The easy solution / workaround is to have individual MIDI tracks for longs, shorts and legatos (and any others that need their own track delay). Thats what I have learned from other peoples workflows.
i fixed this and many other problems with cubase, halion and groove agent.. i moved to reaper where just any function works better, faster and more customizable😊
Diggin the Star Trek bridge background. Nice! And you are correct on the maps! There could be more functionality. If you have a 2000 track template with 500 or so maps, it becomes difficult to search for a particular map. There is no search function. Selecting the track should also select the map in the Setup dialog.
Totally agree. Another massive pain is only being able to import 1 Exp Map at a time and when you have 500+ its such a drag. Oh and importing Tracks from other projects. The import doe not import the Exp Map so you have to manually import them. I mean, all these problems should be sorted out, for sure, but I think nothing tops the timing problem of Exp Maps. That one is just huge.
Great video, thanks. For convenience perhaps. The X-DAW Ariculation Maps EDITER by audio grocery may help. Another thing I do not know how to solve in connection with expression maps: E.g. Synchron Strings By vienna instuments have over hundred of articulations just for one instruments (e.g.violin 1). How on earth can I select the articulation to match with the notes? The articulation lane makes it impossible the see what you want to activate. A simple zoom in/out could help to see what you want to select or a guide to scroll up and down all the articulations. Logic Pro at least you can select all notes you want and then simply select from a drop down menu the corresponding articulation. Perfect! I unfortunatly changed from logic to cubase because Logic is not relible for me when it comes to work along with Vienna Ensemble Pro.
Hey man, if your choose Attribute instead of Direction, you can select the arts from a drop down menu. Sorry, I've only just seen this message otherwise I would have replied sooner!
Honestly I'm using C12, and that's the only feature in C13 that will make me pay for their updates! Expression Maps are great but totally unusable because of that issue.
Hey mate, great video and I agree. Answering one question you had in the beginning about workflow/speeding up this process. I'd recommend keyboard maestro (since you're on MacOs) to help speed you up with a mundane task like building expression maps lol. I'm on windows and use AutoHotkey. I've automated processes like this, to enabling mic outputs in kontakt and routing them to specific ports, to naming tracks specifically. Creating a bunch of these scripts in which you can alter a few variables here and there will save you bunch of time. Of course, it'll cost you a bit of time in the beginning to learn how to write the script and create the script, however, I don't see us anytime soon having to not constantly update our templates and make more expression maps, tracks, etc. Food for thought mate! Cheers!
I've been putting this off forever... And I'm gonna put it off for a little longer. I don't want another app or 3rd party plugin controlling my destiny. I'm tied to the bullshit I'm already shackled by already! 😂
Hot tip - when opening the menus, for example, Output Mapping>Status, you can press the letter on your keyboard that corresponds to the menu item you want, for example, with the menu opened, press 'c' for Controller. Speeds things up a bit.
I had a nice template with 1 track per inst. and expression maps to control the articulations then I seen this video and realised expression maps wont work ffs. it could have been the perfect solution. damn :(
Well they kind of work but kind of don't. But the thing is, I approach this as a way of reducing all my tracks. I rarely use more than one articulation on one of these expression maps tracks so when I have found an art I wanna use, the track becomes an individual art per track type thing anyway. Its just a super luxury to have the buttons on my touch be able to instantly choose any of the arts and then play them back. Having to split them into longs and shorts is the only real way of working with them and from a production point of view that's not a bad thing (for processing etc) I will make a new video on all this stuff but I'm still waiting for my audio interface to be repaired which is why I haven't been making any videos lately which is annoying me greatly.
I use Attribute instead of Direction for this very reason...This way I can always select the articulations I want from the menu and don't have to bother with the window resizing and being able to see the articulations. Hopefully Steinberg revamps the Expression Map system soon...Was dissapointed to find Cubase 12 did nothing in this regard.
I‘m so glad some brings up this topic ! I asked for negative delay for articulations so often in Logic, but I was told it‘s not possible technically. I requested it for Cubase, I was hoping for it in Studio One 6, but nobody seems to care, although it would be the most essential thing to work on a track per instrument base with orchestral libraries. Using track per articulation is a nightmare, but Expression Maps/Articulation IDs/Sound Variations without the chance for individual timings isn‘t much better. MOTU proofs it‘s possible !!
