In a string orchestra piece, the sound I'm getting under slurs with vlns 1 KS, vlns 2 KS, etc. is not really a nice legato - is there anything I can do to improve it? In Sibelius Playback Dictionary, the default setting for slurs is +legato, but I don't really know exactly what that means.
Ooh. My favorite topic! I've definitely run into that, too, and haven't seen a good solution. Hopefully someone will provide an answer.Originally Posted by rsratner
The Sibelius doc does not help much on this. Sibelius maintains a "Sound ID" that tells it what do characteristics to use. The "+legato" merely means "legato" is added to the existing sound id: "string.violin.ensemble" becomes "string.violin.ensemble.legato". That obviously doesn't tell us much.
More importantly, the dictionary shows adjustments Sibelius makes to the note - increasing note length by a certain percent (that you can change). Not mentioned in the dictionary is that Sibelius also turns on the GPO legato control.
The GPO doc somewhere suggests that for ensemble strings, sometimes just increasing note length without turning on the legato control gives better sounding legato. (I haven't heard a good explanation of this, but I've asked.) There doesn't seem to be a way to tell Sibelius not to turn o legato under a slur, but you can use Sibelius's "live duration" function to manually increase the length of selected notes and not bother with the slur. I've tried that with limited success.
I wonder if this is also a problem with Finale or is limited to Sibelius. If this is NOT a problem with Finale maybe someone will tell us how Finale handles legato for ensemble strings.
Pat
> More importantly, the dictionary shows adjustments Sibelius makes to the > note - increasing note length by a certain percent (that you can change). > Not mentioned in the dictionary is that Sibelius also turns on the GPO
> legato control.
Actually, I read the dictionary differently - it says that the effect of a slur is a sound id change, in this case +legato. Then it says, IF no matching sound ID is available, then it will extend the length of the notes under the slur if that is what is desired. My read is that if a sound id is available, no lengthening occurs.
The GPO doc somewhere suggests that for ensemble strings, sometimes just increasing note length without turning on the legato control gives better sounding legato. (I haven't heard a good explanation of this, but I've asked.) There doesn't seem to be a way to tell Sibelius not to turn o legato under a slur, but you can use Sibelius's "live duration" function to manually increase the length of selected notes and not bother with the slur. I've tried that with limited success.
I wonder if this is also a problem with Finale or is limited to Sibelius. If this is NOT a problem with Finale maybe someone will tell us how Finale handles legato for ensemble strings.
Pat[/QUOTE]
Can we limit a sound set modification of slur behavior to just ensemble strings? I haven't looked into sound sets at all so maybe that's a dumb question.
But does either technique improve the legato for ensemble strings?
If not, what CAN we do to achieve this?
Pat
Hey, I think I did it.
For both slurs in the playback dictionary, I switched the program change to +col legno, thinking probably GPO didn't have this. Then I left the percent change at 5 and voila! Legato!
oops, spoke too soon - sounds great in soft dynamics, but sounds worse in f. Back to the drawing board.
The problem with that technique is that slur has been changed for all instruments. Not a problem if all you have is strings, but not so good if you also have winds or brass and want the slur to include legato for them.
I'm glad it worked for you. I thought it helped, but still wasn't totally satisfied with the results.
EDIT: Now I see you aren't as pleased as you thought you were.
BTW, this does not seem to be a problem for solo strings. (With them the problem is the vibrato.)
Based on nothing but blind optimism, I'm hoping these problems will all disappear when GOS2 is released. Too bad my PC won't have the horsepower to drive it.
Pat
Hey, now I really think I did it. In addition to increasing volume and attack, ff, f, and mf also effect a sound id change. I changed all to +flutter tongue for reasons stated above, and reduced attack by 25%. Now I have legato in all dynamics. Frankly, I simply DO NOT understand why there is an id change AND an increase in dynamic and attack given in the dictionary.
So probably the legato in loud places was achieved through reduction of the attack. I'll change the id back when I need to - thanks for the warning. The good thing is that it sounds so much better now. This brings up a point - if attack is a function of midi messages and not the actual sample, it seems to me that dynamics need to be instrument-specific.
Ok. I'm confused. Velocity vs. Attack. I though attack was the time it took for a note to reach its peak sound level and velocity, in MIDI terms, specified that peak sound level - how fast you depressed the key, in effect. The Garritan GPO doc seems to equate them for "sustain" instruments so maybe my confusion is in understanding what GPO does with the velocity value as set by Sibelius. If GPO is using velocity to control attack I'm going to start playing around with "Live Velocity" a lot!
Pat
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks