I somewhat experienced this problem in Sibelius 3 but I am currently writing an A&T exercise in Sibelius 4 and the bass drum voice seems to have very little accent to tap definition during playback. I feel that all instruments could use a lower volume level for taps but the bas drum part still sounds like straight 8th notes w/ no accents.

Is the stroke velocity something I can tweak in VDL2, Kontakt 2, or Sibelius?

gbass - This is common in both Sibelius and Finale. Essentiallly, what's happening, is the notation program will send midi velocities that are relative to the dynamic you are writing in (i.e. mf). When it encounters an accent, a higher midi velocity is triggered. For general stuff, this works pretty darn well. But since marching battery stuff typically requires a more extreme contrast between accented notes and unaccented notes, I find the best results from manually lowering the velocities on taps. It's a little bit of a pain, but can really help spruce up your playback significanly - particularly in spots where a certain voice is more exposed.

The way you do this in Sibelius is through ";live playback velocities";. Click the notes you want to lower. Note: Shift-click will allow you to select a consecutive series of notes, control-clicking (apple-click for mac people) will allow you to select non-consecutive notes. The latter is what I use most often since I'm usually trying to lower a bunch of taps at once, and they're almost never ";all in a row."; When the notes are selected, they'll be highlighed.

Then go to the ";playback"; portion of the ";properties"; window. Click the ";live velocity"; checkbox. For snares and tenors, enter a value of around 66-70 for average taps. Basses (particularly unisons) typically sound better around 50 or so. You might want to experiement a bit to see what sounds best. As with all things MIDI, values go from 0-127.

You can also see a visual representation of these velocity settings if you have View>Live Playback Velocities checked. When checked, you'll see a slider above every note. You can also click this slider to adjust velocity up or down for that note. It's a little more cumbersome than the previously mentioned process though...just an option.

Finale velocities can be adjusted by selecting the desired notes (in the MIDI tool) and setting their value with the MIDI menu.

FINALLY - I had seen you do that at your clinic at MTSU a few years back but I could not for the life of me think of where it was you got into the individual velocities.

thanks Jim!!!