I would suggest to use the Midi Modifiers as Midi insert, which allows you an offset of 50. (And here I ask, why do they need to limit to 50!? Sometimes I just don't understand.) Anyway, this parameter can be automized, so I think it's an half solution
I've been trying this out in Cubase 12 and it works pretty well! I've got it mapped to a quick control, mapped to a midi remote fader, mapped to cc118; so I can send values for this cc from the expression map via a midi send that goes out and back (via a loopmidi port) to move the midi remote fader, and alter the delay value. I do have what looks like a slight midi feedback issue with event chasing on the selected track, but it doesn't seem to be a major problem so far. When I'm happy with the new part I've written, I just have to play it through to write the automation.
That's the biggest one. I also think there is another one: The Direction mode isn't working as it's supposed to. If you set the articulation in direction-mode on let's say beat one of bar one and a note is played at the exact same moment, the program will not change the articulation for that note. So what you have to do is negative-delay all direction-articulations by a bit. And the playback of direction mode is just a buggy pain. That's why I changed to attribute. It's just much more reliant. Even though it is not working for combined things like sustain+legato, cause it's limited to one articulation per note. So I have to use a combination of both attribute and direction. I just hope - and believe in Steinberg; to fix it. They didn't do with Cubase 12. Hopefully with 12. something.
Totally agree. I am part of the Cubase Beta testing team so I am going to make it my mission that this stuff gets fixed.because on paper, this is so brilliant. Unfortnately, Expression Maps just aren't what they should be and with a bit of love I think Steinberg could sort all of this stuff out! :)
Yep, had to switch to Attribute as Direction was buggy. Attribute isn't bad but wish Direction and Attribute could work together and not be one or other. Also wish Expression Maps could be stored in Cubase and not have to be loaded in the Expression Map "bank" first.
Great critique Jono, thanks for the detailed video (the repetition helped me to learn this, so no pain here). Not to be cynical, but remember, we are making progress (even is very very slowly). Twenty years ago, we didn't have expression maps. Maybe in another twenty we'll be able to offset them individually? (and credit you as the inspiration) I hope Steinberg addresses the articulation timing offset in Dorico as well. Hey Dillon, great to see you here too! (similar minds all snared by the same problem, its a jungle eh?).
Thanks Gregory. Oh yeah, not a day goes by where I don't think how lucky we are to be able to use such amazing technology. I recently saw that Digital Performer have implement individual delay timings for each articulation so it gives me hope that Steinberg would implement this! :)
A great thought provoking video. As an avid user of expression maps I think you've highlighted something I really hadn't thought of with the timing. Would be good if the offset option was there. One thing that might perhaps take away a little set up pain is that I have several templates set up with the basics already in then I load it in, rename the articulations then save under a new name. Won't solve naming articulations but will set up your basics like ccs, direction etc if they are always going to be the same. Hope that might help. But totally agree that if the custom articulation could auto import the name that would really help. Thanks for opening up the topic.
Glad you liked the video. Digital Performer now has implemented individual delays for each articulation in their Articulation Map Setup window so its completely possible for this to be added. And I really hope does. As for Expression Map creation, the person I am working with on making a Touch Screen Controller has just created an API to generate Exp Maps and also the other way around. To take an Exp Map and turn the data into code that the Touch Screen uses to generate the Exp Map art buttons. In the script you also say whether you are using Direction or Attribute, which CC to output and value number. Basically made an Exp Map in about 2-3 mins. I'm excited that this will give me back some of my life 😂
I'm seeing NI instruments change articulations when the pitch range of the triggers are way outside the range specified by the expression maps. But this issue that you've pointed out is a real shocker. Surely they know about this issue?
Yeah, well I made the video to hopefully raise awareness that people want this fixed. Digital Performer have recently added an option to offset individual articulations so they have already fixed this timing problem. If Steinberg was a god, I'd be already preying for it to happen 😂
I added blank slot at top of mine for every instrument called dummy. This prevents expression map from switching back after say programming a section of a song. It will keep the expression map you were last on loaded.
I used to do this but since using Prog Changes I haven't noticed any playback problems. Either way, it's a good thing to do if you're using Key Switches. I'll recheck and see if any problems happen with Prog Changes but I've not experienced any so far without an empty slot.
Hey Guy, lovely to hear from you. It's been too long. I've actually rejoined the Cubase Beta Testing team and actually requested this be sorted out. If I can contribute one thing to the music tech world, I hope it can be fixing this. I don't ask for much in life. 😂
@@claudep.1926 No mate I don't actually know anything. I have no idea if Steinberg is fixing this. I have requested in the beta testing forum so who knows man! I hope it gets sorted because its a pain!
Hi. Totally agree. I thought I was missing something. It is so long winded. I presume you have already sent this video to Steinberg!? There is so much potential for even more improvements. Let's hope C12 is better.
