Hey, all.

I bought Virtual Drumline a few days ago, and follow the instructions for setting it up on Finale Songrwriter/PrintMusic found in the FAQ, and so far i have not gotten any results. The only thing that seemed to change is the sounds that the drums play when they play back, and the playback still sounds awful. Also, only the basses make any sound at all.

Thanks!

If you would like I can certainly do a remote session with you to show that it can work.  Please understand however, that this wasn't designed to be used with the limited PrintMusic, or Sibelius Student programs, but rather, was designed to be used with Finale and Sibelius themselves. 

If you would like to do a remote session I would need to have you send me a PM with your Virtual Drumline Serial Number to verify with our system.  If you purchased the box program of PrintMusic you may be able to return it.  You will be much happier with VDL when used with Finale - but I would be happy to show that it does actually work with PrintMusic - with the directions given.

Please specify also if you have a MAC, WINDOWS computer, and some more specs like I have in my signature so we know  what kind of system you are using.

Maybe, but I gotta tell you I'm not 100% on a remote session. However, thank you for reminding me to specify that I am running a PC on Windows Vista.

Also, I probably won't buy Finale mostly because of its cost. Even student editions with rebates and whatnot are just too expensive. I would much rather just take the limitations PrintMusic puts on the user and use it instead.

Limitations put on the user?  It states pretty clearly what the product does and does not do here:

[url=http://finalemusic.com/CompareFeatures.aspx?compare=printmusic]http://finalemusic.com/CompareFeatures.aspx?compare=printmusic[/url]

PrintMusic is designed to be an entry to middle level notation program for people who have no need for the advanced features of Finale.  There are academic tradeup offers from PrintMusic to Finale for about $225 through MakeMusic.

Where did you hit a snag in setup?  If you can detail what you tried, we might be able to offer some assistance if you wish to not do a remote session with Scott.

You might want to keep these things in mind when you are thinking about trying to make PrintMusic work with VDL:

Although you can use Finale SongWriter and PrintMusic with Virtual Drumline, there are some limitations to those products that are important to think about before using the program. Here are some examples of a few of the limitations of PrintMusic and SongWriter:

[list]
[li]No Staff Styles in PM, so you would have to use a separate staff above a mallet line for percussion/aux stuff for one player. [/li]
[li]No Expression to do a channel change. Expressions would only do a tempo playback effect.[/li]
[li]No Editing of Percussion Maps (i.e., Percussion Maps are not User Definable)[/li]
[/list]

If you plan on doing any of these things with VDL, PrintMusic is not going to be the version of Finale that will be best suited for VDL.

That being said, if you could give us a step-by-step description of what you have tried (as Justin has mentioned) that will help us assist you to get this to work.

My installation followed the instructions actually put up here by Coach himself:

http://homepage.mac.com/hirschscott/.Public/Finale%20SongWriter%202007%20and%20VDL.pdf

I'm honestly not sure where I went wrong with the installation. I set it up as the instructions told me. I was just never able to get it to play back through Kontact Player 2. It might have been setting up the MIDI input and outputs, at least as my best guess. Sorry I can't be more productive and helpful here, I just have no clue where it went wrong.

Sorry to double post, but after no one responded for a while this started to slip down the list and my issue is still unresolved. No one has posted on this thread for over three weeks and I was worrying that I would never get help.

But if it is conducive to progress here, I am actually more open to a remote session. I had just been hoping that if I got help here then others could refer to these posts for help in this situation, which they would not be able to do if we just did a remote session.

[quote author=Pdubs link=topic=3042.msg16280#msg16280 date=1241565083]
Sorry to double post, but after no one responded for a while this started to slip down the list and my issue is still unresolved. No one has posted on this thread for over three weeks and I was worrying that I would never get help.

But if it is conducive to progress here, I am actually more open to a remote session. I had just been hoping that if I got help here then others could refer to these posts for help in this situation, which they would not be able to do if we just did a remote session.
[/quote]

Pdubs -

If you would still like to do a remote session, please PM me your VDL Serial number so that I can verify that with our system.

Keep in mind that the directions have been tested by numerous people, and by myself as I was one of the top Technical Support Agents at Finale for 2 years (2006-2008).  That being said, PrintMusic 2009 is not meant for use with VDL, but it will work - WITH LIMITATIONS as previously described.

I would be happy to assist you remotely, if that is something that you are interested in doing.  During this process, if we find any errors in the documentation, I would be happy to correct those errors and repost.  If we find something that is different than already in the documentation, we will update this post so that other users can find the information easily.

Please submit (to me) any times you are available this week along with your VDL serial number and I would be happy to get the ball rolling for you.  Let us know if you have any questions.