DP Approaches for handling orch articulations

[dewdman42]

program changes do chase so there is that... You can also use a CC lane, and use bidule to convert to whatever key switches you may need.

Agree these are not elegant solutions compared to other DAW's.

[richhickey]

program changes do chase so there is that... You can also use a CC lane, and use bidule to convert to whatever key switches you may need.

Agree these are not elegant solutions compared to other DAW's.

Obviously DP could use more power here. That said, after doing this work, and comparing to Logic and Cubase, there are many advantages to uses patch changes. What's missing are ways to setup patch lists per track/VI and to create mappings to the keyswitches/CCs the VIs want to see.

Patch changes are represented by standard bank/program change MIDI data. This is a big deal. If you've ever wanted to manipulate your MIDI data outside of Logic or Cubase, their proprietary representations for articulations means they don't transfer except as 'rendered', so if an articulation turns into a key, MIDI ch, or 2 CCs that is what you'll get in the MIDI export. You lose the articulation change identity.

Patch changes act like Cubase's 'direction' articulations. This 'active until changed' is a good fit for how VIs treat articulations. Logic's per-note (akin to Cubase's 'attribute') articulations seem easy but end up being a PITA to edit and to see what's happening (the colorization scheme is not much help). Few of them have representations in the score editor.

Yes, Cubase has an elaborate (elegant?, not sure) system, with both directions and attributes, but opinions are all over the map as to how well that works, with half the people only using directions, and half only attributes. Many people report problems with the switchback from attribute to the prior active direction. The system is undeniably complex.

Cubase also has a multiple slot system, so you can have different dimensions. So one dimension can be e.g. bow position, another articulation a third duration and fourth vibrato. But that means getting sul pont/detache/long/non-vib can mean setting four things instead of one.

For editing visualization, in Cubase people complain that once you have a lot of articulations (e.g. for VSL), you can end up with an unworkably large vertical space in the MIDI editor for (direction) articulation lanes. In comparison, DP's pop-up selection and median display of patch changes is concise and effective.

I guess we should be careful (and precise about) what we wish for I certainly don't want DP to adopt an articulation system exactly like Logic's or Cubase's.

And MIDI standards rule, and DP is good at them.

[gseibert]

I recently started to get into orchestration and the issues with articulations, so this topic has become very interesting to me. I acquired Komplete 11 Ultimate, Spitfire Albion One, and a Kirk Hunter library that was on sale. All these are Kontakt libraries so after doing some research in the Kontakt manual, I discovered a feature called instrument banks. This is probably old news to most folks here but I found it relevant to this topic. It lets you load multiple individual instruments into one bank. All instruments in the bank use the same MIDI channel and you switch instruments by sending MIDI program change messages. It seems to me that if MOTU would build in customizable VI program patch lists into DP, the methods discussed above would work well, at least for Kontakt libraries. You could load the articulations you want for your piece into a bank then create appropriate names in a custom path change list. Very similar to working with a hardware synth.

[mhschmieder]

I made a decision over a decade ago to get rid of all SyxEx and Program Changes, due to the non-determinism of resulting "burst mode" lag, and I also give a couple of bars count-in even on stuff I don't expect to ever have live overdubs where musicians need it, to give the clock time to "settle in" -- especially as I apply a full MIDI reset to every track at the start of the sequence (unfortunately, some VI's and libraries have bugs that don't recognize "All Notes Off").

[dewdman42]

Regarding how to convert PC messages into key switches.. I have come across the following scripting tool which should work in DP and might help someone trying to work this out. I haven't had a chance to try it with DP yet..

https://www.osar.fr/protoplug/

[laurof]

I guess we should be careful (and precise about) what we wish for I certainly don't want DP to adopt an articulation system exactly like Logic's or Cubase's.

I am on DP since more than 25 years ( it started as Performer): I think I miss articulations switches.
I need to switch from marcato to legato to pizzicato ( for example).
I'm carefully faithfully waiting for this.

[dewdman42]

you quoted me, but I didn't actually say that. richhickey did.

[Michael Canavan]

I guess we should be careful (and precise about) what we wish for I certainly don't want DP to adopt an articulation system exactly like Logic's or Cubase's.