Hey, thanks for watching Jason. Yeah, the individual timing offsets for each art really needs to be sorted out because it’s just impossible to have everything in time. Splitting longs and shorts into separate tracks is a workaround most people use but it really defeats the purpose of you can have longs and shorts on the same track. I haven’t sent it to Steinberg. Just kind of hoping someone there will watch this and think it will be a good idea to fix :)
Hi there. I wonder how is this possible to adjust delay offset when the Daw is playing realtime. Let say I am using marcato art with -50ms offset. Then the note right after that is a legato note with -150ms offset. If Daw try to immediately move the leg note note closer to the Marc note, to compensate the offset timing different. Then the Marc note would be shorter duration than it should be? If not, we will have unwanted overlapped notes. I think delay offset have always be set at track level. Then Daw could have enough time to sync every tracks to the same timing. If offset adjusted during playback, it could cause problems such as out of sync, overlapped, Notes duration cutted out, glitch, drop out...
Mate not only I feel you but I have a solution for you hah .I have 9-10 libraries with 3 different offsets -100 / -80 /-180 So I just go through all of this shit you describing creating the exp map and then I add -100 to Midi channel no.1(average) and then when I play the legato artic. I just pull the notes back 1/32nd and keep my sanity in check TILL THE FREAKING POINT STEINBERG DECIDES TO FIX THIS FFSAKE :p
haha It is highly irritating. I just have mine split to shorts and longs and generally only use one art per track even if they have exp maps. I have the exp maps and buttons to select them on my Touch Controller for pure convenience. I'll make another video going into this at some point instead of just talking about problems :)
Thank you for this video Luke although it's a pain in the ass for you pros for some of us this is a great school. Would you also be able to guide us in to programing expression map on a stream deck that would be sooo great. Thank you very much bless up
Hey thanks. Well I do have a stream deck so I could take a look at that. What is it you want to be able to do with the stream deck and Expression Maps?
@@Mrjononotbono I would love to be able to change the articulations ( sustain, legato, pizz, trills and so on) using the buttons on elgato instead on my piano. I have my own expression maps but can't find a way how to assign the elgato buttons there. Thank you so much for your reply
@@bazenastevski2576 Ok man, it sounds like the Stream Deck buttons need to be able to send out Midi Notes (which would trigger Keyswitches). That might be quite easy (I've not tried to do that before on a Stream Deck so "might" might be a big word haha) and I'll have a look into it.
@@Mrjononotbono my maaan if you could figure it out I will start doing backflips I've tried everything in my capacity so enormous gratitude of you could help out. it can be a game changer
@@bazenastevski2576 Ok man! I'll have a look into it. I'm pretty you can set each button to output midi notes (and Program changes) so this could perfectly work with triggering key switches. What I won't be able to do have buttons dynamically change for each track as I just don't think that's possible with a Stream Deck but to have dedicated buttons that fire off specific Midi notes to simulate pressing a keyboard key switch (like you do when you press the keys on your keyboard) I think is possible. Just gotta figure out how to do it! 😂
Can I suggest some kind of macro to handle moving notes automatically? I did what this guy did here czcams.com/video/3VRhZzaBUzU/video.html to move all the notes based on their velocity because in CSS, different velocitties result in different latency times.. Maybe there's a way of creating a macro to identify notes that are of specific artiulations and then automatically moving them to a predetermined offset as this guy did? I'm using it now nad it works pretty well.
Good suggestion but when you want to print your parts out for an orchestrator, literally every midi note is completely out of time to where it shouldn’t be. If there was a built in function to the Expression Maps to tell each art to offset by a specific amount, every note could just be on grid like how they would be if written out in score. I do have CSS and might have a play with it (and these timing scripts people have made) again but I'm just gonna hope Steinberg implement exactly what Digital Performer has which is individual timing offset for each Articulation. I got so excited when I saw they did this. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. Definitely a way to deal with CSS if its worth your time to do so :)
@@Mrjononotbono cheers yeah I know what you mean.. I suppose if you were fortunate enough to have your music played by an orchestra, it would mean going in, merging all necessary midi tracks and just doing a quick quantize to bring everything back on the grid. Everything is usually off by 60-333 milliseconds so if you quantize it will take care of it. You’d have to pay attention to what division you are using of course, and if there are triplets or other groupings. It definitely requires some attention to prepare it for printing.. what to do.. until Cubase makes a solution.
