Hello All,

Let me begin by saying just how incredibly helpful this forum is, and how much I appreciate all of the time spent by the users and designers here to create such a marvelous tool that can be used to foster incredible growth and musicianship in education and design throughout the world.  Excellent job to everyone here!

Secondly, I need some assistance with Sibelius 4 and VDL 2.5 using the Tenor Auto RL instrument.  I'm becoming extremely frustrated in my lack of ability to figure out the inconsistencies that I am running into when using this instrument.  I want to have the availability granted through using the Auto RL playback, and the mallet switching / variety of drum sounds / approaches.  However, as I am working and writing, I'm noticing that without hitting the note head change 300+ times to find the correct patch sound to trigger, I am achieving proper notation in Sibelius, with incorrect playback through VDL 2.5.  I've searched all over the place and can't believe that i haven't found a single post about how to Key Switch in Sibelius 4, or how to set a mod wheel text setting, etc.  I'm guessing that either one of these may be the issue to my playback sounds?  I've tried transposition changes, and mod-wheel CC0 text commands, but nothing is working for me.  Can someone please point me in the correct direction?  I'm mid-composition of an indoor piece, and it's dramatically slowing down my creativity when I hit these technical walls..

Thank you for your time, patience, and assistance!

-Chris Miller

What immediately comes to mind is whether you have begun by using the template for Sibelius 4?  You should not have to select a notehead; if it is entered in with the template, the notehead adjusts according to its entry...

Can you verify that you're using the VDL template?

If you're using the Sibelius 4 template, can you verify that you've assigned your tenor staff to the correct staff type? If you click (once) in the tenor staff, then go to House Styles>Edit Staff Types, whatever is highlighted is the currently assigned staff type. If it's not the AutoRL staff type, there's a good chance the noteheads and pitches will accurately play back.

Try doing a search for ";keyswitch"; (one word rather than two), and you should find several posts about how people enter keyswitch notes as a grace note, and that this note (displayed as a checkmark notehead in Sibelius 4) is generally preferred to be hidden. There's also been much discussion in the past about entering mod-wheel controller changes, so perhaps the search choices you entered weren't formatted correctly. Typical text entries for mod-wheel changing would look something like this:

~C1,127  (mod-wheel up)
~C1,1 (mod-wheel down)
etc...

Also, if you do find that you need to change noteheads, there's a quick shortcut in Sibelius. With the notehead(s) you wish to change selected, just hold down option-shift-xx (xx being the notehead number), and it will change without you having to grab your mouse or go through any long menus or windows. Still, this approach will require you know which exact notehead you need to switch to. Otherwise you'll just be guessing. If your staff type is set correctly to the AutoRL instrument (as mentioned above), when you enter pitches with your midi keyboard (or with VDL Midi), the correct noteheads will automatically be assigned based on which pitches you've entered.

Thank you SO much for your help - you were correct, the staff type was set incorrectly.  Funny how such a simple mistake can send you on a two week journey of confusion and chaos!  I did a quick staff type change, and now things are back to normal.  The best part is that now my questions about text entry modwheel settings and keyswitching have been answered!  Thanks so much, guys!