I know this isn't actually a VDL question, so please bear with me.

I was asked to look over a student's composition to help with ";playback"; issues. As far as I know this student does not have VDL or a VDL template. He wrote for Snare/Tenor/Bass using the ";Marching Snare Drums [5 line]"; instrument and the corresponding instrument choices for Tenor and Bass.

The playback sounds horrible, with obvious R hits when there should be L, and vice versa. I went to the ";Edit Instruments"; dialogue for the Snare instrument and noted that sounds were mapped to ";RL"; sounds - HitsRL, RimsRL, etc. The typical noteheads are in the mapping (0, 1, 29) but there are no noteheads that seem to be in the map for delineating between L and R sounds.

I opened up the Playback Devices dialogue to look at Kontakt Player 2. The score is using the Sibelius Essentials Soundset and the loaded instruments are ";VDL SnareLine Manual";, ";VDL TenorLine Manual";, and ";VDL BassLine Manual";. Looking at and clicking on the test keyboards for these instruments, I can see and hear that there are different L and R sounds included in the instrument.

Is the mapping for the Essentials marching percussion insufficient to get decent playback of a simple Snare/Tenor/Bass score? If so, that would be unfortunate (but most likely possible to fix). Or am I missing something? I have no MIDI keyboard, and I wonder what would happen if one were used to input notes for the ";VDL SnareLine Manual";, ";VDL TenorLine Manual";, and ";VDL BassLine Manual"; instruments.

It is my understanding (someone please feel free to correct) that Sibelius Essentials comes with stripped down versions of the ";AutoRL"; Snare, Tenor, & Bass sample instruments. What this means is that these instruments are programmed within Kontakt player to automatically alternate between right and left hand sounds no matter what note value is playing. For instance it will play an eighth two sixteenth pattern as R-LR instead of the conventional R-RL. I believe this is what you're hearing. So while there are seperate hand sounds in the instrument, it is programmed to alternate between the two regardless of input or note value. I believe these are more designed for the ";layman"; or non-percussionist writer who may just want semi realistic playback without going into the finer details of which hand should be playing every single note.

I'm presuming by the way you're describing your troubleshooting that Sibelius is the notation program being used. Which version of Sibelius is he using? 5.1, 5.2, 5.2.5, 6?

Sibelius Sounds Essentials: Both the KontaktPlayer2 (shipped with Sib 5.x) and Sibelius Player (ships with 6.x) versions of Essentials contain Manual and AutoRL variations of VDL marching instruments. Yes, these are the stripped down versions, but someone can still write with manual stickings if they so choose.


[quote author=Joe link=topic=3156.msg16661#msg16661 date=1245351671]

Is the mapping for the Essentials marching percussion insufficient to get decent playback of a simple Snare/Tenor/Bass score?

[/quote]

In my opinion, yes.

One of the challenges that people will likely have when using those instruments, is that the default instruments defined in Sibelius for them don't [u]exactly[/u] match the patch that is loaded into the playback device. The user would have to go in and tweak the instrument definitions in order to get the Manual playback.

If you do any instrument editing, make sure to edit a [b]copy[/b] of the instrument.

Ok, I've taken a harder look at this.

First of all, I'm sorry I wasn't clear; while the student composed this piece, I am listening to it on my system. So, everything in my sig applies. My fault for not stating this up front.

I know that Sibelius Essentials comes with stripped down AutoRL instruments for Snare, Tenor, and Bass. But is also comes with stripped down manual instruments, as chznvrt says. The question is how to get Sibelius to use them.

I took a closer look at the mappings for the three percussion instruments in question, and I have to disagree with chznvrt that Essentials percussion mapping is sufficient for decent playback. Everything is mapped to RL sounds, not individual R or L sounds. But I see that it would be pretty easy to remap.

Hmmm, one speedbump I just ran into: by default Sibelius only provides noteheads 0-30, and 31-60 are missing. How do you access the additional noteheads?

[quote author=Joe link=topic=3156.msg16677#msg16677 date=1245382801]
I took a closer look at the mappings for the three percussion instruments in question, and I have to disagree with chznvrt that Essentials percussion mapping is sufficient for decent playback. Everything is mapped to RL sounds, not individual R or L sounds. But I see that it would be pretty easy to remap.
[/quote]

I'm not 100% sure I understand what you're saying. Do you think the mappings are sufficient or insufficient? I said they are insufficient (yes to your question).

Anyway, someone could probably get by with using the AutoRL versions the way they are (for their intended purpose), but the Manual instruments don't have any right-and-left specific noteheads in the mappings. The only way to use the manual versions is to update the mappings to include both right and left hits. You said it would be pretty easy to remap, I agree. You'll probably have to make your own set of additional noteheads to do this though. That isn't difficult either.


[quote author=Joe link=topic=3156.msg16678#msg16678 date=1245383602]
Hmmm, one speedbump I just ran into: by default Sibelius only provides noteheads 0-30, and 31-60 are missing. How do you access the additional noteheads?
[/quote]

Are you wanting to make a file for your student to use that has the manual mappings updated? The best way is to just make the few noteheads that you need for this little project and be done with it.

Sorry chznvrt , I misread your response (or, more accurately, forgot what exactly I had asked). My fault again. I'm certainly not doing myself any favors in this thread...

Rather than making a file for my student, I was going to explain to him how to edit instrument mappings. I was going to suggest hit, shot, and rim sounds for each hand for the three instruments, and I figured I would suggest he mimic the full VDL mappings (which would make the score cross-compatible to VDL users). Using snare as an example, you would need noteheads 0, 31, 29, 51, 40, and 41.

Even if you didn't use the same noteheads as the ones that are used in the VDL mapping, you still need two of each of three types of notehead (filled circle, heavy X, thin X); You could actually do this with the default noteheads 0-30 in Sibelius for hits and rims (e.g. 0 & for hits, 1 and 5 for rims). However, the only notehead in the 0-30 set with a heavy X is 29. So, what is the procedure for creating additional noteheads?

-First: House Style > Edit Noteheads
-Then, select notehead 29 (if the ";heavy x"; is what you want) and click New,
-Give it a name you want and click Ok.

You will now have a notehead 31 which is a copy of 29.

Thanks for everyone's help. Got it all figured it out now and it only makes me appreciate the VDL templates that much more.

It's a wonder that it took as long as it did for the guys to start charging for them.