t find that at all, I’m afraid. There is a sightly push at the beginning of a tremolo but the dynamic level remains constant with NotePerformer tremolos (which sound horribly synthetic but that’s neither here nor there…). Is it possible to attach a project which demonstrates this? Sampled tremolos from other libraries generally play back fine as well.
Maybe we’re talking about the same thing? In Sibelius, there isn’t even that “slight push” at the attack of a note played tremolo, as long as the notes are connected by a slur. I suspect that push is what I call a “pulsing” effect. If I replace the tremolo by written-out repeated notes, this doesn’t happen, the transition from one note to the next occurs at the same (or a continuously changing, if notated with a hairpin) dynamic level.
And just for clarity, I’m using native NP4 synth strings, not samples.
yes, I was testing with native NotePerformer.
There is a specific timing frequency for tremolos (in Playback options–> timing) where NP changes the Dorico default to 1/5 but the setting here doesn’t affect the dynamics or what you describe. Again I’d say it’s best to attach a project – ideally just a short test one – for checking or you could even do an audio export so we can hear what you’re getting and compare with our own results.
The NP4 user guide has something to say about tremolos in Dorico:
- There may be gaps of silence between subsequent slashed notes .
- ● This is a known bug/behavior . Instead of shortening the individual notes in the tremolo by 85% (default note shortening) Dorico performs a tremolo only for 85% of the note’s written length .
I suspect this is what I’m hearing - each tremolo only lasts 85% of the note, and the effect sounds like a stressed attack when the next note begins in tremolo.
I’m in the middle of trying to separate out the two horns and two trumpets in my score into separate players (they were imported as one player, two staves). If I can figure out how to do that and still have energy left, I’ll create a test project (should be good practice) and upload it.
you might expect that if the note is lengthened (say to 100%) in the key editor that the behaviour might change. However I can confirm that is not the case – there is still an audible gap. Looks like this a sort of bug with NP tremolo implementation in Dorico but whether Arne can do anything about it is anyone’s guess. Some basic sampling of tremolo playing would certainly help get rid of the metallic sound but I guess that the future of NotePerfomer is in the intelligence it brings to 3rd party libraries and I’d be a bit surprised if further significant work was done on the native NP library – after all, Arne himself has said he felt he’d gone about as far as he could.
It sounds as if Arne thinks this is a Dorico bug, so I doubt if he’s even motivated to do anything about it.
(I’m talking about the gap, not the metallic sound, which I suspect is just the way NP synth is and always will be. If the 3rd party libraries didn’t each have a very specialised sound, I’d be more tempted to invest in one of them, but it seems you need to have several and pick between them, depending on the character of the piece.)
you might be right there – I really don’t think a tremolo is something which can be effectively emulated and you really need a sample library for decent tremolos. The NP ones – including in Sibelius – really stick out like a sore thumb. It may be Arne will see the thread and chip in but if it’s not possible to match the NP tremolos to Dorico’s algorithm for emulating them, then there may not be much progress. Of course Dorico itself may well improve its tremolo handling in the way that synthetic trills have gradually refined over the versions.
One possible workaround if you’re desperate is to use a trill with an interval of 1 so it stays on the same note instead of a tremolo . This sounds a little better to me. I not infrequently find that in these sort of situations, you need one staff for the notation (with “suppress playback”) and another hidden one below for the playback but you might want to leave this powerful tool a little until you’re more familiar with the basics.
by the way, you may have seen the parallel thread about NotePerfomer completely messing up tremolo (or trill) playback during gradual tempo changes like rit. which you’re bound to come across sooner or later. The trouble is here that the NP Expression Map – quite incorrectly it would appear --overrides the default Dorico setting in Playback Options to “play tremolos at constant speed during tempo changes”. It’s necessary to reactivate it in the EM Playback Options overrides. Things then work much better.
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Yes, I have no idea how to create a hidden staff that contains “hacks” to tweak the playback, vs. the displayed notation - that sounds like a powerful tool. There is nothing like that that I know of in Sibelius - and people have commented on the weird note lengths in my scores, such as triple-dotted 8th notes, to produce a small gap between notes that there is no supported notation to produce. Obviously in Dorico the played back note lengths can be edited in the Key Editor, a much friendlier and more flexible way to do the adjustment - though I’ve wondered whether and how adjusting that can interact with NP’s dynamic shaping of the note and the phrase it’s in (my reading of Arne’s comments is that NP actually looks ahead in the score to be able to do that).
I saw the thread but didn’t read it - thanks for the heads-up.