Hello,

I'm having some issues with rolls in VDL 2.5 that I'm hoping someone can clarify.  Normally I'd notate a 9 stroke roll as a quarter note with 3 tremelo marks on the stem tied to the following note.  However, as I understand it VDL/Sibelius cannot deal with notation.  Is this correct or is it the unfortunate reality?  When I tried to play it back it just played a ";bzzzzzt"; as if it was trying to play a huge number of strokes.  After reading some other postings, I tried to work around the issue by notating it as I'd like it printed in voice 1, and in voice 4 I put 4 sixteenth notes with single tremelo marks and turned off the playback of voice 1 for the quarter note.  This leaves me with a couple of issues though.  First, since the final stroke is the end of the tie from voice 1, it doesn't get played.  Am I also forced repeat the next beat in voice 4 (turning off playback in voice 1 for it) or is there a way to tell Sibelius to play the attack of the second note of two notes tied together?  Second, even though I marked the voice 4 notes as hidden, Sibelius still reserves space for them so that the tie in voice 1 is longer than it normally would be.  Is there a way to have Sibelius not do that so that it looks more normal?  Thank you for any input that you may have.

Sean

[img]http://home.comcast.net/~sean.r.manning/roll.png[/img]

As far as having the 1st note in the next bar playback, try using a slur instead of a tie in Sibelius.  The slur will look the same as the tie but the result will be different.

You are correct in the playback being unusual if you use three slashes.  I've gotten used to just putting in 4 16th notes with single slashes instead of a quarter note with 3 slashes.  Musically it is the same.

Bill is right. I would suggest using a slur instead of a tie. They actually look a bit different, but you can manipulate the arc of the slur to look how you like it. This should at least allow for the release of the roll to play now.

If you get inside Sibelius's head a little, you'll see why the single quarter note (with three slashes) doesn't work. That quarter note is either a RH or a LH hit. The slashes simply tell Sibelius to fit 8 repetitions of that single pitch within the beat. You can do that, but as you've already found, it won't give you the alternating strokes. Hence the need to use single slashes for proper roll playback. Your solution looks like the best one if you want to see the traditional 9-stroke roll notation while hearing accurate roll playback.

One suggestion I might offer is to select the other rests from voice 2 and hide them. This should allow the bar to print as a player would expect to see it without having rests in two voices.

Hope this helps.

One more thing you can do to change the printed look would be to select the hidden, single-tremolo notes (all 4 of them) and physically pull them to the left. This will bring the barline closer to the quarter note (3-slash version) and minimize the extra space that was created when you created the 16th notes. (see below)