Velocity assignments for expressions

I found the result clearly better than the original draft. Although there are a few accents in the dotted rhythms that could be perhaps be brought out more, there is a real weight there – probably the spacious acoustic helps. Out of curiosity I applied my CSS template but saw immediately there would be a lot of work required to get anywhere near this.

Yes, I could have spent a bit more time tweaking the accents and dotted rhythms in the violins, but I didn’t want to spend any more time on it. I can’t really take too much credit for my basic orchestral balance - That is defined my the VSL MIR room pack which has predefined levels for the instruments based on the Vienna Konzerthaus where the impulse responses are derived from. I have moved things around on the virtual stage from the defaults though. What is crucial for the balance is the Velocity Curve Setting in Dorico and how it specifically responds to each VST’s dynamic behavior, and there are several posts about using secondary dynamics in the Expression Map settings etc from dko22 and others to this end. As soon as we have a little more granular control over the specific velocities that are created by the dynamics in the score, this will be even easier to tweak. After much experimentation I have found settings that work without me needing to edit the apparently soon to reappear dynamics lane too much, but each persons setup will be different depending on the specific sample libraries used.

To ebrooks’s point, balancing the orchestra is one of the conductors main jobs of course, and in the recording studio things can be further highlighted including solos. It may be true that this piece is not ideal for this kind of experiment…I have the Kennan book and I will consult the chapter you mentioned out of interest. The challenge when we create mockups of our own pieces is how to notate specific dynamic markings to most accurately reflect how it would sound if it was played by a real orchestra. At least that is partly my lofty goal, in the distant hope that maybe one day that could actually happen. One can always dream…

I forgot that I meant to ask you about this @Grainger2001 - do your violins play specific accent samples from VSL here or do you have Dorico generate accents for you (and I’m not sure if it could be both)?

Actually my first violins are the only non VSL instrument that I use in my orchestral template - they are CSS. I did tweak the accent setting in the playback overrides section of the expression map. I used a setting of 1.5 but I’m not really sure what this actually means….it was trial and error in the end. Other settings are available as a %, but not accents.
VSL does not have an accent articulation as such, but most collections have an sfz and sffz articulation which could work for the accented notes in this situation. If I get chance I will try this technique, maybe with Appassionata Violins.

As far as I understand, a value of 2 is one full dynamic level higher. I tend myself not to use a separate patch for accent in VSL or elsewhere but use accent with the same playing technique just to give more stress. Normally I use closer to 2 (e.g. 1.8) so the difference is clear but not overpowering.

To answer @ebrooks , there’s no reason at all why you can’t use both the inbuilt Dorico accents and a separate patch if a library has a suitable one available. The inbuilt setting works independently of any patch and the same is true of marcato though here there will normally be a suitable patch in the library. I still sometimes make the mistake of forgetting to reduce or zero the marcato because the patch tends to be louder to begin with and adding to it can easily make the dynamic too strong

Thanks - and just to clarify if I’m getting this right - are you saying that Dorico would auto-generate the accents dynamic even if I create a specific playback technique for “accent”?

yes, because Dorico does nothing more than increase the dynamic level by the amount in the settings. There’s no “special sauce” so to speak.