@@PhilipZilfo I’ve actually set up quantize buttons so they don’t just change the grid type to the quantize setting but also to change selected notes to specific quantize settings. For example, if I lassoed and selected a group of midi notes and pressed the quantize 16th button, it will quantize those selected notes to 16ths (on grid). It’s a massive time saver. The link you provided with almost gave me a headache for how much manual tweaking he would have to do for a full feature film score 😂
Steinberg will not fix anything, Expression maps are a typical example of how Steinberg works. They have fantastic ideas and are able to put them on the market as semi-finished products that they will never fix. I work with switching articulations massively, and for me, the non-functionality of Expression maps was the reason for switching to Studio One, even though I would have loved to stay with Cubase. Steinber is losing customers and doesn't care.
@@Mrjononotbono I don't think they would neccesarilly disagree with me, they would rather just don't mind your contribution to the issue list. I'll explain. As you probably know, the most voted and one of the most popular topics on Steinberg forums is an Expression maps topic. There, people have already mentioned probably hundreds of things that are currently wrong with Expression maps, many of which are critical. I also know about many composers including some top ones who stopped using E maps just because of these issues. At the same time, what are you talking about here is not critical at all (except for the per-articulation delay, of course). In fact, you can easily create your own E-map creation software. E map files are not binary encoded, they are essentially XML files, so you can reverse engineer them and create your own parser with any interface you'd like. Because of that, I would argue that the interface is not the issue at all. There are a lot of issues which don't have workaround and can't possibly be solved by a user unless you reverse the whole software and do dll injections, which is prohibited by the license. Such problems as articulation locking, selection, auto-assignment, mass note data manipulation, articulated note audition, new UI functions like selection, articulation removing, playback issues, midi track issues, and of course custom delays.
@@Mrjononotbono I don't think Steinberg will watch your channel, but they read their forums and they are aware. That comment was to inform you and anyone who stumbles upon this video. Cheers
You are attempting to solve the problem at the wrong level. What actually needs to happen is the sample lib developer produces quality libraries where notes don't contain silence at the beginning. Any amateur can use a batch processing tool to get rid of these automatically (after sampling reference noise) in all samples. I would get rid of any sample lib where I need to tinker with individual delays per articulation just because the sample lib producer did a shitty job and had the courage to ask money for it!
Well, most "amateurs" have no idea how to do this kind of thing, hence why they may indeed be called "amateurs". If the "silence" you are referring to is the pre roll before the sample transient, then this should never be removed. Unless your goal is to create absolutely awful (or wondrously synthetic depending on what you want to achieve) sounding samples that cut into the transient. Then sure. I agree. The only solution is to negatively delay each articulation so the transient lines up to grid. With pre roll still intact. Thanks man
@@Mrjononotbono Not sure you have a slightest clue what I'm talking about. So let me rephrase it -- you apply individual delays to individual articulations. Why? Because, obviously, the individual articulations have inherent delays in the sample lib samples. So it's not an issue at the DAW level, but at the lowest level -- the samples of the sample library. Why are they delayed differently depending on the articulation? Because they have silence at the beginning. If not, then I'm not sure what you're trying to solve. If a musician is supposed to start earlier, than the note must be written earlier as well. Track delays are a stupid solution in any case.
@@AngelicStreak David, you clearly have no idea how a REAL instrument/musician-generating-a-sound works. I think you have to research and study the lowest level of fundamental of how it works.
Here's the main problem: You have to set them up thrice. You have to create the map, manually assign the output for every one of them, and manually assign an expression to each one of them to be able to use them. In Digital Performer and Studio one you only set up the first one (only input and output), the rest is done automatically.
You’ve missed the main problem. Not being able to offset timings for individual articulations. This is something that can be now down in DP. I go through this at the end of the video. Every other problem is just a nuisance in comparison. Hopefully one day all this stuff will be fixed! :)
Really hope someone at Steinberg watches this... As you have painstakingly and thoroughly demonstrated, the expression map workflow is monstrous.
Thanks for watching the video man! Yeah, I wish this was sorted. It's almost amazing but man, so far away from being amazing at the same time 😂
The easy solution / workaround is to have individual MIDI tracks for longs, shorts and legatos (and any others that need their own track delay). Thats what I have learned from other peoples workflows.
i fixed this and many other problems with cubase, halion and groove agent.. i moved to reaper where just any function works better, faster and more customizable😊
Diggin the Star Trek bridge background. Nice! And you are correct on the maps! There could be more functionality. If you have a 2000 track template with 500 or so maps, it becomes difficult to search for a particular map. There is no search function. Selecting the track should also select the map in the Setup dialog.
Totally agree. Another massive pain is only being able to import 1 Exp Map at a time and when you have 500+ its such a drag.
Oh and importing Tracks from other projects. The import doe not import the Exp Map so you have to manually import them. I mean, all these problems should be sorted out, for sure, but I think nothing tops the timing problem of Exp Maps. That one is just huge.
