I've bought Dorico in the meantime and actually found I can get reasonable results with the articulations just by starting with the Cubase strings map remapping the most important entries to the actual controllers/keyswitches used in the default "VSL Preset Level 2" with the Solo Strings. The most important articulations all seem to work except gliss which is (still) unsupported by Dorico, even in the new v3.1.

One thing which I still can't fully understand is dynamic control. VSL defaults to CC7 volume, CC11 Expression for strings, yes? One would think that the Volume dynamic in Dorico should be set to CC11 as appears to be the case in the Sibelius soundset. But it seems Dorico only transmits dynamics (as written in the score) to VSL through velocity and indeed the Cubase Expression Map is set to Note velocity. Frankly I couldn't care less (leaving aside for the moment questions of possible timbre differences) except of course that velocity naturally does not allow a dynamic change after the note in sounded and will require a doubling through a CC which  can be done graphically in Dorico.

I've just seen from a different Dorico thread that Andi advises Velocity as primary dynamic controller together with VelX crossfade as a secondary. In actual fact my own tests led me to also to this but of course as VelX sends all the volume levels at once, you need to somehow compensate for the overall higher dynamic for instance. Any Dorico specific tips for the settings both in Vienna Instruments Pro and in Dorico -- for instance the optimal Dynamic Curve setting in playback settings?

many thanks, David

UPDATE

I realised I'd made  a mistake in not changing the dynamics controller for all the articulations individually in the Dorico Expression Map as I'm used to just setting the control once in VI Pro itself for the instrument. So my previous post can be largely dismissed as nonsense and apologies for any confusion caused! In fact now, I get the same results setting Volume to CC7 as Note Velocity with the obvious exception that within-note dynamics work with the CC and not velocity. I'm using Vel.XF as secondary controller

This, though, begs the question why Andi advises in another Dorico post for notation software to use velocity as the primary dynamics controller in notation software (other obviously for percussive and other instruments with no post strike control). If I could understand this, then I might be another step on the way to really taming my VSL libraries!

Dorico 3.5 seems to have greatly improved the management and editing of expression maps. Importing Cubase maps still doesn't produce completely functioning maps for Dorico, but most of the techniques are there. Replacing the wrong ones is easy, even if the high number of them, multiplied for the expression maps, would make editing a long task.

I have a question for @andi: it seems that some advanced techniques have been left out from the dedicated VI presets and the matching maps. I'm thinking to ricochets, unless I'm simply not finding them. Do you confirm that some techniques have been left out?

I guess they can be added to custom presets and maps with ease. But if they are already there, no need to do the additional work!

Paolo

On a second thought: I will probably be better going on with my universal presets and map. They have been working great in Logic, and will work great in Dorico. A single map will select all the techniques in all the pitched instruments, and edits will have to be done on a single map, instead of one hundred.

Paolo

Hello Paolo!

I don't know which collection you are asking about, but I can confirm that some articulations have been left out from the Cubase Expression Maps for the VI String collections.

Best regards,
Andi

Thank you for your answer, Andi. So, it's just a matter of adding them as custom techniques.

Paolo

A trick I was thinking about, to control dynamics in Dorico. My recent maps (for BBO and SynSE) all include a CC28 value as the first message of a technique in the expression map. I’m forcing each technique to respond to either velocity or modulation.

This is the easy way, but also the least flexible one. It is true that most of the time it is better to control shorts with velocity and longs with modulation, but you might sometimes prefer something different (for example, when improvising at the piano keyboard, or when wanting to draw curves for shorts).

With notation programs like Dorico, another way could be creating a couple techniques "VelXF On" and "VelXF Off", with different values of CC28, and add them in the score just before the passage to be controlled one way or the other.

I don't know if this might, in the end, become too time-consuming and annoying, but it's an easy-to-use switch if you need to work this way.

Paolo

@PaoloT said:

A trick I was thinking about, to control dynamics in Dorico. My recent maps (for BBO and SynSE) all include a CC28 value as the first message of a technique in the expression map. I’m forcing each technique to respond to either velocity or modulation.

This is the easy way, but also the least flexible one. It is true that most of the time it is better to control shorts with velocity and longs with modulation, but you might sometimes prefer something different (for example, when improvising at the piano keyboard, or when wanting to draw curves for shorts).

With notation programs like Dorico, another way could be creating a couple techniques "VelXF On" and "VelXF Off", with different values of CC28, and add them in the score just before the passage to be controlled one way or the other.

I don't know if this might, in the end, become too time-consuming and annoying, but it's an easy-to-use switch if you need to work this way.

Paolo

I do it exactly in the same way. Works fine!

@MMKA said:

I do it exactly in the same way. Works fine!

Do you insert the CC28 message in the selecting bundle, or do you use a dedicated couple of switches to be inserted manually?

Paolo

@PaoloT said:

 

Do you insert the CC28 message in the selecting bundle, or do you use a dedicated couple of switches to be inserted manually?

Paolo

I have a dedicated couple of switches to be inserted manually. It works fine, because I have to deal with the boundaries what is possible, a combination sometimes of timestretching, working with Velocity XF. sometimes Synchron violins 1 in octaves, that can be too much, and with this switches I can make choices, that the processor can handle it. I made in the Synchron Player also a dedicated timestretch slot, so that I can choose at any moment between timestretching or not. The combination of Dorico and VSL makes a lot possible. By the way, I have the same experience with the Cubase Expression maps as you have. They are a very good base to build on.