Trills for Sibelius

[zentrumsounds]

I'm wondering what the best solution is for trills in Sibelius. I'm using the suggested trill line option but this triggers Sibelius' own interpretation of the trill rather then the samples provided for in the Sound Sets.

[dayadon]

Hello.

I've been using Sib6.03 with VE3 and soundsets for Plus Strings, and several download instruments with soundsets for WW&Brass, all of which have trill articulations.  I've been using trills as you stated above.  Now that you mention it, I don't really know if the trills are from Sibelus' interpretation, or VSL's own trills.  They sound pretty nice to me.  How would I go about finding out which trills are being use?

When I load my VI instruments, I always load in the complete, or 'All' for the winds, and '+' for the strings.

[andi]

Dayadon, if you are not sure, just take a look at Vienna Ensemble and you will see which articulation is triggered. If it sounds fine, it is probably the trills articulation.

Zentrumsounds, normally the trill line should trigger the trill articulation. Which soundset do you use and which Sibelius instruments? For solo strings please make sure to use the Sibelius instruments "Solo Violin", "Solo Viola" and so on. The instruments "Violin 1", "Violin 2", Violin I", Viola, ... are for ensemble strings and will mess up the Sound IDs.

Best,
Andi

[zentrumsounds]

Thanks dayadon.

Hi Andi,

I'm using the Sound Set for the Winds Brass downloaded from the VSL site. I'm using this with the Woodwinds II library.

At present I am trying to set up a score with two flutes in which each flautist is called upon to perform on Alto Flute and Piccolo in addition to the normal flute. The tremolo is certainly triggering the Sibelius auto trill feature rather then the articulation. (not necessarily a problem).

However I'm really tearing my hair out with this. I've been relatively successful in getting this to work but for some reason today the second flute is now only triggering the first instance of the Flutes in Ensemble. Any idea how on earth Sibelius decides where to send its data. It all feels dreadfully sporadic and impossible to troubleshoot this. Very very frustated at the lack if info on the whole manner of Sound ID' interaction and all that is entailed. Surely there is an easier way of doing this.

Any help much appreciated thanks.

[andi]

It's a bit hard saying where the trouble comes from, without knowing your exact setup. Please take care of the following things:

I have seen, that you have registered several of our collections. If you mix solo strings and wind instruments in one arrangement, you will need an instance of Vienna Ensemble for the Solo Strings and one for the wind instruments, because they need different sound sets. Also be sure to load the right presets, as I have seen that you are using download wind instruments and DVD wind instruments.

Be careful with the Sibelius mixer. Don't play around with the channels. This will mess up things even more. If instruments play on the wrong channel, use the third line in the Sibelius mixer to correct it by setting the right sound ID. For example for the first flute choose the Sound ID wind.flutes.flute (first line) and for the second flute choose the Sound ID wind.flutes.flute (second line).

To change instruments in one staff (for example flute to piccolo), do as written in an earlier thread:
http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/22112.aspx

If you haven't done so, I recommend reading the Optimizing Sibelius playback manual, you find at the following location:
http://vsl.co.at/en/68/141/460/576/655.htm

Best,
Andi

[zentrumsounds]

Thanks Andi. If you don't mind I can give you more details here:

I am using Sibelius 6.01 on a MacBookPro and connecting this to a Synergy PC running XP64 with 12Gb RAM. I'm now only experimenting with a core using two flutes and these are the FLUTE II which comes with the Woodwinds II library. Now I've started everything afresh on both machines, set up a new Sibelius document and tried everything I had working yesterday. Whilst when testing the system using the test button on the "manual sounds pag"e triggers the CORRECT Instruments, the score seems oblivious to this. I've certainly read the documents now numerous times but can't seem to solve it. The difficulty here is that wheras in Finale each stave is clearly alloted a MIDI destination by the user, here it seems Sibelius does all the working out automatically and for some reason has decided that my first flute should be ignored. Or perhaps there IS a way of determining this... any info you have would be much appreciated.