Great video, thanks. For convenience perhaps. The X-DAW Ariculation Maps EDITER by audio grocery may help. Another thing I do not know how to solve in connection with expression maps:
E.g. Synchron Strings By vienna instuments have over hundred of articulations just for one instruments (e.g.violin 1). How on earth can I select the articulation to match with the notes? The articulation lane makes it impossible the see what you want to activate. A simple zoom in/out could help to see what you want to select or a guide to scroll up and down all the articulations. Logic Pro at least you can select all notes you want and then simply select from a drop down menu the corresponding articulation. Perfect! I unfortunatly changed from logic to cubase because Logic is not relible for me when it comes to work along with Vienna Ensemble Pro.
Hey man, if your choose Attribute instead of Direction, you can select the arts from a drop down menu. Sorry, I've only just seen this message otherwise I would have replied sooner!
Honestly I'm using C12, and that's the only feature in C13 that will make me pay for their updates! Expression Maps are great but totally unusable because of that issue.
Hey mate, great video and I agree. Answering one question you had in the beginning about workflow/speeding up this process. I'd recommend keyboard maestro (since you're on MacOs) to help speed you up with a mundane task like building expression maps lol. I'm on windows and use AutoHotkey. I've automated processes like this, to enabling mic outputs in kontakt and routing them to specific ports, to naming tracks specifically. Creating a bunch of these scripts in which you can alter a few variables here and there will save you bunch of time. Of course, it'll cost you a bit of time in the beginning to learn how to write the script and create the script, however, I don't see us anytime soon having to not constantly update our templates and make more expression maps, tracks, etc. Food for thought mate! Cheers!
I've been putting this off forever... And I'm gonna put it off for a little longer. I don't want another app or 3rd party plugin controlling my destiny. I'm tied to the bullshit I'm already shackled by already! 😂
Hot tip - when opening the menus, for example, Output Mapping>Status, you can press the letter on your keyboard that corresponds to the menu item you want, for example, with the menu opened, press 'c' for Controller. Speeds things up a bit.
Awesome!
I had a nice template with 1 track per inst. and expression maps to control the articulations then I seen this video and realised expression maps wont work ffs. it could have been the perfect solution. damn :(
Well they kind of work but kind of don't. But the thing is, I approach this as a way of reducing all my tracks. I rarely use more than one articulation on one of these expression maps tracks so when I have found an art I wanna use, the track becomes an individual art per track type thing anyway. Its just a super luxury to have the buttons on my touch be able to instantly choose any of the arts and then play them back. Having to split them into longs and shorts is the only real way of working with them and from a production point of view that's not a bad thing (for processing etc)
I will make a new video on all this stuff but I'm still waiting for my audio interface to be repaired which is why I haven't been making any videos lately which is annoying me greatly.
We also need the ability to resize the window so we can see all the column text. It just very hard to read the menus.
Absolutely!
I use Attribute instead of Direction for this very reason...This way I can always select the articulations I want from the menu and don't have to bother with the window resizing and being able to see the articulations. Hopefully Steinberg revamps the Expression Map system soon...Was dissapointed to find Cubase 12 did nothing in this regard.
I agree Scott. Scalable Vector Graphics have been around a while.. like in FL Studio. Why Kontakt and Steinberg don't use them is rather puzzling.
I‘m so glad some brings up this topic ! I asked for negative delay for articulations so often in Logic, but I was told it‘s not possible technically. I requested it for Cubase, I was hoping for it in Studio One 6, but nobody seems to care, although it would be the most essential thing to work on a track per instrument base with orchestral libraries. Using track per articulation is a nightmare, but Expression Maps/Articulation IDs/Sound Variations without the chance for individual timings isn‘t much better. MOTU proofs it‘s possible !!
I would suggest to use the Midi Modifiers as Midi insert, which allows you an offset of 50. (And here I ask, why do they need to limit to 50!? Sometimes I just don't understand.) Anyway, this parameter can be automized, so I think it's an half solution
I've been trying this out in Cubase 12 and it works pretty well! I've got it mapped to a quick control, mapped to a midi remote fader, mapped to cc118; so I can send values for this cc from the expression map via a midi send that goes out and back (via a loopmidi port) to move the midi remote fader, and alter the delay value. I do have what looks like a slight midi feedback issue with event chasing on the selected track, but it doesn't seem to be a major problem so far. When I'm happy with the new part I've written, I just have to play it through to write the automation.
That's the biggest one.
