I just installed virtual drumline and have a few questions about the sounds. I am using virtual drumline with the Macbook Pro OS and Sibelius 5. I am also inputting the notes manually rather than using a MIDI keyboard.

1. The marching bass drums are making hi hat sounds rather than bass drum sounds. How can I fix this?

2. The marching tenor drums are on a setting that makes them sound “dirty”. I am writing triplet rolls on the 6”, 10” and 12” drums and the clarity of the playback is not as clear as the marching snare voice. It also sounds like the tenors are playing the triplet roll rhythm using single sticking rather than diddles. I wrote the rolls as triplets with diddles on each note.

Thanks for the help,
James

Hi James

Welcome to the forum.

It sounds to me that you need the Sib 5 Template which you can find on the Tapspace Updates page:

�� ��[url]https://www.tapspace.com/updates/[/url]

If you still have problems after you have thoroughly gone through the Readme - and watched all of Jim's excellent video tutorials - come on back with more details as to what you have tried and we will see if we can help you further.

Also, you might spend a little more time searching the forum just in case someone else has already had the same issues. Many new VDL users have found their solutions via that route.

Anyway, let us know if the above doesn't help.

Late

Still can�۪t get the bass drums to sound like bass drums. I have all the updates for Sibelius and Virtual Drumline including the VDL 2.5/Sibelius 5.1 Template and Sound Set. I have even spent time editing the marching bass drum sounds and the only sound I can get for a normal note head is a rim sound. I have also installed Virtual Drumline and reinstalled it. (Didn�۪t help) I would be grateful for any advice on how to fix this problem. Thanks, James

Since you are entering your notes manually, you will need to specify which notehead you want for desired playback.  ***You MUST be using the updated Sibelius/VDL template for these specific noteheads to work correctly.

Bass drum sounds are dependent on correct noteheads numbers.  For regular bass drum hits:  notehead #0 (zero) for LH hits, and #31 for RH hits.  Please reference page 37 in the ReadMe that is included in the .zip file that you downloaded to get the Sibelius/VDL template.  This page should allow you to specify the correct noteheads you need to get the sounds you want.  Also, reference page 27 for the playback dictionary concerning bass drums.  I would suggest reading page 23-24 in the ReadMe to understand how the Playback Dictionary in Sibelius works.

Also, watch the VDL tutorial videos provided on the Tapsace Support page.  There is a specific video dealing with manually changing noteheads...  Here is a direct link to the video tutorials:  (Scroll to the bottom of the page.  The last video is the one mentioned concerning noteheads).

https://www.tapspace.com/support/tutorials/Sib51.html

Keep us posted on your progress.

And just in case you overlooked it, be absolutely certain you have set KP2 to use the Tapspace Virtual Drumline 2.5 sound set in your playback configuration. Some people have gotten confused between [i]Essentials[/i] (which includes a few VDL sounds bundled with Sibelius) and the [i]full version of VDL[/i]. Definitely two different things.

It's also important that in any staves you desire to hear true VDL playback from, you've set the [i]Instrument[/i] to one of the instruments found in the templates ";VDL 2.5 instruments"; category. It's easy to mistakenly add ";marching bass drums"; which is not one of the template's VDL formatted instruments, but rather, a stock instrument staff included with Sibelius.

If you ever want to know what instrument is currently assigned to a given staff, simply click once on an area of the staff (so it becomes framed), then go to House Style>Edit Instruments. Whichever instrument is highlighted is what's currently assigned. To get proper VDL playback, you'll want your bassline staff (for example) to be set to one of the VDL named instruments such as ";Bassline Manual"; or ";Bassline AutoRL";.

Thanks for all the help. Now have the bass drum and tenors up and going! One more small problem, the snare voice does not change when I enter ";edge";. However, the tenors and basses do sound different when I enter ";puffies";. Aside from that I am off and running.
Thanks again,
James

Glad to hear that James!  Since ";puffies"; works with Tenors & BD, then your snare voice may actually be working with edge, halfway, etc...but sometimes it's hard to hear the difference between them.  Turn up the volume and listen carefully...you may have to add in some dynamics to make it more obvious.  If that is not the case, then you can manually enter a controller value for the ";velocity"; of those (snare) notes - usually in hidden text above the staff.  That is the ";old-school"; method we used to use with previous versions of VDL.  Do a forum search for that if your are interested...it has been asked and answered many times on how that is done.

Have fun using VDL

This may or may not be the problem, but are you using the ";AutoRL"; snareline? If so, that instrument doesn't use playing zones.

One thing that I have done a few times without even noticing is using ";Expression"; text rather than the ";Technique"; text when typing in edge/halfway/center and what not. Just a reminder to use ";Technique"; text when doing so. It does affect playback if you don't.