Duality Strings - Legato Harmonics

[mducharme]

Hello,

I posted and requested this before, and recall that I received a reply that it would be added, but my post seems to have disappeared with the forum upgrade so I am posting again.

Harmonics don't play back properly when slurs are present. I would rather have them play back as regular harmonics and Dorico defaults to legato notes, which often puts them outside the range of the instrument for regular legato notes and they no longer sound.

I recall when I posted this before, @andi I believe it was responded that they would add this to the maps so it handled this condition correctly, but there have been several upgrades to the maps and in this time I haven't seen it, so in case it was forgotten about, I just wanted to ask again.

Thanks!

[andi]

Hello mducharme!

I don't remember that this has ever been brought up before. Anyway, I have noted it for a possible update.

Best regards,
Andi

[mducharme]

Ahh, I found your reply to my post (my post itself is still missing from the new forums):

https://forum.vsl.co.at/post/317110

@andi said:

Hello mducharme!

I don't remember that this has ever been brought up before. Anyway, I have noted it for a possible update.

Best regards,
Andi

[andi]

Hello mducharme!

I have just looked into your request. On my machine the combination legato + harmonics already triggers harmonics without having to edit anything in the expression maps.
It seems to me though that Dorico triggers natural harmonics an octave too low. With strings I would usually prefer the notation as artificial harmonics anyway. They get played back correctly here. If you still think that there is something wrong on our side, please send a simple Dorico file to support@vsl.co.at demonstrating the problem.

Best regards,
Andi

[mducharme]

Hi andi,

No, that is not the issue (that Dorico is playing the harmonics an octave too low). It is definitely playing regular legato notes without the harmonic. This can easily be seen by having the Synchron player open when playing back a score - it's regular poco vib legato.

What happens in Dorico is if the combination legato+harmonics does not exist (it does not), it falls back on one of the other techniques. In this case, it can either play it back with "harmonics" without legato or with "legato" without harmonics, and between these two choices, it decides (through some means) that "legato" should win and it plays it back legato without harmonics which puts the notes out of range.

In my original post which explained all this before (and vanished when the forum was upgraded), I explained that if I duplicated the "natural harmonic 1" articulation and set it to "natural harmonic 1 + legato" then it played them back fine, or it played back fine if I deleted the slurs.

If I go in and select all the slurs in the passage (just the slurs) and enable "suppress playback" in the Dorico inspector, it plays back those as harmonics correctly.

Keep in mind these are artificial harmonics and not natural harmonics. I'm not sure if that makes a difference for the fallback decision.

@andi said:

Hello mducharme!

I have just looked into your request. On my machine the combination legato + harmonics already triggers harmonics without having to edit anything in the expression maps.
It seems to me though that Dorico triggers natural harmonics an octave too low. With strings I would usually prefer the notation as artificial harmonics anyway. They get played back correctly here. If you still think that there is something wrong on our side, please send a simple Dorico file to support@vsl.co.at demonstrating the problem.

Best regards,
Andi

[andi]

Hi mducharme!

Notes marked as harmonics plus a slur always trigger harmonics in my project. I couldn't get them to trigger legato. That's why I asked for a simple Dorico project showing the problem. I would like to analyse why it triggers legato in your project, before I make the change in the expression maps. You can send it to support@vsl.co.at.

Best,
Andi