I also think there is another one: The Direction mode isn't working as it's supposed to. If you set the articulation in direction-mode on let's say beat one of bar one and a note is played at the exact same moment, the program will not change the articulation for that note. So what you have to do is negative-delay all direction-articulations by a bit. And the playback of direction mode is just a buggy pain. That's why I changed to attribute. It's just much more reliant. Even though it is not working for combined things like sustain+legato, cause it's limited to one articulation per note. So I have to use a combination of both attribute and direction. I just hope - and believe in Steinberg; to fix it. They didn't do with Cubase 12. Hopefully with 12. something.
Totally agree. I am part of the Cubase Beta testing team so I am going to make it my mission that this stuff gets fixed.because on paper, this is so brilliant. Unfortnately, Expression Maps just aren't what they should be and with a bit of love I think Steinberg could sort all of this stuff out! :)
@@Mrjononotbono Oh, so you could finally be someone I could forward my Din-A4 page of bugs/missing functions to :D
@@leobrennauer No promises. Lets get Exp Maps working first and go from there😂
Yep, had to switch to Attribute as Direction was buggy. Attribute isn't bad but wish Direction and Attribute could work together and not be one or other. Also wish Expression Maps could be stored in Cubase and not have to be loaded in the Expression Map "bank" first.
@@austinhaynesmusic Or loaded 1 at a time. I just loaded over a thousand Exp Maps into it., It gets time consuming 😂
Great critique Jono, thanks for the detailed video (the repetition helped me to learn this, so no pain here). Not to be cynical, but remember, we are making progress (even is very very slowly). Twenty years ago, we didn't have expression maps. Maybe in another twenty we'll be able to offset them individually? (and credit you as the inspiration) I hope Steinberg addresses the articulation timing offset in Dorico as well.
Hey Dillon, great to see you here too! (similar minds all snared by the same problem, its a jungle eh?).
Thanks Gregory. Oh yeah, not a day goes by where I don't think how lucky we are to be able to use such amazing technology. I recently saw that Digital Performer have implement individual delay timings for each articulation so it gives me hope that Steinberg would implement this! :)
A great thought provoking video. As an avid user of expression maps I think you've highlighted something I really hadn't thought of with the timing. Would be good if the offset option was there. One thing that might perhaps take away a little set up pain is that I have several templates set up with the basics already in then I load it in, rename the articulations then save under a new name. Won't solve naming articulations but will set up your basics like ccs, direction etc if they are always going to be the same. Hope that might help. But totally agree that if the custom articulation could auto import the name that would really help. Thanks for opening up the topic.
Glad you liked the video. Digital Performer now has implemented individual delays for each articulation in their Articulation Map Setup window so its completely possible for this to be added. And I really hope does.
As for Expression Map creation, the person I am working with on making a Touch Screen Controller has just created an API to generate Exp Maps and also the other way around. To take an Exp Map and turn the data into code that the Touch Screen uses to generate the Exp Map art buttons. In the script you also say whether you are using Direction or Attribute, which CC to output and value number. Basically made an Exp Map in about 2-3 mins. I'm excited that this will give me back some of my life 😂
totally agree!!!
I'm seeing NI instruments change articulations when the pitch range of the triggers are way outside the range specified by the expression maps. But this issue that you've pointed out is a real shocker. Surely they know about this issue?
Yeah, well I made the video to hopefully raise awareness that people want this fixed. Digital Performer have recently added an option to offset individual articulations so they have already fixed this timing problem. If Steinberg was a god, I'd be already preying for it to happen 😂
I added blank slot at top of mine for every instrument called dummy. This prevents expression map from switching back after say programming a section of a song. It will keep the expression map you were last on loaded.
I used to do this but since using Prog Changes I haven't noticed any playback problems. Either way, it's a good thing to do if you're using Key Switches. I'll recheck and see if any problems happen with Prog Changes but I've not experienced any so far without an empty slot.
Nice one Jono!
Hey Guy, lovely to hear from you. It's been too long. I've actually rejoined the Cubase Beta Testing team and actually requested this be sorted out. If I can contribute one thing to the music tech world, I hope it can be fixing this. I don't ask for much in life. 😂
@@Mrjononotbono Hey Luke, any news on this?
@@claudep.1926 No news man
@@Mrjononotbono thanks man but is it a "can't talk about it" kind of no news , or actually no news?
@@claudep.1926 No mate I don't actually know anything. I have no idea if Steinberg is fixing this. I have requested in the beta testing forum so who knows man! I hope it gets sorted because its a pain!
Hi. Totally agree. I thought I was missing something. It is so long winded. I presume you have already sent this video to Steinberg!? There is so much potential for even more improvements. Let's hope C12 is better.
