# Slow Legato transitions, and how to deal with them



## Daryl (Nov 17, 2022)

I'm looking for opinions on this. Up until now, I haven't bothered using sample libraries in Dorico, but with the new MIDI performance tools that are availbe in 4.3, I've been re-assessing this.

If I need to do a demo, historically the legato transitions from a library such as CSS have been an issue. With a track delay, the start note is in time, but then the transition makes the second, "legato" note late. In Nuendo, this is solved by selecting all notes, except the start notes, shifting them an appropriate number of ms earlier, and re-quantising the ends of those notes, so eliminating the gap. This way one gets the start notes in time, and the "legato note in time.

In Dorico there is a huge theoretical advantage, in that Dorico knows which notes are start notes, and which have legato transitions. Is there a way of taking advantage of that? Or is it still a case of manually moving notes around, adjusting lengths, but without the advantage of a macro?

Any advice gratefully accepted.


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## richhickey (Nov 17, 2022)

Currently Dorico's expression maps do not have rules for "starts/ends/both under slur", as does Notion, which is needed to handle legato well.


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## Daryl (Nov 17, 2022)

richhickey said:


> Currently Dorico's expression maps do not have rules for "starts/ends/both under slur", as does Notion, which is needed to handle legato well.


Thanks for the reply. I figured as much, but I don't yet know enough to know what I don't know...!


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## benwiggy (Nov 18, 2022)

Anything under a slur (or a _legato....._ playing technique) will use the Legato expression. I seem to recall there was some discussion and user request (which was granted) about when the legato effect should start and stop (e.g. if it would affect the attack of the first note and the transition of the last). But that was a year or more ago.

I concur that I seem to have most trouble with Legato and 'lateness' -- particularly with Orchestral Tools' samples -- there's often no definition of the note within the phrase; or worse, you get 'overlap'. OT does supposedly have 'magic Legato', but I've not found that beneficial. Perhaps I should revisit it.


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## Daryl (Nov 18, 2022)

With CSS it's quite easy. Or would be if you could set a delay for the first note, and a different one for all subsequent notes.


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## Bollen (Nov 18, 2022)

Daryl said:


> I'm looking for opinions on this. Up until now, I haven't bothered using sample libraries in Dorico, but with the new MIDI performance tools that are availbe in 4.3, I've been re-assessing this.
> 
> If I need to do a demo, historically the legato transitions from a library such as CSS have been an issue. With a track delay, the start note is in time, but then the transition makes the second, "legato" note late. In Nuendo, this is solved by selecting all notes, except the start notes, shifting them an appropriate number of ms earlier, and re-quantising the ends of those notes, so eliminating the gap. This way one gets the start notes in time, and the "legato note in time.
> 
> ...


Although I don't have any libraries that add too much delay when using legato, I am often adding timing changes for things I want “pushed” or “dragged”. The way I do it is simply select the section of music you want altered, open the bottom Panel (Properties) and click on the Playback offset (Start and End if you wish). It's not automatic, but it's pretty quick if you program the whole thing on a macro.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 18, 2022)

richhickey said:


> Currently Dorico's expression maps do not have rules for "starts/ends/both under slur", as does Notion, which is needed to handle legato well.



What s there any chance you can use a named custom expression to identify leading note vs secondary legato notes?


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## Daryl (Nov 18, 2022)

Bollen said:


> Although I don't have any libraries that add too much delay when using legato, I am often adding timing changes for things I want “pushed” or “dragged”. The way I do it is simply select the section of music you want altered, open the bottom Panel (Properties) and click on the Playback offset (Start and End if you wish). It's not automatic, but it's pretty quick if you program the whole thing on a macro.


Yes, that's what I suspected.


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## Daryl (Nov 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> What s there any chance you can use a named custom expression to identify leading note vs secondary legato notes?


The information is all in the score but I dot see away of doing it in the Expression Map.


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## richhickey (Nov 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> What s there any chance you can use a named custom expression to identify leading note vs secondary legato notes?


You can do plenty with custom expressions, but that's tedious vs just getting the right thing from simply writing slurs and having rules that do the work.


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 18, 2022)

and how do you do that?


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## richhickey (Nov 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> and how do you do that?


Something like this? (I'm not sure if there is a more current video):


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## Dewdman42 (Nov 18, 2022)

I'm sorry maybe I wasn't clear. How are you assigning a playing technique to the end of a slur?

Also how would you use the to adjust a different playback offset.


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## richhickey (Nov 18, 2022)

Dewdman42 said:


> I'm sorry maybe I wasn't clear. How are you assigning a playing technique to the end of a slur?
> 
> Also how would you use the to adjust a different playback offset.


You can't do any of that automatically, only manually. That's why better rules are needed.


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## Daryl (Nov 19, 2022)

I agree that better rules would help enormously. However, better filters would also help. Sort of like:

Select a passage
Select all notes under a slur except the first one of a slur
Apply offset


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## VSTHero (Nov 23, 2022)

That first note difference with the legato delay is tough - especially with CSSS. Can feel it more with the solo strings. There is that KSP plugin that Idhoc made. If you combined that with setting an offset on all the notes in the track, it might work. I don't know how well that plugin works with the individual note offset that Dorico has.


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## VSTHero (Nov 23, 2022)

So you can layer the plugin - but it's difficult as the plugin uses delay in milliseconds while Dorico measures them in 'ticks'. I know 480 ticks equals a quarter note for typically midi resolutions, but no idea how to translate this into milliseconds yet. I might be able to figure it out in Logic X if they use the same tick values (or bet yet, look at Cubase since it's uniform with that). It's hard to find this in the Dorico documentation. I'm not sure it's a stable conversion- think it might depend on tempo at a given time which really complicates this. Need to think it through more.


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## Daryl (Nov 24, 2022)

VSTHero said:


> So you can layer the plugin - but it's difficult as the plugin uses delay in milliseconds while Dorico measures them in 'ticks'. I know 480 ticks equals a quarter note for typically midi resolutions, but no idea how to translate this into milliseconds yet. I might be able to figure it out in Logic X if they use the same tick values (or bet yet, look at Cubase since it's uniform with that). It's hard to find this in the Dorico documentation. I'm not sure it's a stable conversion- think it might depend on tempo at a given time which really complicates this. Need to think it through more.


Ticks is not really much use, as the length of a tick depends entirely on the tempo, whereas the length of a transition is static


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