Hi there,

I am wondering if it's possible to have multiple instrument sounds and different type of staff lines in Finale 08. (IE - A player starts out on say congas and then after so long get a ";to xylophone"; instruction so the staff lines will have to change to adapt to the new instrument.) Also if, this is possible can VDL 2 accommodate the sound change on that channel? Thanks!

Calvin - since you're using Finale, what you may be able to do is write your conga part in layer 1, then the xylophone in layer 2. In Finale's ";Instrument List"; window, you can assign a different MIDI channel to different layers of a staff, which is quite nifty. You would, however, need to make sure that the conga and xylo patches are loaded into their own unique slot (in VDL2), with a unique channel assignment which corresponds to the channels assigned in the Instrument List Window.

In VDL 2.5 (Kontakt Player 2) the process is a little different because you can actually load what's called an ";Instrument Bank"; which is a container that holds multiple patches accessible on the same MIDI channel. So rather than having to use two layers and assign different channels as described above, all you'd really need to do is swap one instrument out for another by way of a ";program change"; message which can be sent via Finale's MIDI Tool, or by attaching a program change message to a text item.

In either case, you would also need to implement a staff style change to switch from the conga percussion map to the pitched xylophone staff style in order to get proper chromatic display. This, I presume, is possible. The only thing I'm a little uncertain of is whether you can have that same staff switch between ";percussion"; staff styles and regular ";pitched"; staff styles.