Hey guys I have 2 quick questions. I've been reading alot of the posts on here about the staff type changes you can do in sibelius so you can put like crash cymbals on the bell part. I change the staff type and load the crash cymbals onto the same channel as the bells but they both sound at the same timewhen I play it back. Am I supposed to assign the cymbals to a different channel somehow? How can I make it so for,say that one measure, it sounds like crash cymbals and then it goes back to bells? (I'm also trying to put a concert BD hit on the rack combo A part so this pretty much applies to all parts)

Also, with crash cymbals on vibes and marimbas, whenever I hit C6 to put the hit in part, the cymbal hit is actually at C6 like 8 leger lines up and its not an X. Is this a flaw or am I hitting something wrong?

Jamieson

Jamieson,

If you have Kontakt 2, not the Kontakt Player that ships with VDL:2, then you are able to set up what are called instrument banks.  What that means is you can load up to 128 different instruments into one bank.  Each bank occupies one channel.  You can easily switch banks in Sibelius on the fly to trigger whatever sound you have loaded into a certain bank.  If you're using the Kontakt Player, this option is not yet available.

For the cymbals on vibes and marimbas, are you switching the staff type before the cymbal part?  There are specific 3 line staves created just for the cymbal parts.  Navigate to Change>Other>Staff Types>Percussion>VDL2: Vibes Sus Cym or Mar Sus Cym to get the new staves up.

I have a similiar issue.  I have been working all week on setting all of this up.  I just got a MacBook and I loaded Sibelius 4, Kontakt 2, and Virtual Drumline 2 on to it.  I am using a Oxygen 8 v2 midi controller.  I have figured out how to create instrument banks in Kontakt 2 and I have managed to sinc up the correct sounds in Sibelius by matching all of the channels and input and output devices.  However, I am not exactly sure how the staff change feature is supposed to work.  I attempted to change the staff to the VD2: Orchestral Tambourine in the middle of a marimba line.  While I am able to access both sounds in one channel in the mixer, I can not seem to get the sounds to work for playback.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!  Thank you!

The staff type change only controls the percussion mapping (how notes are displayed on staff). To actually change programs (i.e. from marimba to tambourine), you need to manually enter the program change as well (in sibelius). To do this, simply use technique text. For example:

~p1  -- This command will set that instrument bank to program 1
~p7  -- Sets that instrument bank to program 7

Also, if you haven't already updated to Kontakt 2.2, this would be highly recommended since you are using an Intel Mac. It's the first universal binary version of Kontakt, which essentially means you'd be running your VDL2 sounds in universal mode, which will perform better than Rosetta.

Jim, thank you very much for the info.  I will give this a try as soon as I get home from work.  One other question, now that I have all the sounds up and running, I am trying to create a full band and percussion score.  Any suggestions on setting this up?  Should I use standard kontakt silver sounds for the winds and virtual drumline for the battery and pit?  Can you still use kontakt silver sounds when incorporating kontakt 2?  What is the best way to do this?  Thank you!

Dave,

Start with the VDL:2 template since it has all of the sounds mapped.  From there press ";I"; to add your other instruments.  Kontakt Gold/Silver will work for your band sounds , but be careful of using too much memory.  I write using GM and using the samples for the recordings.

HTH,

Gabe Cobas

Dave - as Gabe recommends, be aware of how using Sibelius, Kontakt Silver, and Kontakt 2 simultaneously affects your system. It's a lot to have going on. That said, this is how I normally work (though not on a notebook). A few tips to help you get the most out of using Kontakt Silver (or Gold) at the same time as Kontakt 2.

1) In the Kontakt Player options (in Sibelius) make sure you are using the ";eco"; (economy) versions of the instruments. This will preserve computing resources.

2) Be sure Sibelius is set to [b]not[/b] use reverb in it's Kontakt Player.

3) Have staves that use same instruments share the same channel (i.e. trp 1, 2, 3 all use only one trumpet patch)

To set wind staves to Kontakt Player (sibelius's kontakt player silver), just set this in the Sibelius mixer in the ";device"; pulldown. That's a really nice thing about Sibelius. You can mix and match devices per staff.

Once Sibelius releases their universal binary version, I suspect your performance should also improve.

Gabe,

When you use the samples for your recordings, are you still playing it all back through Sibelius?  Are you multitracking segments?  How are you doing the recording?

Depends.  If I am making a quick ";no frills"; recording then I use wire tap pro (www.ambrosiasoftware.com) and record straight from Sibelius.  I am running on 3 GB of Ram so I usually don't run in to drop outs or pops.  When making a high quality recording I export the midi and use Logic Express, which puts out a much higher quality product.

Gabe

Sorry for yet another post....

1.  How can I save instrument banks and set ups once I load them into Kontakt so I can use them in future sessions?

[quote author=dculotta link=topic=1488.msg6940#msg6940 date=1168021393]
1.  How can I save instrument banks and set ups once I load them into Kontakt so I can use them in future sessions?

[/quote]

There is a ";load/save"; button in Kontakt. Click that and select ";save multi."; This will save the entire multi as an .nkm file.

If you only want to save one bank, use the same button, but you'd use the ";save"; option then select the corresponding bank.