Hey everyone. I just got sibelius 3 , virtual drumline, kompakt, and maple midi tools, but i dont know to get anything working, despite all the help files. can someone please give me instructions on how to get everything working so i can have the snare, tenor, bass, and cymbal sounds working in sibelius, starting from the beggining. Thank You!!

Create a folder on your hard drive called "Virtual Drumline". Drag the gigastudio instrument files from the VDrumline CD, into this folder. Also drag the Sibelius template into this folder. Don't worry about copying the Sibelius soundsets from the VDrumline CD as they aren't compatible with Sibelius 3. Once you've done this, eject the CD to avoid confusion.

Install Maple MIDI Tools (if you haven't already). Launch it. In the "Midi Settings" window, click the button that says, "accept input from sequencer or scoring program" then click "OK." Keep Maple running in the background.

Launch Kompakt. Go to the Setup menu, and click the 'midi' button. On your MIDI input, you should see Maple Midi Port 1, port 2, etc. Make sure (at least) Maple's port 1 is set to "ON". Everything else should be set to "OFF".

Load the VDrumline gigastudio sounds into Kompakt. To do this, click the "browser" button on Kompakt, which will open a file hierarchy of your hard drive. In here, navigate to the files you dragged into the Virtual Drumline folder. In here, you'll see a folder for each of the instruments such as:

SNARE LINE SCV (GIGASAMPLER)
TENOR LINE SCV (GIGASAMPLER)
etc....

Double-click the snare folder, and you'll see a "programs" folder and a "samples" folder. Click (once) on the "programs" folder. NOTE: click on the NAME of the folder, not on the folder itself. When you do this, you'll see the instrument appear in the lower left-hand window (i.e. SNARES SCV). Take this file, and drag it up into the Kompakt slot that says "1. Empty". This will load the snare instrument. Note that by doing this, your actually asking Kompakt to CONVERT the giga file into a .nki format that kompakt can read more easily. So if your presented with a "save instrument" dialog, that's OK. Save the instrument, and name it something appropriate (i.e. VDrumline Snares).

Do the same with tenors (in slot 2), basses (in slot 3), and cymbals (in slot 4).

Important: Set the midi channels for each instrument by clicking on the field that says "OMNI" (above the 'group edit' button). Clicking here will present a popup menu of channels 1-16. Set snares to channel 1, tenors to channel 2, basses to channel 3, and cymbals to channel 4.

Once you've done all this, it's a good idea to save this Kompakt session as a "MULTI" by clicking on the "Save" button (just beneath the Kompakt logo).

Now, open the Sibelius template. Go to the "devices" window and click on the Maple MIDI Port 1 as your default device. Click on your input device (your midi keyboard) so it's highlighted. Also be sure MIDI THRU is checked.

Then go to the Mixer window in Sibelius, and click the "reset sounds" button. Click on the snare track, and set it's device to Maple MIDI port 1, and set the channel to 1. Do the same for tenors (Maple port 1, channel 2)
basses (Maple port 2, channel 3)
cymbals (Maple port 3, channel 4)
NOTE: don't worry that the "sounds" option says something odd like "piano" or if it goes blank. Just ignore that.

This should enable Sibelius to speak to Kompakt so you can play your sounds.

AB

Thank you so much, i can finally get it working