One particular gotcha on entering in the first page was a bit of confusion around how humans typically write and read music and the way MIDI represents it internally. The other was from using free plugins.
Anyway, this is what I have so far.
Gotcha 1: It is all sharps under the hood
In a key with flats we nearly always think of accidentals in terms of flats. However, in the internal data representation of MIDI, it is easier to think of everything as a sharp regardless of key. This leaks out in the score editor in logic pro.
The note in question is here. Page 1, bar 4 of Violin 2 if you are following along.
As written in the score, the green note is marked as a natural. That mark removes any implied sharps or flats.
If you ask Logic “Hey, what note is that?” it will tell you.
It tells you a sharp. If you are not paying attention to the key signature you might mistakenly turn this into an A. That is what I did. It was not an improvement.
The correct way to do this is to not be lazy and actually READ the score. The score is in the key of A♭, so the note as written in the score is a B♭. If you apply the natural, then the node becomes a B. It doesn’t look the same as the written score, but it is the same note.
Gotcha 2: You get what you pay for
Another weird issue is that my free orchestral plugin doesn’t have a great deal of articulations (they also sound robotic). This score calls for the strings to play marcato. My plugin does not have that articulation. If you just use the sustain patch, which is probably the closest to marcato you get something that feels drastically different than how orchestras play it. Take a listen.
I shortened each note and used an accented sustain patch to give it more attack, which gives the strings that marcato clip. It is better, but it is far from perfect.
The next audio clip is a real orchestra playing the part. I am working ‘in the box’ and you simply can’t make something sound as good as the real thing. Trying is probably a waste of time. But it is nice to have a standard for comparison.
When compared to a real orchestra my marcato hack isn’t terrible… It gets the job done. However, I would prefer to use real articulations rather than hacking and splicing.
After searching around for a while I realized that orchestral plugins that have a bunch of articulations aren’t free. They are pretty expensive actually. They also require significant hard drive space (500gb+ is common). The one I am eyeing right now is Spitfire Audio's BBC Symphony Orchestra - Professional. That one ways in at a whopping $999 and requires 632Gb of hard drive space.
I am going to buy one towards the end of the month. There are bunches of really good ones out there, so I am shopping around. If you know of any good ones, let me know.