Hey, thanks for watching Jason. Yeah, the individual timing offsets for each art really needs to be sorted out because it’s just impossible to have everything in time. Splitting longs and shorts into separate tracks is a workaround most people use but it really defeats the purpose of you can have longs and shorts on the same track. I haven’t sent it to Steinberg. Just kind of hoping someone there will watch this and think it will be a good idea to fix :)
Hi there. I wonder how is this possible to adjust delay offset when the Daw is playing realtime.
Let say I am using marcato art with -50ms offset. Then the note right after that is a legato note with -150ms offset. If Daw try to immediately move the leg note note closer to the Marc note, to compensate the offset timing different. Then the Marc note would be shorter duration than it should be? If not, we will have unwanted overlapped notes.
I think delay offset have always be set at track level. Then Daw could have enough time to sync every tracks to the same timing. If offset adjusted during playback, it could cause problems such as out of sync, overlapped, Notes duration cutted out, glitch, drop out...
Sorry man, but Digital Performer has already implemented exactly what I have said about in the video. Check it out. Its great! :)
Mate not only I feel you but I have a solution for you hah .I have 9-10 libraries with 3 different offsets -100 / -80 /-180 So I just go through all of this shit you describing creating the exp map and then I add -100 to Midi channel no.1(average) and then when I play the legato artic. I just pull the notes back 1/32nd and keep my sanity in check TILL THE FREAKING POINT STEINBERG DECIDES TO FIX THIS FFSAKE :p
haha It is highly irritating. I just have mine split to shorts and longs and generally only use one art per track even if they have exp maps. I have the exp maps and buttons to select them on my Touch Controller for pure convenience. I'll make another video going into this at some point instead of just talking about problems :)
Thank you for this video Luke although it's a pain in the ass for you pros for some of us this is a great school. Would you also be able to guide us in to programing expression map on a stream deck that would be sooo great. Thank you very much bless up
Hey thanks. Well I do have a stream deck so I could take a look at that. What is it you want to be able to do with the stream deck and Expression Maps?
@@Mrjononotbono I would love to be able to change the articulations ( sustain, legato, pizz, trills and so on) using the buttons on elgato instead on my piano. I have my own expression maps but can't find a way how to assign the elgato buttons there. Thank you so much for your reply
@@bazenastevski2576 Ok man, it sounds like the Stream Deck buttons need to be able to send out Midi Notes (which would trigger Keyswitches). That might be quite easy (I've not tried to do that before on a Stream Deck so "might" might be a big word haha) and I'll have a look into it.
@@Mrjononotbono my maaan if you could figure it out I will start doing backflips I've tried everything in my capacity so enormous gratitude of you could help out. it can be a game changer
@@bazenastevski2576 Ok man! I'll have a look into it. I'm pretty you can set each button to output midi notes (and Program changes) so this could perfectly work with triggering key switches.
What I won't be able to do have buttons dynamically change for each track as I just don't think that's possible with a Stream Deck but to have dedicated buttons that fire off specific Midi notes to simulate pressing a keyboard key switch (like you do when you press the keys on your keyboard) I think is possible.
Just gotta figure out how to do it! 😂
Yep, absolute nightmare. Track per articulation it is then for now .. pain in the arse.
Can I suggest some kind of macro to handle moving notes automatically? I did what this guy did here czcams.com/video/3VRhZzaBUzU/video.html to move all the notes based on their velocity because in CSS, different velocitties result in different latency times.. Maybe there's a way of creating a macro to identify notes that are of specific artiulations and then automatically moving them to a predetermined offset as this guy did? I'm using it now nad it works pretty well.
Good suggestion but when you want to print your parts out for an orchestrator, literally every midi note is completely out of time to where it shouldn’t be. If there was a built in function to the Expression Maps to tell each art to offset by a specific amount, every note could just be on grid like how they would be if written out in score.
I do have CSS and might have a play with it (and these timing scripts people have made) again but I'm just gonna hope Steinberg implement exactly what Digital Performer has which is individual timing offset for each Articulation. I got so excited when I saw they did this. Anyway, thanks for your thoughts. Definitely a way to deal with CSS if its worth your time to do so :)
@@Mrjononotbono cheers yeah I know what you mean.. I suppose if you were fortunate enough to have your music played by an orchestra, it would mean going in, merging all necessary midi tracks and just doing a quick quantize to bring everything back on the grid. Everything is usually off by 60-333 milliseconds so if you quantize it will take care of it. You’d have to pay attention to what division you are using of course, and if there are triplets or other groupings. It definitely requires some attention to prepare it for printing.. what to do.. until Cubase makes a solution.
