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.
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.