I'm intrigued though by what you say about the Sibelius mixer. I did this morning try to work out how it was connected and may have altered something there but having set everything up again i'd presume that such changes are not relevant.

Incidentally I was experimenting to see if I could use two DIFFERENT devices to play the same flute sound... I wanted VSL flute to play all the sounds but to have Tongue-Ram triggered by a different sampler using the preferred sounds page. I was not successful but now am in a bit of a fix... perhaps I shouldn't have tried to do anything.
Thanks!

[andi]

Did you remove your entries on the preferred sounds page? Maybe these entries mess up the playback. If you want to, you can send me your score and your playback configuration (xml file and data folder) and I will take a look at it.

Mail: a.olszewski@vsl.co.at

Best,
Andi

[zentrumsounds]

Hi Andi,

Thanks for the kind offer but in many ways this is not a VSL issue, it's a Sibelius one and I'd feel a bit uncomfortable you spending time on a problem not directly related to your company (though I'll send the 'corrupt' file to you if you are curious and I'm about to negate my political correctness below).

I have now started from scratch again and instead of trying to sort out problems in a complex orchestral setting, I'm now focusing on sorting out the problems on a very simple score with only a few staves. However I am getting closer to the biggest issue of them all for me (mentioned above) and if you could give this some thought I'd be much obliged (though I must confess this too is potentially more Sibelius then VSL).

If I have a violin stave and set up two non VSL VSTs with one of these set to Sound ID 'strings.violin' and the other to Sound ID 'strings.violin.pizzicato' and ensure that the preferred sounds page references this second plugin as the preferred choice for the latter Sound ID then when the score plays back it jumps as expected BETWEEN both plug-ins. Its brilliant!

But if however I now substitute the first plug-in with the Vienna Symphonic Library Violin and engage the accompanying Sound Set for this then my previous preferred sound choices are completely ignored. i can't work out why but i am coming to the conclusion that 'preferred sounds' does not work when a Sound ID already exists which is referencing a complex xml file such as the case when using VSL.

I did ask this question in June and it seemed that this was not possible 'http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/p/21400/148649.aspx#148649, 'however it IS possible in the above scenario just not when VSL gets involved. Or perhaps I am doing something wrong.

Any ideas? It would be incredible if I could get this working!

[andi]

Hi zentrumsounds!

Sorry, but I didn't experiment with the Preferred Sounds page yet. If it doesn't work the way you want it and you want to combine different plugins for one instrument, I recommend using more than one staff.

Best,
Andi

[zentrumsounds]

I'm now awaiting a response from Sibelius on this. However I'd really like to stress that this SHOULD work (and does) just not when VSL is involved (or at least when XML files are involved). However I'm pretty new to Sibelius and the preferred sounds possibilities myself so if anyone else can shed light on this it would be great.

Andi: whilst I'd certainly recommend having a look, how might I ensure that different plug-ins are fixed to a specific stave. If I have a VSL flute playing on one stave, how do I stop the other stave adopting VSL as its preferred output destination?

Many thanks.

[andi]

In the Sibelius mixer you can set up the output plugin. This way one flute can trigger Vienna Ensemble and another flute can trigger another plugin.

Best,
Andi

[zentrumsounds]

Hi Andi,

Just to let you know that this now works. I've spent a considerable amount of time trying to find a way to enable a SINGLE staff to trigger both VSL and other sample player plug-ins and have now finally been successful. Whilst not acknowledged as a bug by Sibelius, it seems that Sibelius ignores the preferred sounds entries IF the current Sound-ID already contains a specific mention of that articulation. The trick is to erase or modify the Sound-ID thus forcing the other preferred sound to be triggered. I might start a new thread just to explain how this works in more detail.

Many thanks for giving this your attention!

[andi]

Thanks for your report.

Best,

Andi