*I wrote a two-measure suspended cymbal roll at the very beginning of a piece.
*To the best of my knowledge, I have notated it correctly (two whole notes tied, the first one has three tremolos, quarter note release on beat one) - but the roll does not play properly. I am aware that C is the shorter roll, D is a medium roll, and E is a longer roll - but when *I input the notes using my MIDI keyboard, it gives me the roll that is supposed to be assigned to E, whether I press C or D.
*When I attempt to play back my score, the roll doesn’t even start until measure 2, and it keeps rolling past its quarter note release.
*I’m fairly certain this isn’t a keyboard issue, considering my MIDI keyboard works fine with the other instruments.
*I also went into Kontakt via Sibelius and checked on the little keyboard, clicking the keys C and D, and the proper roll sounded upon click.
*I believe the problem may be related to the fact that I have reinstalled VDL2 and Sibelius onto a new computer…I didn’t have this problem on my previous computer and I have been doing everything exactly the same.
*I have tried nearly everything I can think of and have not found a solution.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hi Justin.

In the file you're having problems with, are you using a VDL Template and sound set? If so, the notehead number and staff placement will definitely have an affect on which roll gets triggered. Since Sibelius 5 came out with the Soundworld playback environment, the score's playback is a bit less reliant on what MIDI pitch was entered, but rather, the notehead, staff placement, and in some cases, which articulation is assigned.

I am indeed using the Sibelius 6 VDL2 template - I'm not sure what to do about this problem; I went into Properties > Notes and tried out the different notehead numbers, and wasn't able to come up with a solution - any ideas on how to correct this?

I could really use some help with this issue...

When you speak of the short, medium, and long being on C D and E, I'm presuming that you're just referring to their mappings on the keyboard as it pertains to the VDL keymaps. Do you understand that there is a difference between those mappings and the Sibelius template mappings (which pertain to placement on the staff)? All suspended cymbal crescendo rolls should be on the E space, regardless of which crescendo roll you enter. Whether you press C, D, or E on your MIDI keyboard, they will all appear as an ";E"; in the music, because that's how the Sibelius template mappings were designed. It's important that you make the distinction between Keymaps and unpitched Sibelius mappings.

As you can see in your VDL_README for the template, all of those notes are mapped to E but each on has a different notehead, including 0, 20, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, and 39. Based on your description, you need to be using notehead 36 on the E space. Also, you might notice that those notes are also highlighted in Orange in the mapping diagrams contained in the Sibelius template ReadMe. As it states earlier in the ReadMe (around pg. 19) those notes require a 2 or 3 note tremolo for them to produce the desired sound. If you're already doing all of these things then we can continue to chip away at the problem.

Hope this helps.

Thank you for your response...I have been using the three-note tremolo on the cymbal roll...and I also went in to change the notehead to 36 and it still continued to play the longer roll.

Are you also sure that you have the correct sound set for your template selected in the Playback Configuration? Are you using 6.0 or 6.0a?

yeah, I have the right sound set because I basically have NO trouble with anything except the cymbals. I have Sibelius 6.0

In your Playback Devices window, what is the [i]exact[/i] name of the sound set you have assigned to Kontakt Player? Also, what specific instrument are you experiencing this problem with? It might be worth swapping in a different suspended cymbal instrument and checking if you get the same results. If not, there may be something wrong with the mapping of the initial suspended cymbal instrument (which we can address via the ";edit instruments"; dialog).

Another (less intuitive, perhaps less likely) thing that can sometimes happen with ";roll"; sounds if you're not careful, is that toggling the ";play tremolo"; box in the playback portion of the Properties window can yield different results on VDL items. Since cymbal rolls are actually recorded rolls, and don't need to be simulated with a series of attacks, it's important for Sibelius not to initiate a sequence of strokes. Typically, you shouldn't have to pay attention to this checkbox because the proper technique is already built into the Sound Set and Sibelius should know that this is a recorded roll. If that setting is somehow creating a sequence of strokes, it could sound like the cymbal roll is being initiated over and over, or perhaps just sounds like it's releasing much later since it'd be initiating the same short suspended cymbal roll over and over. That may not be what's happening here, but if you've fiddled with that ";tremolo"; checkbox, it might not be a bad idea to just re-enter this part to ensure it's input without any accidental settings.

The exact name of the sound set I have selected is Virtual Drumline 2.5. All the suspended cymbal rolls are having the same exact problem...the roll is just lasting too long. Also, in the Properties window, I ";play tremolo"; has been selected, but when I deselected it, NOTHING played back. Also I tried using another cymbal just to double check, and this one won't play back at all, no matter what.

You have the wrong sound set assigned. Check out the ReadMe that came with the template. Specifically, read up on the section called ";All the Right Pieces"; (page 5), as well as the part about ";Playback Configuration.";

The sound set you're currently using is the one that's pre-built into Sibelius, and while it mostly works, there are some quirks if you plan on using it with the VDL template. Instead, you should use the sound set that came with the template (named ";VDL Soundset 6.0a"; or something to that effect).

Thank you so much!!! This must have been a mistake I made when transferring the program from one computer to another. This has helped and fixed all problems. Thank you very much!!!!!