Hello all,

I was recently able to set up a full drum corps score by using some hints I found in the forums.  (Thanks guys!)  It was quite a process and actually took a LONG time to get the entire wind and pit score formatted and copyed in on top of the VDL:2 template.  Since I did so, I've been able to write within the score with a lot of success, however I'm running into one problem so far....

I seem to be getting good playback from everything except bass drum unison notes.  As a matter of fact, the LH bass unisons are displaying without a stem when I input them.  The strange part about all of it is that I'm hearing the sound being triggered as I enter it, however the sound won't playback after it is entered for either RH or LH notes.  It also stops triggering the sound when I try to select an individual note, and I'm not having the same problem with any other sounds, only the bass drum unisons.  I thought at first it might have had something to do with the polyphony, but I think I'm ok there.  The only other parts playing through midi channel 3 are baritone parts, and I have them set to use my soundcard as the device, not midi yoke as with the bass drum channel. 

If anyone has any suggestions, or has run into this problem, please let me know.  It seems weird that those specific notes would be playing back incorrectly, and especially that the LH unison has defaulted to stemless. 

btw I'm using sibelius 3, running on 1GB of ram.

Thanks!

Chris Whyte

Chris,
Thanks for the detailed description. You're right...this does sound a little odd. My first hunch is that perhaps something has been slightly altered in the bass drum ";staff type"; that is set for your bass drum staff. One way to troubleshoot a little is this:

-Click on one of the offending, stemless, not-sounding BD Unisons.
-Open the ";properties"; window, and expand the ";NOTES"; section.
-The first pulldown menu here tells you what notehead is assigned to the note you've selected. Remember this.
-Go to House Style>Edit Noteheads, and find the notehead in question. Double-click it to open the notehead properties.
-If the checkboxes next to ";plays"; and ";stem"; aren't checked, that's your problem. The VDL template should not have this problem, so something may have gotten altered, or perhaps you added a new notehead to your staff type without realizing it? Just a few guesses.

It's also not a bad thing to know which staff type is actually assigned to your BD staff. To quickly find out, do this:
-Click a measure in the BD Staff (it should be framed)
-Go to: House Styles>Edit Staff types
-Whatever is selected once the ";edit staff types"; window appears, is what's currently assigned. You can view/edit the percussion mapping for this by clicking the ";edit"; button, but be forewarned, it's not all that pretty, and I advise you to be careful before making any changes as it can be a little confusing in that window.

Check those things out and let us know if you uncover anything. There's a lot going on beneath the surface with notehead types, and staff types.

Hey Jim,

Thanks for the help.�� That fixed the problem right away.�� Once I read your post I realized what I had done...

The wind score was formatted differently (bar numbers, page numbers, text styles, etc.) than the VDL template, so I had saved and imported the house style from the wind score to match it up, and didn't even think about the playback or input effects it might have.�� I think in the process it changed the properties of that notehead and the playback for it.�� I'm hoping that it didn't affect any other aspects of the VDL mapping or template.�� I haven't run into anything else yet, but I will let you know if I do.

Thanks again!

Chris Whyte