Ok. Try to follow me here. Whenever i put in a crescendo or a decrescendo, it doesnt play it with a much contrast as i would like. I know about the whole transform live playback thing. But in the Spice Mon demo, Jim's crescendos are played beautifully. I know it isnt a computer problem because my own computer is playing the demo. i went to the view live playback velocities option for spice mon and checked it, but i saw no sliders in his music. In the eighth bar of D, there is a four count tap roll that crescendos VERY well, but there are no live plackback velocity sliders over the notes. What the heck is going on??? is there some option that i dont have checked? I realize that you can ultimately achieve any result you want with the live playback option and the sliders and all...(which takes alot of time)............but i think it should be just as simple as it looks in spice mon. (tap roll starting at Fp----crescendo to FF. that simple. It just doesnt play back quite so well on my stuff. So why does it work in spice mon so well? Help.
Neil

Neil - thanks for calling my crescendos beautiful. Shucks...
To alter the crescendo playback, select the actual hairpin crescendo (so it's highligted blue). Then, in the 'live playback' pallete, there's a little field for "hairpin playback". I usually enter something like "40% change" to get a nice contrasting crescendo. It's also helpful to enter dynamic markings at the beginning and end of the hairpin so it has a point of reference.

one thing i've found from doing this however, is that this type of live playback setting can mess with accent patterns that happen over the course of a cresc/dim. In those cases, it's a good idea to select each note that's NOT accented, then set its live velocity down to a good tap height setting, like 55 or so.

hope this helps.