Velocity not matching dynamics and Articulation has weird drone sound

Dorico
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1

Hi!

I’m using Dorico 3.5 and have a couple of weird bugs going on with my playback and would love some help figuring this out.

First,
The velocity does not match the dynamics I put in when playing back. I’m using the sound patches that Dorico comes with as well (HALion Sonic SE.) I’ve tried tinkering with expression maps, playback options, and playback template but nothing works. On the playback window, the dynamic panel looks to be working fine as well as the MIDI CC, but the velocity is stuck to 100 for every note. I’ve had this issue for quite a while and I find that setting the velocity for each individual note helps realize the playback better, but this is extremely time consuming and tedious, and as I understand it, Dorico should be doing this for me already.

Second,
Whenever I implement articulations on wind and string instruments, along with the articulations it plays back a loud low drone sound from the instrument. It works on piano and percussion though.

I’ve had Dorico 3.5 for two years now and always had these issues, I’m just now getting to finding help for these issues. Could this be something wrong with the files I downloaded when setting up Dorico? I ended up steering away from articulations in my pieces because of the play back which is not ideal and I’d like to start including them again.

Thank you!

2

Welcome to the forum.

Velocity will only match dynamics for instruments that only respond to velocity (eg Piano)

This suggests you are using the wrong Expression Maps for those instruments (the low drone is a keyswitch)

If you post an example of a problem score, we can offer specific help.

3

Thanks Janus,
Still new to the forum, by posting a problem score do you mean posting the file to a score or a screenshot?

4

Is there a way to get the velocities to follow the dynamics, or is the only option to manually set each note? I’m just trying to understand if its a problem with the sound patches or the playback

5

Upload the project file (you can cut it down to just a few bars that show your difficulties, if you don’t want to share much of your work!)

Either use the upload button or drag the file onto the reply box - the forum accepts the .dorico filetype

6

chord orchestration class practice (score).dorico (1.3 MB)
this is just an example from homework for class. But it shows everything I’ve been talking about

7

Yes, you have mismatched expression maps and instruments (just one example… there are many)

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I would not expect a trombone to respond to the timpani instructions!!!

The simple solution is to reapply your Playback Template (Play>Playback template…)

8

…nor would I expect a trombone to be beaten by a timpani mallet. (Now a trombonist, on the other hand…)

9

How strange is that!! :joy:

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forgive me, all of this is very confusing to me. I have dorico 3.5 and don’t have the track inspector in my play window (at least I don’t think I do.) Is there a way to view this on 3.5? And when I select Playback Template I get this window. Is there a specific one I should press? And also, each one I press causes the whole playback to not work. Sorry for the load of questions.

10

IIRC on 3.5 most of the stuff on the right side of your Play tab is now located on the left. However, there should be a little cog symbol that shows the expression maps applied to each instrument.

That said, applying the template you highlight should reset all your sounds.

(Upgrading to Dorico 5 is definitely worth it!)

11

Thank you!! I am seeing this now and wow there are so many mismatched ones :joy:! The update looks great and I’m investing into getting it. As for the velocity and dynamic question, is there a way to match velocities to the dynamics without manually inserting them for each note. I really appreciate your help and for your quick replies

12

You don’t need to manually adjust the velocity of each note. Indeed, you should definitely not do that if you want Dorico to play the written dynamics by itself. Use Play > Reset Playback Overrides to remove the overrides you’ve already made (though note that this will remove start/end offsets as well as velocities: if you want to remove only velocities, you can do that by deactivating the Velocity property in the Properties panel).

Once you’ve got the right expression maps chosen for each instrument, you should find that simply writing the appropriate dynamics in the score achieves the expected playback.

13

Thanks! Dynamics and Articulations are working perfectly now! Changing the expression maps to default on all the instruments in the endpoint setup cured everything :slight_smile: