Finale and VSL instrument assignment

[Newbis]

Hi, I'm a bit new to this here. Say I want to use VSL Special Edition for playback in Finale 2010. In Finale, there are 8 sets of 16 channels (1-16, 17-32, etc.). If I select VSL, the Vienna Instruments player comes up. I can move instruments to slots on the left (in the matrix view) and I can assign them some sort of keyboard-activation code. So for example, if I play on the virtual keyboard C at the 4th octave, it will say "C4" in the little box next to the instrument I selected. However, there's nothing corresponding to Finale's "1-16." And when I try to play back in Finale, the most I can get is one instrument at a time. Does this mean that I can only use at most one VSL instrumnet for each of Finale's 8 slots? E.g., "1-16" could be violins, "17-32" could be violas, etc., so that basically I get a total of 8 instruments instead of 256? Or is there a way to somehow assign an instrument to each of the channels individually? Thanks, -Jonathan

[Newbis]

One other thing...Most of the time I can only get staccato, or sometimes it randomly goes to other articulations. I tried importing the "F2009+VSL-SE_HumanPlayback.MUS" into my Human Playback preferences. I'm not sure if that's doing anything because I don't see anything in the window when I import. Another thing I tried was to resave that file as a Finale 2010 file, and then save with a different name, and use that as my file to enter notes in. In that case, a lot of things in human playback are in bold, but selecting them doesn't do anything. All I get is staccato, even though when I select it in the player, it says that there are several different articulations. Do I have to basically set up all my own preferences and articulations in HP? Maybe what VSL has for Finale HP preferences only works for Finale 2009?

[JET]

Jonathan,

Make sure you download the Vienna Ensemble player. There also is a Finale 2010 file with VSL preferences to download. In Finale's midi setup window, under channels 1-16 load the Vienna Ensemble player. Then in the Ensemble player load your instruments into the player's 16 channels. Make sure in your file you have the VSL preferences chosen, not the default preferences. Then just start a test file with violins. The pizz and arco expressions you use should not have any playback definition assigned to them. Make sure your staff is labelled violin in staff attributes also. All of the articulation in the Special edition work automatically for me except the sforzato patch. That one needs to be triggered by a expression using a specified controller. Regular notes will default to the detache, slurred notes will switch to the legato patch. Long notes will be the sustained patch, pizz  works with an expression and tremolo works via the tremolo articulation in Finale.

Good luck.

[Newbis]

Thanks so much...That gets me way further! (I wish in the "needful" area they had spelled out the steps regarding the Ensemble player as being different from the thing that gets installed from the disk. I didn't find any Finale 2010 file to download though, other than the percussion map; under "Finale 2009 & 2010 Human Playback Settings for Vienna Instruments Special Edition," there's a ZIP file, and unzipping it only produces a Finale 2009 file. However, after having opened that file, somehow it seems to have "stuck," or at any rate, I do have HP settings for Vienna now.
   My only problem now is that there are few weird things. If I put staccato dots over the 2nd violins, they play martele-style. Then, if the violas are playing the next bar, they sometimes play the staccato just because the violins did, or sometimes not. That is, randomly, some instruments take on another instrument's articulation. But other times it fixes itself.
   Then, sometimes the articulation seems to apply only to some of the players. For example, if I mark "pizz," they do play pizz, but it seems that there are a few in the section that are still playing arco, as if maybe some of the less attentive players in the back row didn't see the "pizz," creating a sort of divisi articulation effect that I don't want.
   By the way, suppose I want another kind of staccato instead of the heavy martele sound. Just creating an expression called "detache" or "staccato," etc., doesn't seem to be enough to access the different kinds of staccato that the player says are available with the instrument. I guess I have to invoke the "key switches" for all those things (?). But how do I do that in Finale when I'm editing the playback options for my expression? There doesn't seem to be any option for "key switch" there.

Thanks,
-Jonathan

[Newbis]

   Here's yet another very weird thing. The basses seem to respond to other instruments' articulation only (whereas the violas and cellos do it just 50% of the time, on a random basis). So if everyone is marked pizz, the basses play pizz, but really only because the others are marked pizz. As soon as the violins play "arco," the basses will not play pizz no matter how many times I write pizz into their part. But what they do play is all of these very high-pitched sounds every time there's any expression marking for them. At first, I thought that VSL had recorded a chair squeak into some of the samples to make them more realistic, like something that might actually happen in an orchestra. But then I realized that that it's those "key switch" things I was wondering about earlier that are actually being activated by Finale's existing expressions. So rather than activating any different articulations for the double basses, I just get a lot of extra very high notes.
   One thing I tried was to rename the staff name for the double basses different things. In the HP preferences, they're called contrabass, so I called them that. If I rename them "dooba," then they don't even "take the hint" from the other sections to play "pizz" because the others were. So calling them "contrabass" does have some effect, but it still doesn't make them follow the expressions in their own part...only other peoples' parts.