@@PhilipZilfo I’ve actually set up quantize buttons so they don’t just change the grid type to the quantize setting but also to change selected notes to specific quantize settings. For example, if I lassoed and selected a group of midi notes and pressed the quantize 16th button, it will quantize those selected notes to 16ths (on grid). It’s a massive time saver. The link you provided with almost gave me a headache for how much manual tweaking he would have to do for a full feature film score 😂
Steinberg will not fix anything, Expression maps are a typical example of how Steinberg works. They have fantastic ideas and are able to put them on the market as semi-finished products that they will never fix. I work with switching articulations massively, and for me, the non-functionality of Expression maps was the reason for switching to Studio One, even though I would have loved to stay with Cubase. Steinber is losing customers and doesn't care.
Hey found this video helpful but would you mind taking out Love You long time from the title. It’s a derogatory phrase and offensive towards Asians
Sure no problem. It was just a quote from a very famous film, but if its offensive then no problem.
There you go. Changed. Hope nobody was offended.
They don't fix anything. Mixer snapshots do not include mutes lol
Sorry but I agree with some commenters. This video is kind of pointless (someone linked it to me)
Many other people would disagree with you. Thanks for your thoughts.
@@Mrjononotbono I don't think they would neccesarilly disagree with me, they would rather just don't mind your contribution to the issue list. I'll explain.
As you probably know, the most voted and one of the most popular topics on Steinberg forums is an Expression maps topic. There, people have already mentioned probably hundreds of things that are currently wrong with Expression maps, many of which are critical. I also know about many composers including some top ones who stopped using E maps just because of these issues.
At the same time, what are you talking about here is not critical at all (except for the per-articulation delay, of course). In fact, you can easily create your own E-map creation software. E map files are not binary encoded, they are essentially XML files, so you can reverse engineer them and create your own parser with any interface you'd like. Because of that, I would argue that the interface is not the issue at all.
There are a lot of issues which don't have workaround and can't possibly be solved by a user unless you reverse the whole software and do dll injections, which is prohibited by the license. Such problems as articulation locking, selection, auto-assignment, mass note data manipulation, articulated note audition, new UI functions like selection, articulation removing, playback issues, midi track issues, and of course custom delays.
@@quantumdeconstructor Thanks for sharing man! No doubt Steinberg will read this! :)
@@Mrjononotbono I don't think Steinberg will watch your channel, but they read their forums and they are aware. That comment was to inform you and anyone who stumbles upon this video. Cheers
@@quantumdeconstructor I’m a Cubase Beta tester. :;
You are attempting to solve the problem at the wrong level. What actually needs to happen is the sample lib developer produces quality libraries where notes don't contain silence at the beginning. Any amateur can use a batch processing tool to get rid of these automatically (after sampling reference noise) in all samples. I would get rid of any sample lib where I need to tinker with individual delays per articulation just because the sample lib producer did a shitty job and had the courage to ask money for it!
Well, most "amateurs" have no idea how to do this kind of thing, hence why they may indeed be called "amateurs". If the "silence" you are referring to is the pre roll before the sample transient, then this should never be removed. Unless your goal is to create absolutely awful (or wondrously synthetic depending on what you want to achieve) sounding samples that cut into the transient. Then sure. I agree.
The only solution is to negatively delay each articulation so the transient lines up to grid. With pre roll still intact.
Thanks man
@@Mrjononotbono Not sure you have a slightest clue what I'm talking about. So let me rephrase it -- you apply individual delays to individual articulations. Why? Because, obviously, the individual articulations have inherent delays in the sample lib samples. So it's not an issue at the DAW level, but at the lowest level -- the samples of the sample library. Why are they delayed differently depending on the articulation? Because they have silence at the beginning. If not, then I'm not sure what you're trying to solve. If a musician is supposed to start earlier, than the note must be written earlier as well. Track delays are a stupid solution in any case.
@@AngelicStreak Thanks for your thoughts.
@@AngelicStreak David, you clearly have no idea how a REAL instrument/musician-generating-a-sound works. I think you have to research and study the lowest level of fundamental of how it works.
Here's the main problem: You have to set them up thrice. You have to create the map, manually assign the output for every one of them, and manually assign an expression to each one of them to be able to use them. In Digital Performer and Studio one you only set up the first one (only input and output), the rest is done automatically.
You’ve missed the main problem. Not being able to offset timings for individual articulations. This is something that can be now down in DP. I go through this at the end of the video. Every other problem is just a nuisance in comparison. Hopefully one day all this stuff will be fixed! :)