Steve Harder

VSL's quality control is pretty good, so I'm going to say this is a feature not a bug. The workaround is certainly easy. I'm sure we will continue to collect "folklore" about the idiosyncrasies of various sample libraries and how they handle keyswitching.

### Go to this thread for up to date artic maps. ######## Cakewalk articulation maps for VSL Big Bang Orchestra Free Basics, Andromeda, Hercules, Jupiter, Kopernikus, Lyra, Musca, Orion These are working well for me but am interested in hearing of any issues that crop up. Setting Velocity to a non-zero value solved a problem with articulation not chasing when starting play in the middle of note. More info on that VSL Big Bang.zip

I had a problem in VSL Synchron player BBO libraries. Starting playback in the middle of a note does not cause the keyswitch to be recognized by Synchron player. I set up a simple test track where 3 consecutive notes each had an easy to identify articulation set. Play thru all 3 and all is well. Play thru 1, stop, set cursor at middle of 3 and play, and you would hear the note 1 articulation on note 3. I tried every iteration of "play at" and "chase mode". I checked Preferences | Project | MIDI, and made sure both "MIDI Event Chase on Play" and "Include Note Events." are selected. Then I noticed "velocity" was 0, I tried changing it to 100, and problem was solved! Further testing showed that VSL Synchron wasn't fussy about "play at" and "chase mode". I left mine at the map editor default for new midi event of Duration and CC's. The easy way to change the velocity globally in an articulation map is open the map in a text editor (map is an xml file). Make a backup first. Change every occurrence of ["b3":0,] to ["b3":100,]. The [ ] are my delimiters and should not be included in the find/replace text. So keep velocity in mind if you are having issues with articulation keyswitches not chasing properly when starting play in middle of notes. FWIW.

In my experience each "group" in the "Articulation Groups" section will appear on a separate line in the articulation pane on the piano roll.

Here is a good intro vid of Cubase Chord Track that will get you thinking. Nico is Swiss. He uses a text to voice narrator. He has many excellent vids on youtube or his own site composingtips.com. Check him out. Some of the vids are Cubase specific but most are Daw neutral with a focus on orchestration techniques.

While importing Cubase expression maps is a great way to jumpstart using articulation maps Cakewalk does offer the extra capability to organize arts into folders. So Cakewalk maps will have a "value- added" capability that users may want to use and then share. Cubase maps end up being one long list of articulations for an instrument. Being able to organize that list into a tree structure adds some usability.

Keep your posts coming. We need to keep this thread at the top of this forum!

The Cubase expression maps I've imported have all worked. Cubase maps are stored in a binary file, so not easily viewed, but must be using note number.

Thanks for these posts. I don't have hands on experience with Chord Track so it's good to hear from users who have other Daws that provide it. I encourage others to keep posting. Your enthusiasm will encourage the Cakewalk developers to put Chord Track into the future feature pipeline.

Yes

I'm asking someone who can make a lucid, logical and detailed request for Chord Track to start the thread in https://discuss.cakewalk.com/index.php?/forum/8-feedback-loop/.

No, I don't have a formal or developed knowledge of music theory, I know what I don't know. So I'm hoping others will jump in based on more experience than I have. Chord Track would be as big an addition to Cakewalk as articulation maps are. So I'm really encouraged that Noel expressed interest in hearing input.

Noel Borthwick posted this on another thread and I wanted folks to see it. "I'm curious what aspects of a chord track are attractive to you in your workflow. i.e how do you use it. Feel free to make a thread in the feature requests forum." And the thread is now active on Feedback.

I'm trying to keep this thread updated, lots of sources for Cubase expression maps for import.

Solid intro to art maps.

Great news! This will really give a jumpstart to anyone wanting to use articulation maps in Cakewalk! BabylonWaves is bringing their well received Cubase and Logic product over to Cakewalk. https://vi-control.net/community/threads/coming-soon-art-conductor-for-cakewalk-articulation-maps.100939/ And Art Conductor for Cakewalk will have a feature that utilizes folders to organize instruments into groups, a feature that Cubase users will be very envious of.

Reading thru this thread will get you an overview, problem is not in Cakewalk, it's in Steinberg elicenser.. File SaveAs is the workaround I'm using.

Another good and expanding resource for articulation map usage. Nico Schuele Composingtips.com, his new website to complement his Youtube channel. Nico is uploading a number of the Cubase expression maps that he uses as a professional composer. Composingtips.com asks that you create an account to download files. I've tested both the Play ewi files and imported the Cubase expression maps. All works 100%. Bingo, you are up and running with a full string ensemble contained in 5 instances of Play.

Nektar Gx and Lx keyboards work well in Cakewalk.

If you are interested in this thread then reread the first post. I've added new sources and comments. And I saw a thread posting that BabylonWaves might create a package of articulation maps for Cakewalk similar to those they have for Cubase and Logic. FWIW ...

Asking for input. Has anyone created maps for VSL Synchron based libraries? I'm getting ready to tackle the BBO libraries that I own and am weighing a couple of different structure scenarios. ### Unrelated, fyi, most Cinesample libraries can be converted from the default velocity control of articulations to keysewitch. Go to Mapping page where you can tweak trigger velocities and change to keyswitch. My overall goal is to write articulation maps that use default library setups. But writing maps using velocity is a bit more complicated than keyswitch.

Is it feasible to provide an "adjustment to midi note number" within a individual articulation map, which would apply to all articulations within that map? This would aid when importing expression maps. The need for this will hopefully diminish after the Cakewalk community gets busy importing, tweaking and sharing. Luckily there are a finite number of sample libraries to deal with.

Midi note number is an objective piece of data that we can hold onto while we work through the process of importing Cubase expression maps or creating our own from scratch. Each sample library may assign a different midi note number to C0. So C0 is subjective. Being able to determine what midi note number was assigned by that sample library to C0 will give you the objective data you need to understand what is happening in the articulation maps you build or import.

If this is the only library that is loaded for that project then Cakewalk base octave can be tweaked. The issue certainly isn't unique to the libraries you've been working with. VSL BBO is different than CineSamples is different than EastWest. A request was made to developers that each artic map could have a base octave assigned so won't need to tweak each entry in map. Just another wrinkle to get sorted out. But artic maps have me revisiting a couple of libraries that weren't "nimble" enough for me in the past. Loving it.

Thank you for all the work you have done on these. I don't have these libraries but the point is that if we all put time and energy into creating for libraries we do have the entire Cakewalk community will benefit. I will download and archive for later posting on an articulation library that I'm hoping the forum moderators create, attributed to you.