[Newbis]

Ah...actually, let me clarify: The basses actually are partly following the pizz/arco designations in their own part, but only some of them. If I have passages contrasting the same figuration in pizz or arco, it sounds slightly different...It's really that unwanted divisi effect I was talking about earlier. But if the violins play pizzicato, and the basses also have pizzicato, then all of the basses go to pizzicato...whereas if it says pizzicato only in their own part, then I get that divisi-half-arco-half-pizzicato sound. Clearly some of the basses are following the expressions in their part, and some are following the ones in the violin part. But why is that?

[JET]

From your description, it's kind of hard for me to diagnose what's happening without seeing your file. What I would suggest is to make short test files, just few measures that contains all of the various articulations that you plan to use. But make separate test files for the violins, another one for the violas and so on. This should help you isolate the problem. Once you have those files working, then appply the same principles to the score. The staff names are important to use. Finale's HP will not recognise a pizz articulation on a flute staff, becaue it knows flutes can't play pizz. Also double check your midi assignments. If the midi channel setup in the Vienna Ensemble doesn't match the FInale instrument list, that would also cause problems.

[Newbis]

Thanks very much for your help. I've tried making all the names match everywhere...the staff, the instrument list name, even the GM selection in the instrument list.    Because I don't see any way to attach files on this forum, I've posted on the Finale forum, in case you'd like to see the file:

http://forum.makemusic.com/default.aspx?f=5&m=315577

By the way, I also tried getting rid of all the other instruments so it was only DB. Then the DB works. So it works by itself; when the other instruments are added, it gets confused.

Thanks again,
-Jonathan

[andi]

Hello Jonathan!

It's not necessary to open the HPP file, that you have downloaded. Just import the settings from this file on the HP menu in Finale. How to use it is explained in the readme file that comes with it. It should not be necessary to edit these settings for the Special Edition at all. Please make sure to only add instruments with the Finale instruments wizard. Otherwise it can happen that Finale doesn't know which instruments you have in your score (although you may have named them).

I hope this was helpful.

Best regards,
Andi

[JET]

Jonathan,

[Newbis]

Thanks much! It was my Vienna Ensemble setup as you had guessed, as I had been assuming that the numbers in the right corner were channel numbers, so I never actually selected the channel numbers in the correct place until I saw your graphic.

[Newbis]

One other thing: You mentioned "Please make sure to only add instruments with the Finale instruments wizard." Finale's Setup Wizard allows one to add staves that are linked with Garritan-for-Finale, smartmusic, and tapspace libraries.

Is there actually a way to make the Wizard's dropdown include Vienna Ensemble also? Everything is working with Vienna right now; it plays back, etc. ...but the Setup Wizard doesn't know about Vienna.

Thanks,
-Jonathan

[Newbis]

PS...On the MakeMusic/Finale forum, they said some sort of text file is required to tell the Setup Wizard how to set up the VST library. I see the format of the files is fairly simple, but there's a lot of information in them. Does VSL supply such a thing?
Thanks,
Jonathan

[andi]

Hello Jonathan!

I don't know which text file you are refering to. You don't need a text file for the setup wizard. All you need for the Special Edition and Finale, you can find in our Needful Things/Finale section.
http://vsl.co.at/en/68/141/460/1603/1290.htm

Best,
Andi

[Newbis]

Hi Andi,
In the Needful Things/Finale section, there's a zipped .mus file from which I can import HP settings, and there's an XML file for the percussion map. However, if you look at an installation of Finale 2010, you'll see there's a directory like C:\Program Files\Finale 2010\FinaleVST which includes, in addition to VST plugins, text files such as TapSpaceinstrument2k10.txt and GIF2010instrument.txt.

These have data in a format that looks like this:
[VSTINFO]
Name          = Garritan Instruments for Finale 2010
PluginID      = GA2k
PlayerChannels      = 16
LibraryID      =

As I was told in the Finale forum, this is how the Setup Wizard automatically selects instruments for you. The Setup Wizard in Finale does all the work of selecting the channel numbers, making them match the instrument list, etc., so it makes it much easier to assign instruments.

Unless you can tell me another reason why the Setup Wizard isn't seeing VSL even though everything else in Finale sees VSL, I would assume that this file needs to be included to integrate VSL with the Setup Wizard.
Thanks :)
-Jonathan