Staccato followed by legato

[fmalka]

Whenever I have a staccato note immediately followed by a legato note, the legato algorithm attempts to link the two during playback. This creates a phantom appogiatura between the two notes.

This playback side effect occurs with all instruments that have staccato and legato techniques (woodwinds, strings, and brass).

The workaround is to truncate the duration of the first note and insert a very short rest between the two notes. This prevents the legato algorithm from attempting to create a smooth transition between the two notes. This workaround, while it fixes the audio, is still unacceptable as it inserts unnatural rests everywhere in the score.

Making sure that the previous note was also marked as legato sounds to me like a good candidate for an improvement in the legato playback algorithm.

I use Sibelius 5.2.5 with Vienna Ensemble 2.0 build 3452. As far as I can remember, I have had this issue with all prior versions of Sibelius and Vienna Ensemble/Instrument.

Has anyone ever noticed this problem?

Francis Malka

[DG]

 If you make the note following the staccato a sustain, you won't hear the transition material.

DG

[fmalka]

Agreed. But very often, the second note is slured, which triggers legato playback. Do I have to manually disable the slur everytime this occurs?

Is there a better way to mark a note sustain than to add "sustenuto" and hide the text? (I don't want these playback marks all over the score).

The playback behaviour stills feels like a bug to me. It would be such a simple fix for Vienna not to trigger legato if the previous note was not legato!

Thanks,

Francis

[DG]

@fmalka said:

Agreed. But very often, the second note is slured, which triggers legato playback. Do I have to manually disable the slur everytime this occurs?

Is there a better way to mark a note sustain than to add "sustenuto" and hide the text? (I don't want these playback marks all over the score).

The playback behaviour stills feels like a bug to me. It would be such a simple fix for Vienna not to trigger legato if the previous note was not legato!

Thanks,

Francis

 

It has to do with the legato threshold. Unfortunately it has been set at a rather high value for those people who can't really play a keyboard properly. In the "old" days one could set the legato threshold manually, but that professional feature has been abandoned in favour of one that suits the less able keyboard players......! I still live in hope that some sort of control will eventually be given back to us.

DG

[fmalka]

The legato threshold should only be taken into account when consecutive notes have the same sound id. In the present case, the two notes have different sound ids. That's a pretty big clue that there shouldn't be any transition between them.

Setting the threshold to a small value would probably not solve the problem in this case, since I suspect Sibelius sends the "note off" of the first note at the very end of its written duration, making it look like a legato to VSL.

Following your clue, I looked at the parameters for "staccato" in the dictionary. Unfortunately, Sibelius forces us to choose between sending a new sound id OR shortening the note duration. Had we been able to do both, this would have get around the issue without having to wait for Vienna to fix it in the plugin. No luck.

Thanks for the clue.

Francis

[DG]

@Another User said:

Following your clue, I looked at the parameters for "staccato" in the dictionary. Unfortunately, Sibelius forces us to choose between sending a new sound id OR shortening the note duration. Had we been able to do both, this would have get around the issue without having to wait for Vienna to fix it in the plugin. No luck.

Thanks for the clue.

Francis

 

I don't think it's a question of fixing, as they don't consider it's broken. It's more a matter of persuading the powers that be that we are adults and are able to take responsibility for our own legato threshold. [;)]

DG 

[andi]

Hi Francis!

There is a way to optimize legato playback and leave the layout as it is (without short rests). Let me cite my own Optimizing Sibelius Playback manual:

Best wishes,
Andi

[fmalka]

Andi,

It works! You just solved the most irritating issue I had with Sibelius/Vienna.

Thanks,

Francis

PS: I still think that starting a new legato phrase after a staccato is a good candidate for future Vienna Ensemble releases. It would automate the manual task of truncating the playback duration of all these notes.

[andi]

Hi Francis!

This is something we have no influence on. Sibelius by default keeps the notes held down until the start of the next note (or rest) and if the next note is legato, the transition also gets played. It's a Sibelius thing, not a Vienna Ensemble thing.

Best,
Andi