Honestly I wish they would adapt any articulation system. I have a copy of Logic here and it's really nice. I'm sure it's not great setting it up for anything other than Logic's own orchestral library, and that's probably true of the Cubase version. There's a third party full mapping of all the articulations for most libraries out there for both Logic and Cubase being sold for $50. Personally I hope that MOTU does something, and hopefully it's quick and easy to save presets for various sample libraries etc.

[dewdman42]

LogicPro's articulation system works with ANY sample libraries. In my opinion it is the best thing offered by any DAW at this point in time for articulation management. Its better then Cubase's, which is the other offering. Neither solution is without their own flaws, including the LogicPro version has a few bugs that constrain it, but then it can be compensated for by using their Scripter plugin if you are handy with that, though in my experience the kind of scripting needed is beyond the scope of what most composers are able to do. There are some third party scripter addons out there that try to make up for some off the deficiencies; which are becoming less and less necessary as time goes on and Apple continues to improve its articulation management feature.

Both LogicPro and cubase are way ahead of Motu, who has provided zilch.

The main thing LogicPro does is provide the notion of "articulationID" as an extended attribute of MIDI events, and then provides various methods to manipulate the articulationID of every Note. you can set it just like you set velocity or channel. Its just one more data point. But you can only see it inside LogicPro and 3rd party plugins can't even see it. Their Scripter plugin can see it though. So you can use the scripter to react to articulationID and do whatever you want. They also provide a framework that can send key switches and/or channelize notes based on the articulation ID without using Scripter...but like I said, while in simple cases it works fine, you can easily end up with some sample libraries needing more complicated handling then what their system provides...and in some cases there are odd bugs too. So in the end, you end up needing to use Scripter....except for a lot of simple cases, which it handles very very well. For a lot of people, the simple cases are enough though!

I personally think the best work around in DP at the moment would be to use PC messages which you can add to tracks. Then use this free third party scripter to react to the program change and convert to whatever channelizing or keyswitches that are required by the sample library in question.

https://www.osar.fr/protoplug/

the above is kind of like LogicPro's Scripter plugin, but third party.

But truthfully, most musicians and composers will not be interested or capable of writing such scripts... frankly...

I have been prototyping a LogicPro Scripter script that is becoming more and more capable of handling many many simple and complicated articulation management cases, using articulationID or it could be configured to respond to PC messages, for example. When I have it working I am thinking about porting it to an AU/VST form and then it could be used in any DAW such as DP, but I don't know whether it will ever happen, its a lot of work. The LogicPro script is working good for me.

I agree its disappointing that DP provides nothing for the complex problems that digital orchestrators face every day when using complex sample libraries with articulation switching a critical part of the production process..

MOTU would do well to look at both Cubase and LogicPro for examples of what has been done and how people are using it. However, they could easily go further if they put some thought into it as both of those solutions do have some deficiencies.

[laurof]

Sorry Dewdman42,
I don't know what happened: I apologize and just corrected the post.

At the moment sometimes I have to switch on Reaper and on that DAW there is the possibility to write your own scripts... for example Reaticulate is one of these: it is a great tools to manage articulations with all libraries, you can edit it, personalize,etc.
Apart from this, what I mean is that not only Cubase, Logic, but also other DAWS can manage switching articulations.
I am a DP addicted and in my experience I think it is great for manage MIDI and a real killer for managing big templates and mockups.
In my humble opinion this is a necessary professional upgrade.

[dewdman42]

I forgot about Reaper, but yes there is that third party solution Rearticulate. Its not really part of reaper, but Reaper is generally highly customizable.

[HCMarkus]

As an aside, I have found that key switches can be made to “chase” better, if you extend them all the way from one key switch to another. So if a B0 is at bar 20, and a B1 at bar 50, extend the B0 30 bars, all the way to just before the B1. DP will then chase better.

+1 "to next attack"

[Michael Canavan]

Sorry Dewdman42,
I don't know what happened: I apologize and just corrected the post.

At the moment sometimes I have to switch on R••••• and on that DAW there is the possibility to write your own scripts... for example Reaticulate is one of these: it is a great tools to manage articulations with all libraries, you can edit it, personalize,etc.
Apart from this, what I mean is that not only Cubase, Logic, but also other DAWS can manage switching articulations.
I am a DP addicted and in my experience I think it is great for manage MIDI and a real killer for managing big templates and mockups.
In my humble opinion this is a necessary professional upgrade.

