Hello Richard, > Now, where the real power comes in is that Sibelius has > included a "reset instruments" command, so I can create a file > using my preferred patches, and when I send it to you, you can > click a button to reset everything to play back on your > preferred patches. (Philip, did you read this far? There's a > playback trick I don't think you can get Finale to do!)
Not quite sure what you're getting at or even it's usefulness (I never share my sounds or scores) but it's possible to load in saved Instrument/Expression Libraries in Finale. One does have to reassign staves or substitute expressions though and that's not 1 click. What you describe in the rest of your post however sounds like it's actually more complicated to do in Sibelius than with Finale libraries. > Maybe this is all possible in Finale, but I've never figured > out how,... From your description, most likely. But there's also the factor of being able to connect with the whole idiom of an application and if Finale is not your cup of tea, I'd suggest not to bother with it because if you find it's like beating yourself on the head with a hammer, it might be good to stop before you hurt yourself. I just happened to tune in with Finale's printed manuals and going through every page of them (3 full days) has been the key to being able to take advantage of its logical organization features. F**king laughable the knots some folks get tied up in because they haven't deduced how to set up up a score properly in the first place (good business for plugin developers though). Maybe a good test of a music application is it's ability to deal with an orchestral reduction of say an aria (i.e. has lyrics too) that both prints and plays back correctly. I can do this and a lot more with Finale. Just like others have mentioned, a Finale expression can do just about anything you want it to and we're not bound to organize our output or anything else by a default setup. I might use "loco" to change channels instead of transposing or use any one of the other permutations and combinations possible with such a flexible mechanism. Philip On Wednesday, July 10, 2002, at 02:31 PM, Richard Walker wrote: > Here's how Sibelius does the patch-switching trick. > Each playback device has its own "soundset" within Sibelius. > This is just a > text document that lists every patch on the instrument with all of the > bank/patch numbers to locate it in the device. > Following the patch list are "groups" that list which devices > appear under > which headings in the instrument assignment drop-down within Sibelius. > At the the end of the file are "best instrument" assignments > that contain > defaults for every imaginable instrument (including that old > favorite "muted > bass bugle in G"). When you add instruments to your score, > Sibelius consults > this list to find what it should play. > Within the "best instruments" list are "specializations" that define > instruments for "special effect" playback: "mute:trumpet in Bb", > "spiccato:Violin I" ... When Sibelius sees "mute" on a "Trumpet in Bb" > staff, it pulls out the patch assigned here. (Sidebar: "Arco" isn't a > "specialization." It's just an internal command that tells Sibelius to > revert to the original patch for that staff. I'm not sure I > agree with the > assumption behind this, but it has its uses--"arco trumpets" is > a fast and > dirty way to get back to home base, though the marking has to be hidden > before printing!) > The neat thing about this is that it is all editable by the user. To be > honest, it's not a pretty job, but it is doable. What I did was > to load a > default set of about 75 patches into my GigaStudio rig, saving > them as a > performance file for future use. (Yes, it takes a while for > everything to > load when Giga is turned on, but I'm willing to put up with it.) Then I > copied the Sibelius soundset for General MIDI, changed its name, and > replaced its list with my Giga instrument assignments, so that > instrument 2 > is now "flute" and instrument 4 is "Trumpet (jazz)". Then I > created groups > to display instruments the way *I* want to see them, and > replaced Sibelius' > default assignments with my own. > It took some work to set this up, but the result is that I now > get exactly > what I want in instrument assignments without the tedium of > tweaking every > damned patch in every damned score, or littering my disk with > thousands of > templates. > > It should also be easy to work up several different > configurations of this > file if I want to, one for big band jazz, one for symphony > orchestra, and to > go through and change defaults for other devices in other > soundset files, so > that my Proteus 2000 box gives me my favorite bass guitar and drum kit > automatically. I also suspect, though I haven't tried it yet, > that I could > create bogus devices in FreeMIDI on the same channels as the > Giga rig but > with different names, a "big band giga" and a "symphony giga," and that > Sibelius would find the proper default patches for each without > my having to > fuss around too much. > Now, where the real power comes in is that Sibelius has > included a "reset > instruments" command, so I can create a file using my preferred > patches, and > when I send it to you, you can click a button to reset > everything to play > back on your preferred patches. (Philip, did you read this far? > There's a > playback trick I don't think you can get Finale to do!) > Maybe this is all possible in Finale, but I've never figured > out how, and > being able to do it in Sibelius has removed a major source of > frustration > for me. mailto:philip@vcn.b c.ca _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
