I welcome these templates as well and am enjoying studying the Expression Maps.  With the Dimension strings, perhaps because I first created my own maps before Dorico 3.5, I missed your trick of using a con sord as an add-on which actually simplifies things rather. In fact, it's puzzling why you didn't simply include additional odd-ons for all the player divisions as that's just a few minutes work and seems to work flawlessly. Of course the corresponding p.t's would also need to be generated which is a few more! Incidentally, when in con sord mode, any p.t when cancelled must have the con sord reapplied as ord specifically exits mute mode (A0). Obviously pizz comes into this category, as does detache. Articulations (marked with symbols) work differently as I'm sure you know.

On the Synchronized orchestra vol 1 and 2, I've found some odd dynamics with my own pieces (compared to my own maps) but there are various possible reasons for that and I'm now off to listen to your demo tracks -- thanks for making the scores available which will be very helpful.

Vielen Dank!

Really great to see these arrive, thanks!

One immediate thought is that I was a bit surprised to see, in Dorico's video, a great long list of individual VSTs for each instrument, because I'm accustomed to using Ensemble Pro. Of course there is no problem with assigning the new maps to the appropriate instrument, but would I be right in thinking that it isn't practical to auto-load ensemble instances?

I'm just working through the VST list with a current project. I've noticed a few things so far:

Flute 2+ loads with CC11 set significantly lower than 127. (Incidentally, currently my own maps use both cc2 and cc11 instead of velocity+cc.)

Instrument Eb clarinet loads a Bb clarinet patch.

Horn 1+2 loads the Vienna horn, 3+4 loads the triple horn. I wonder if it should go 1+3, 2+4?

Trumpets load C, Bb, C; I'd prefer C, C, Bb

Strings: some odd things here, thanks to Dimension Strings. This score has solo violin/viola/cello, but no divisi (so far). What's loaded is Dimension violin 1 player 1 for the solo -- I would have expected Solo Strings violin 1+ -- and then both section violins load with group 1 enabled, rather than the full ensemble. No solo double bass, but it loaded with only player 1 enabled.

@Marcabru said:

Strings: some odd things here, thanks to Dimension Strings. This score has solo violin/viola/cello, but no divisi (so far). What's loaded is Dimension violin 1 player 1 for the solo -- I would have expected Solo Strings violin 1+ -- and then both section violins load with group 1 enabled, rather than the full ensemble. No solo double bass, but it loaded with only player 1 enabled.

There's no support in the Expression Maps for string divisions so there would be no point putting them in the score. Arguably, there should be entries for all the different solo players as well but that was a step too far for me.

I also prefer CC2 +CC11 but with the secondary scaled, otherwise the dynamic range is far too high. The chosen method seems to work OK for the demos, though.  The comment on the horns is interesting as there are a lot of ways you could call this including allocating an ensemble to one part (and then just mute the others in the score)

Hello Marcabru!

Thanks for your input. Here are the answers to the things you have brought up.
We thought about using Vienna Ensemble or VE Pro too in the playback templates. This would have the drawback that some instruments would be loaded even though they are not included in the score. Furthermore not all users have Vienna Ensemble installed. So these users would get an error message about the missing plugin. That's why we have decided to go with Synchron Player without Vienna Ensemble (Pro). If you want to, you can make your own playback templates with Vienna Ensemble (Pro) and our expression maps.

>> Flute 2+ loads with CC11 set significantly lower than 127.

=> I cannot reproduce this problem. Flute II loads with CC11 value 127 here. Which playback template did you apply?

>> Instrument Eb clarinet loads a Bb clarinet patch.

=> That's true. Unfortunately Dorico doesn't differ between the keys the instruments are in as far as playback is concerned. For the Clarinet in Eb, please load the Clarinet in Eb preset manually. The expression maps doesn't have to be changed.

>> Horn 1+2 loads the Vienna horn, 3+4 loads the triple horn. I wonder if it should go 1+3, 2+4?

=> Horn 1 and 3 load the triple horn, horn 2 and 4 load the Viennese horn. Which playback template did you apply to get the result you have described?

>> Trumpets load C, Bb, C; I'd prefer C, C, Bb

=> Dorico doesn't differ between the keys the instruments are in as far as playback is concerned. If you prefer a different order of the trumpets, please re-assign the plugins or load different presets in Synchron Player.

