Ok - first time here at the forum. I just took a huge leap from 15 years of using a PC to a Mac Pro.

Specs:
2.66 Dual Intel Processors
5GB RAM
Sibelius 5.1
VDL 2.5
Logic Pro 8

So I have got most of the setting in VDL to where I have an almost perfect playback in Sibelius. Now I want to experiment with exporting to MIDI into Logic and using that to make a really good recording of my pieces - mainly percussion ensemble, solo works, winter drumline, and pit scores with the occasional jazz band score. I exported to MIDI from Sibelius and opened that midi file in Logic but it was all messed up. Logic replaced all of the instruments with it's own instead of VDL's. So I started to go through and change them one by one and thought to myself ";There has to be an easier way to do this"; Any help or ideas?

1. Is there a better way to export midi to use in Logic?
2. How do you assign more than one channel to the kontakt player so I can have one instance of kontakt running with 16 sounds loaded? As of now, every time I set a channel to the  kontoakt player, it opens a new instance of it.

Thanks in advance.

- Scott ";Reno"; Brian

Hey Scott,

I am also looking for suggestions. However my situation involves Garage Band 3. Same thing though, it opens a new instance of Kontakt Player 2 each time I try to assign a specific track to a VDL 2.5 sound.

Thanks for the help in advance.

-J.J.

Tyler Durden is the man on all of that stuff. He has posted a couple of REALLY good threads about this. Do a search for ";Mixing Made Easy";, it took the mystery out of a lot of it for me.

A MIDI file is just a small file that includes MIDI info-such as note value, velocity, controller values, and so on.  Logic has no idea what to do with that file sound wise until you tell it.

Jesse's tutorial here does a good job of explaining how to do this-

https://www.tapspace.com/support/tutorials/jessem_vdl2_tutorial/index.html

It describes using VDL 2.0 and Cubase, but the process of loading multiple instruments in one player is virtually the same.

If you need more help on getting some better sound in Logic, I did a write up a bit ago on this-

https://www.tapspace.com/forums/index.php?topic=2070.0

Scott - I think one of the main things that will help you get started is understanding how to assign channels to a multi-timbral software instrument. That's what KP2 is - a multi-timbral software instrument, meaning, you can assign multiple channels to multiple tracks from the same software instrument. You'll see that Logic 8 gives you this option when creating new software instrument tracks.

I'm not sure about Logic 8, but Logic 7 used to NOT import tempo/time sig information when doing a simple import of a midi file into an existing file. However, opening the midi file from Logic (not importing it, but opening it directly) would bring this info in, so I recommend doing it that way. Doing this though, your MIDI tracks will likely show up as just that - MIDI tracks. So the next step would be to create the appropriate number of software instrument tracks (which are essentially MIDI tracks, but played back via virtual instruments), and assigning channels accordingly. Doing this isn't terribly difficult, but it would help you to read up and gain a better understanding of Logic's [b]Environment[/b] window as that's where you have quick access to all these settings. Once your software instrument tracks are there, all you have to do is drag the MIDI regions that were created from opening the MIDI file into the newly created software instrument tracks.

Note - if you have instrument changes mid-score in Sibelius, it may make better sense in Logic to load these into a BANK in Kontakt player, then have Logic switch out instruments by doing ";program changes."; Sibelius's new ";instrument change"; methodology isn't something that other MIDI applications do, so there will be a little more manual tweaking of these sorts of things once you're in the world of your DAW.

Thanks. That makes more sense. I was hoping there was a way around creating new tracks and copying tracks. Guess not.

That worked great! What an amazing difference from Sibelius playback and I haven't even done anything too yet!!! Wow. Thanks a lot for your help.,