Hi gang,

I ran across a playback annoyance today (not a problem, since I believe everything is working as intended). I wrote a suspended cymbal passage with some rapidly alternating open hits and chokes. During playback the open hits ring past the chokes, which obviously doesn't happen in real life.

Is there a good solution to overcoming this problem? One way I can think of is to go to a multiple-stave approach, with one staff for open hit playback, one staff for choke playback, and one staff for notation. Then I could bring the open-hit-staff C7 controller down to 0 after every open hit, right when the choke happens, then bring it back up to 100 just before the next open hit. This is a fairly time-consuming endeavor when dealing with multiple open hits and chokes.

Is there a better way?

Was looking for this exact thing today and found this post through a Google search.  Jim, you're a stud. :-)

Just the information I was looking for, Jim; thanks.

FYI, it doesn't help much, but it's something.

Todd, you're right. The release knob in each VDL instrument can be utilized to help reduce the amount of decay layering. The release knob is assigned to controller 20.

So to turn the knob all the way down from within Sibelius (so the decay is shorter), enter this text into the staff: [b]~C20,1[/b]

To raise the knob back to it's full/default value, enter [b]~C20,127[/b].

This may not produce the exact result you're looking for, but I'm guessing it will help reduce the amount of ringover you hear.

There are some fancier things that can be programmed into the back end of instrument (similar to how open/close HH or Triangles work), but it can effect other, more common playback of the instrument, which is why I left it out. It's something I can revisit for future implementation, though.

I'm wading in tentatively as a Finale user so I am not familiar with how Sibelius handles these things but I was wondering if there was a way that the you could change the release value for the open cymbal sound down to zero using a controller setting in the score.  In Finale, I believe you could use the Midi Tool to do this and it would be much faster since you can pick out the actual ";notes"; in the measures and apply the setting only to those notes.  Not sure if Sibelius has a similar feature?  Just an idea.

Todd