I discovered a strange reaction of the dictionary text";stick"; the other day. I wrote a brief marimba part for a pit player, shortly after which he has to grab a stick and play a cymbal with it. He only has one beat to pick up the stick, so four bars prior to that, on top of the beginning of the marimba music, I place text as a mental reminder: ";(ready stick)";.

To my surprise, when I played back the part the marimba notes were rolls (or at least single tremolos - I'm not sure as the note lengths were ell eighth notes). So I looked at the dictionary to see what it said. It says:

[b]Staff text for ";stick";[/b]
Sound ID: +stick
word properties: whole word is checked

[b]Staff text for ";sticks";[/b]
Sound ID: [reset]
no word properties

I know that text ";sticks"; is a reset for things like ";puffies";, and the dictionary entry reflects that. I don't know what a Sound ID of +stick means, though, nor do I know for what instrument(s) this dictionary entry is designed/intended.

Since the marimba part in question was short and involved an instrument change immediately before the four bars of marimba music, I was able to get around the problem by attaching the ";(ready stick)"; reminder to the instrument change, not to the first note of marimba music. It would be helpful (for me and others) if someone could explain the +stick Sound ID so that we can better understand what it does and if deleting it from the dictionary in certain instances would be a valid solution to this sort of problem.

Joe

";stick"; and ";sticks"; are defaults that come with Sibelius, therefore I didn't change them. ";sticks"; ([reset]) is designed to be used with the Concert Toms Full instrument, even though you could use it elsewhere too (review the Dictionary charts in the Readme for more). ";stick";, with the sound ID change of +stick is not setup to be used with any of the VDL instruments. Placing ";stick"; as Staff Text shouldn't have any ill affects on a Marimba staff.

Can you show us a picture of exactly what you did (to get those results)? I suspect something else at play.

Yes, you can delete ";stick"; from the Dictionary if you want, but like I said, I don't think that's the problem.

Late
Hugh

Will do, Hugh. I'll post a screenshot tonight or tomorrow.

Ok, here are the screenshots. The line indicating to where the ";(ready stick)"; text is attached is pretty hard to see, but if you stare you can see the difference between the two images. Sorry about the mess, but this part has a few instrument changes right near this bar.

I did confirm that this text is causing the marimba to roll (and not just play a single tremolo); I removed the tremolo articulation from the whole note as a test, and with the text attached to the first marimba note the whole note plays back as a roll.


[b]";stick"; attached to first marimba note - plays back as all rolls[/b]
[img]http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeeeefo/RMB/_stick_%20attached%20to%20marimba%20note.jpg[/img]

[b]";stick"; attached to instrument change - plays back as notated[/b]
[img]http://mysite.verizon.net/vzeeeefo/RMB/_stick_%20attached%20to%20instrument%20change.jpg[/img]

I'm pretty sure this is a problem stemming from the dictionary. I opened a clean version of the 5.2.5 template, swapped the ";Default"; instrument for Marimba~Syn Hard, and input a C Major scale. It played back as expected. I then added the text ";stick"; to the first note and played it back again; this time all notes were rolled.

Bump?

[quote author=Joe link=topic=3207.msg17098#msg17098 date=1248465746]
Bump?
[/quote]

What?

Anyway, I was able to duplicate the odd behaviour that you are getting with using ";stick"; somewhere in technique text. In the dictionary ";stick"; has a sound ID change of +stick (a default), but there is nothing in any of the SwitchTypeDefinitions (sound set) that are setup to use this ID change.

It's been a few weeks since I played around with this, but if I remember correctly, this occurred when being applied to any instrument. In each case the modwheel went all the way up to 127.

As soon as I have time to get my ducks in a row on this, I'll let the guys at Sibelius know of this little quirk.

Late

A work around, in your case, would be to write ";[b](ready stick)~sticks[/b]";. This would work since Sibelius reads the last text it encounters - in this case sticks, which resets everything. You could also replace ";sticks"; with anything else that resets the sound ID i.e. has [reset] as the sounds ID.

For a more generalized application, just add [b]~reset[/b] after the technique text to accomplish the same result.

[quote author=chznvrt link=topic=3207.msg17296#msg17296 date=1250220973]
[quote author=Joe link=topic=3207.msg17098#msg17098 date=1248465746]
Bump?
[/quote]

What?[/quote]I wanted to bump the thread up to the top as a reminder of the unresolved issue. The question mark was because I was puzzled that it hadn't been dealt with already (since you guys take care of things so fast around here). Sorry for any confusion caused.

[quote]Anyway, I was able to duplicate the odd behaviour that you are getting with using ";stick"; somewhere in technique text. In the dictionary ";stick"; has a sound ID change of +stick (a default), but there is nothing in any of the SwitchTypeDefinitions (sound set) that are setup to use this ID change.

It's been a few weeks since I played around with this, but if I remember correctly, this occurred when being applied to any instrument. In each case the modwheel went all the way up to 127.

As soon as I have time to get my ducks in a row on this, I'll let the guys at Sibelius know of this little quirk.[/quote]Glad to hear the actual cause of the problem has been identified.



Bryan, that's a good idea for a workaround.

[quote]
[quote]
[quote]Bump?[/quote]What?[/quote]
I wanted to bump the thread up to the top as a reminder of the unresolved issue. The question mark was because I was puzzled that it hadn't been dealt with already (since you guys take care of thigns so fast around here. Sorry for any confusion caused.
[/quote]

It's all good! I thought it was some new fandangled bit of slang that I hadn't heard yet. :)


[quote author=Bryan Harmsen link=topic=3207.msg17298#msg17298 date=1250249775]

... [b]Sibelius reads the last text it encounters[/b] ...

[/quote]

I was not aware of that, and probably in the Reference too (I'll have to see if I can find it). Good to know though.

Not sure if it's in the reference or not. I found it simply through trial and error. If you were to enter ";Center edge halfway~edge"; it would end up being edge.

Thought, I'm sure you're correct in that it might be in the reference somewhere.