>> Strings: some odd things here, thanks to Dimension Strings. This score has solo violin/viola/cello, but no divisi (so far). What's loaded is Dimension violin 1 player 1 for the solo

=> The playback template "VSL SYzd Special Edition Vol 1-7 PLUS (Dimension instruments)" loads dimension instruments. If you would like to have solo strings loaded instead, please use the template "VSL SYzd Special Edition Vol 1-4 PLUS".

Best regards,
Andi

Andi,

I noticed that there was no playing technique for trills, half or whole. Is this an oversight or intentional since Dorico has it's own method of generating trills when you use the "tr" symbol? I had to go into Engrave>Playing Techniques... and define my own text based symbol - Trill(half-step), if I specifically wanted to trigger VSL's trill articulation.

Initially I couldn't get this to work, not because I had the wrong definition, but rather because I had it following the "Portato" articulation in my test score. My trill only worked if I ended the "Portato" articulation with "Ord" prior to using the trill.

Are there any other of these idiosyncrasies that we should be aware of when using the maps? I'm sure that as people use them more, their experiences will be documented.

Regards,

Gyprock.

Hello Gyprock!

Trills are included in the Special Edition PLUS expression maps for strings and wind instruments. They are working fine here. It's true that if you have other commands earlier in the score, they may not work together and it may be necessary to add an "ord." command before the new command.

Best regards,
Andi

@andi said:

We thought about using Vienna Ensemble or VE Pro too in the playback templates. This would have the drawback that some instruments would be loaded even though they are not included in the score. Furthermore not all users have Vienna Ensemble installed. So these users would get an error message about the missing plugin. That's why we have decided to go with Synchron Player without Vienna Ensemble (Pro). If you want to, you can make your own playback templates with Vienna Ensemble (Pro) and our expression maps.

Best regards,
Andi

thanks for this clarification, Andi. I find it annoying to use single instrument instances as it's harder to edit or get an overview but on the other hand, uisng VE not only are instruments loaded which are not necessarily in the score, I frequently seem to get extra instances added by Dorico and other odd behaviour (such as refusal to save endpoints) so your choice is understandable even without the consideration that some users may not be using VE (Pro)

@andi said:

Hello Gyprock!

Trills are included in the Special Edition PLUS expression maps for strings and wind instruments. They are working fine here. It's true that if you have other commands earlier in the score, they may not work together and it may be necessary to add an "ord." command before the new command.

Best regards,
Andi

perhaps just to clarify that vol5 Dimension Strings don't include trills, (though I've borrowed them from elsewhere in my own setup). However the trills seem to work otherwise fine for me

Hi all, I'm pretty new to VSL but love working with the new Dorico Playback Template. Obviously this is user-editable, but I really think all VSL Dorico Expression Maps should have an Init value set so CC#28 is turned on. Most users of notation software are going to expect hairpins to play back. I know it's more system intensive, but most users that are accustomed to working with notation rather than MIDI are going to assume that these are functional.

Hello 153793!

I can see your point. On the other hand, if we would turn Vel XF on by default, there would be many people reporting performance problems and cut off voices in their orchestral arrangements.

Bst regards,
Andi

Windows: Playback templates do not show.

I downloaded and installed today the last version of "VSL-for-Dorico-WIN-v32.exe".  
The installation process requires admin rights, there is no way to run it as a user.
Unfortunately, the installer seems to put therefore the playback template information only into the admin AppData branch or so, as the playback templates for the vsl libraries are only offered to me if I start dorico as admin - if I start dorico under my user account, the menu stays empty, no vsl playback templates visible.  

It seems, that the installer does not take into account that since Windows XP or so we have down here in our windows hell indeed admin and user accounts, and that it is since then (since 2001 to be exact btw) strongly recommended to work only with resticted user account rights...
I would appreciate if the installer was updated to reflect the existence of user accounts in Windows, so that one can work with the library whithout being forced to start an application as admin.  

Apart from that, what I would need now are instrucions which data from which folder I have to copy from admin to my user space to make the thing run.

Thanks and a happy new year.

Hello!

Please log in to your computer with your user account. Then run the VSL-for-Dorico installer. There's no need to run it as an administrator. After that the Playback Templates and Expression Maps for the SYNCHRON-ized Special Editions should be available for you in Dorico.

Best regards,
Andi

@andi said:

Hello!

Please log in to your computer with your user account. Then run the VSL-for-Dorico installer. There's no need to run it as an administrator. After that the Playback Templates and Expression Maps for the SYNCHRON-ized Special Editions should be available for you in Dorico.

Best regards,
Andi

I agree entirely -- there is no prompt or need to run as Admin. it must be something system-specific with the user.