Hi,
So, as this thread of mine indicates, I have recently been frustrated by Dorico playing back piano parts as if both staffs are articulated when it comes across an articulation in only one staff. David Tee kindly provided a workaround and I thank him for that, but I just wanted to know, will this playback limitation definitely be fixed by version 3? The less users that have to search through forum pages for help, the better (no offence to people who offer such help).
Could you please be a bit more specific about what you mean by ‘articulation’? In Dorico, ‘articulations’ refers to a specific subset of things (staccato, tenuto, accent, marcato).
We never make any promises about what will definitely be in future versions, because as Daniel often says, things can take longer and be much more difficult than expected. However, we do hope to add support for independent voice routing for the next major version, which would mean that each voice could potentially be routed to a separate device/channel. However it would be good to find out what you’re wanting to achieve.
What I mean is, if, say, I insert a note in the piano part that has no staccato and a note in the left hand that is staccato’d at the same point in the score, Dorico currently plays them back as if they are both staccato’d.
You must be doing something strange here.
When I set up an example like that, if I look at the piano roll display in Play mode, the note lengths are what I expect them to be, and the playback sounds consistent with what I can see.
Which version of Dorico are you running? Can you make a demo file (just 1 or 2 bars long) and post it on the forum?
Better still, could you attach a score that reproduces the problem?
Here’s an .dorico file of an excerpt of the Adagio in G Minor by Remo Giazotto. Strangely, I noticed that the first chord in the right hand here plays correctly, but starts playing staccato later on when it’s not supposed to, because there’s staccatos in the left hand.
EDIT: I’m using 2.1.10 on Windows 10, by the way.
Adagio_in_G_Minor_(excerpt).zip (295 KB)
The problem is with Noteperformer. It defines staccato in the expression map as a control change. This effects the entire midi channel, so all voices in the piano part even though in play mode some notes are shortened, the expression map still causes some issues.
Using a piano with Velocity based dynamics and no expression map entries for articulations will work as you would expect.
Noteperformer, while interesting in its own right, has limitations across voices since it chooses to control percussive instruments (which includes the piano) using continuous controllers.
Hi, thanks for this information.
Going to Expression Maps → NotePerformer → Techniques (staccato) and deleting the control change there seems to fix the problem. Doing so may have other side-effects that I haven’t discovered yet, though.
Well, one side-effect it will certainly have is disabling staccato playback for all other instruments as well as piano, so do be aware of that.