Using NPPE and Dorico, I have noticed that unmeasured tremolos (three or four slashes on whole notes), stutter during rallentando.
This is not a huge issue, but is there fix or workaround? (I actually need to test if the audio renders correctly for offline playback.)
Thanks.
this has come up before and as far as I’m aware, Arne’s recommendation is simply to write out a tremolo longhand if things get really bad such as very strong rallentandos. I spent quite some time with this experimenting with the Playback Options tremolo settings and could never get a reliable way of working. The problem is that NP uses an “internal effect” tremolo over a “nat” base switch rather than simply using the tremolo sample unaltered as would be the case using the library natively which will not be affected by a rall.
of course one idea would simply to add the tremolo to the NP Expression Map with the appropriate keyswitch. Unfortunately that doesn’t work either (just try it!) as NP is designed completely differently with CC’s not keyswitches.
This is interesting because most libraries like VSL have sampled tremolos that would take far less processing than other methods and wouldn’t be effected by tempo changes.
I will just have to omit tremolos during rall. when creating audio, and put them back in for the real score.
if you use a sampled tremolo natively then it works fine in Dorico with gradual tempi changes if programmed in the EM . The issue is NP and not Dorico specifically although one might argue it’s the combination of the two in this case. If you want to use NPPE, you have to accept one or two drawbacks and issues which for me are outweighed by the many positives. And of course it’s possible that future updates of Dorico and/or NPPE may be able to address this specific issue.
This thread might be of some help.
yes – I’d forgotten that NP actually disables this “Consider tempo changes” setting in the EM (why, as it’s obviously wrong?) so of course just changing it in the Playback Options has no effect. It does look like in the current version of Dorico, this is much improved – when I first tested it, it was not so effective. Clearly this is now the best way to proceed.
I replied on the thread quoted above with two questions for @Christian_R:
unfortunately the wording for tremolo features in the Playback Options Overrides screen and the Playback Options is not actually the same which is a bit confusing but ChristianR has correctly identified the relevant section . The second screen is reached from the main EM screen by clicking where shown below.
