Finale 2014. VDL 2.5.

Why does the playback range of the bass guitar only extend to C2? Is the actual range of the instrument not E1? Surely I've done something incorrectly.

Many thanks

It probably has to do with how Finale defines middle C. If I recall correctly, Finale Middle C is C4. That would make the lowest bass note the c below the bass clef staff.

I was going to mention the same thing. Different music applications define middle C differently. In VDL (Kontakt), middle C is C3.

Also, keep in mind whatever staff you're using in Finale may have some sort of transposition in place, so you may want to check that.

The Bass Guitar in VDL ranges from C1 (lowest) to E4 (highest). That's using the C3=middle C convention.

Finally got came across a solution to this problem -

When I ";add instruments"; from the score manager that were originally from the Aria library, Finale automatically adds the 'octave up' transposition. Kontakt does as well - Aria Player does not. So in the case of the bass part the sounding pitch was two octaves lower than the written pitch - rather than just one (which is what it should be). The solution was to just select the 'Transposition' pull down menu and change it to none.

The other solution is to just add a blank staff and change the name of the instrument - which is probably what most people do.

I came across this problem again while adding a glock part to a score. The sounding pitch was four octaves above the written pitch, rather than the standard two octaves, because both Finale and Kontakt were adding the transposition. I imagine the same thing would happen with a xylo part.

Hope that helps,

Jed

Thanks for the update, Jed. Octave transpositions can keep us on our toes. Some programs try to account for transpositions while others may not.

If you're using a VDL/Finale template from [url=http://www.thewritescore.com]The Write Score[/url], it may be worth letting them know in case any of their defaults are affected by your findings.