I use VDL 2.5 in Finale 2007, and I can't get rolls on mallet instruments to sound natural.  They sound, basically, like a machine hitting a bar at whatever rate-per-minute I set Finale's roll speed to be.  Is there a way to get rolls to sound natural?

I've tried using some of the ModWheel features, but it doesn't seem to have any effect.

If there's another topic on this, please direct me to it.

There have been some discussions about it you can probably find with the search feature.  Usually I write out the roll as it would be played on a hidden staff, and the visible staff would be silent but have the standard notation.

Or I just don't write rolls :)

I've found the same problem with Finale 2008.  My solution was to write them as triplet rolls instead of standard 32nd rolls.  You can write shorthand them as eighth note triplets with a single slash or just write them out as 16th note triplets.  I find they come through much cleaner without that ";mechanical"; sound and musically it didn't really make much difference.

Pretty similar to what they are talking about is this topic here:

[url=https://www.tapspace.com/forums/index.php?topic=1766.0]https://www.tapspace.com/forums/index.php?topic=1766.0[/url]

This has to do with Ripple Rolls but the same can be applied for regular rolls.  I give some step-by-step directions later in the post.

Hope this helps.

Thank y'all!  I'll give this stuff a shot. =)