Daniel, I hate to create a new thread to ask this (though maybe I should because I don’t see much about it here on the forum). I apologize if this has been covered somewhere, but I haven’t found it. Could you point me toward some documentation (videos or pdf) about exclusion groups. It is completely unclear to me how these work. If I put a marking in the score, let’s say Pattern Legato since we’ve used it already, what does the exclusion group look like? I have experimented with it, but I still find that I have to put nat. in the score to make the patch change.
I have a lot of libraries, and I am hard-pressed to think of an example where I would need to activate two techniques simultaneously. Most times, I think that this would be handled with an Add-on technique and not a Base technique, i.e. some libraries have an additional switch for con sordino. 99.9% of the time, I only want the patch triggered by the keyswitch. What do I write in the two columns (Mutual Exclusion Groups, Has Techniques) to make sure that I get the technique in the keyswitch and ONLY that technique?
quite a number of people do, in fact, use a fair number of combinations in their maps. In a lot of cases it’s pretty pointless because there is no specific patch available in the library for such combinations and, like you, I seldom see much point in using two written playing techniques together. Two articulations – in other words the markings found in the Dorico palette – can be used together, though, in certain circumstances. For instance portato is usually notated as a slur+staccato so this is a combination which corresponds to a single technique.
The other thing is combine a p.t with an articulation. This is often a written instruction together with a legato. Again, there is not often a specific patch for something like this in the library’s articulations but you may want to notate it, in which case you would want to define the combination in the Expression Map. However, a situation where there is a background state like vibrato, con sord, divisi 1 etc, you are quite right that a an Add-on technique should be used wherever possible – it should be clear in the library if this is appropriate.
As you obviously understand a good deal of the principles, I’m a bit puzzled by the difficulties with exclusions. You just think of a name for the type of articulations you wouldn’t want to combine under any circumstances and add them in the right-hand column. I’ve given a an example below.
There are no rules – it’s simply what seems logical to you. For instance “vibrato” and “non vib” could form a group called “vibrato” and the example everyone used is “arco” v “pizz”.
If it’s still not clear then there should be something in a video on Expression Maps – I doubt there a a separate one on Mutual Exclusion Groups but Daniel or Lillie for instance will probably know immediately for sure.
Hi @hittjett – this is the existing section about mutual exclusion groups on the manual page about the Expression Maps dialog overall. It might well need some further detail and more specific examples to elaborate on the principles and use-cases, but in case you’d not come across this, hopefully it’s helpful?
Additionally, in case they weren’t obvious (as I know the reference page for the Expression Maps dialog is pretty big to cover all the details in each section), there are sub-topics with more information about switches and actions respectively.
This is a list of the techniques (keyswitches) that I have added to the Expression Map. I placed all of these in “Has Techniques For”. If I understand correctly, when I call for one of these in the score, it will cancel everything else on this list. Is this correct?
I believe so – my understanding is that if, for example, “Marcato Long” was previously active and being used for playback for bars 1-4, and you input a playing technique in bar 5 that calls up the “Rapid Legato” playback technique, Dorico will switch to the latter rather than try to find a combined sound that is both “marcato” and “legato”.
I use it frequently with VEPro Server. In Dorico I have one instance of Vienna Ensemble Pro connecting to the VSL Orchestra instance on the server. Then I add Event Inputs for the sections (winds, etc.). This way I can have more than 16 channels going to 1 server instance. This allows me to do all my mixing in VEPro.
In the interaction of Dorico with VEP, any number of instruments can be routed in just a single instance (port/channel) if required. For mixing in VEP, the output channels in VEP must be assigned accordingly. There is a very good guide at VSL:
…“Vienna Ensemble Pro Event Input Plugin
The Event Input Plug-in is inserted as a virtual instrument into your sequencer. You will most likely use it as a multi-timbral virtual instrument (with multiple MIDI channels).
This additional plug-in is only useful if you are using Vienna Ensemble Pro 7 as a VST2 or AU Plug-in. You will not need it if you are using VST3, AAX or MAS.” …
I see it exactly the same way as Lillie, I believe. If a technique from your list is currently active and playback meets another technique from the same list of techniques, it will automatically cancel the first and go to the second. And it does work, I can assure you. If you have examples in score where you don’t think it’s doing what it should then please post the relevant score section and most likely we can then work out what’s gone wrong.