I completely agree, I'm not a big orchestral composer, I mainly do experimental electro rock, but DP is IMO just better suited to orchestral sized work than any other DAW, except it's current lack of an articulation manager like Cubase or Logic.

[richhickey]

LogicPro's articulation system works with ANY sample libraries. In my opinion it is the best thing offered by any DAW at this point in time for articulation management.

I agree that Logic's current support is the best so far. But (as you implied) it has a lot less to do with the articulation maps than it has to do with:

1) MIDI scripting as a MIDI fx plugin, via Scripter
2) per-note metadata, via articulation IDs

As far as Logic's actual articulation output mappings - I don't ever use them, preferring to script the output messages. The output mapping support is flakey, the notation connection is poorly thought out, the piano roll does not show artic ids or names etc.

The most important thing any DAW can provide is MIDI scripting (Lua or JS) as a MIDI plugin. This can engender a ton of support without the DAW manufacturer doing anything else, as evidenced by the things built upon Logic's Scripter. Scripter has a lot going for it worth emulating - some UI capability, good, chasing automation support for exposable parameters (with default values) etc. I wish every DAW had it.

Then the foundation for any articulation system should be per-note metadata, and preferably more than one 'id' per note, such metadata being visible to scripts.

Actually building in a fixed articulation map or expression map system as a feature is generally not as good as one would think. The editing UIs are uniformly terrible, and the flexibility is poor. Making a script to turn metadata X into MIDI messages Y and Z is pretty trivial, especially given an example or two, and much more powerful with some knowledge.

And if a DAW is going to provide none of this, at least it should support AU/VST plugins as MIDI fx (with automatable params), then we could use BlueCat Plug'nScript, Bidule or protoplug to solve some of our own problems.

As it stands, even routing MIDI between plugins in DP, while supported, is a headache, due to the <rant>lack of MIDI input monitoring when not record-enabled!</rant>

[dewdman42]

All good points.

One problem is that the vast majority of users that need this kind of capability, are also not capable of writing custom scripts of any complexity. Or unwilling to spend the time doing so if nothing else.

That's why the DAW's do need to provide something that doesn't involve scripting, which both Apple and Steinberg have done, but IMHO, not very well. They could both have done it better.

I am most familiar with LogicPro and while they are trying to improve their ArticulationSet paradigm, it still falls way short except for relatively simple sample libraries, where it works quite good and for some people its great. But it doesn't take much to run into a wall with it. So I am glad that Scripter exists, so I can script around it, but actually as I have dug into the issues, my scripts have been increasingly complex and have involved a LOT of my time in programming them, and I have 20+ years experience as a professional software developer. Most people needing this feature are not experienced enough to do that and even I would rather be writing music than scripts.

I agree though, I'd love to see a scripter built into DP. Especially if they integrated it into the MIDI plugin slot rather then making us route things all over the place in order to make use of a AU/VST MIDI plugin.

But ultimately I think MOTU would be better served to take a hard look at the sample libraries out there and the problems that users are trying to solve related to managing articulations, and come up with a solution that does not require scripting. I also feel that event metadata is the way to go on that. Steinberg didn't do that with Cubase, but it turns out most people are using expression maps in a way that its practically the same as if they did do it that way.

Some of the challenges include:

1. Sending multiple keyswitches per articulation
2. When channelizing notes per articulation, also need to channelize CC, PitchBend and Aftertouch events
3. Able to handle multi-timbral instruments with hundreds of instruments, especially when used with Vienna Ensemble Pro.
4. managing the levels between articulations
5. managing latency differences between articulations
6. managing the ability to record articulation changes on the fly as you record the MIDI track
7. Ability to interact with 3rd party touchpad solutions (ie, Lemur, etc)
8. Conditional key switching or articulation selection based on other factors (for example, if the CC1 level is above such-and-such, then need articulation1 keyswitch sent, but if CC1 is below that below then maybe a different keyswitch variation, etc.
9. Able to mix and match articulations from different libraries
10. Etc... there are more, that's just off the top of my head.