Staccato

[emfuhsiss]

Hello, I am writing a sax quartet using Sibelius 5.2. I am having a hard time getting staccato articulations to "shut off". When I notate staccato on one note, all of the following notes are then articulated as staccatos, whether they have other articulation markings or not. The only way to get Sibelius to shut staccatos off is by introducing a slur on the following note. But I don't always want a slur, of course. Has anyone else had this problem? How did you fix it? Thanks! Tom

[andi]

Hi!

Sorry for the late reply. I missed your thread. Wrong (or not happening) articulation changes often occur when there are mismatches in the Sound ID (for example between the Instrument you chose for Sibelius and the program you set in the Manual Sound set tab).
I recommend updating to Sibelius 5.2.5 (the Sibelius guys fixed a few playback issues there) and watching our tutorial video at the following location:
http://vsl.co.at/en/211/1343/1348/243.vsl

Best wishes,
Andi Olszewski
Vienna Symphonic Library

[gdugan2]

Hello.  I am having the same problem.  That is, I have 2 violins, a viola and a cello.  When I make one note on the 2nd violin staccato, it gets "stuck" on staccato.  This does not happen on any of the the other three parts.  They all switch back to sustain after playing one staccato note.  I have Sibelius 5.2.5 build 37 Audio Engine v1.009, and the latest sound set.  I have checked (and reset) the sound IDs in the Sibelius mixer.  I have restarted Sibelius, and it behaves exactly the same, able to play only one staccato note and then switch back to sustain on all staves except Violin 2, which gets stuck on staccato.  Any suggestions?  Thanks.

[andi]

Hello Gary!

I need some more infos to help.
Are you working on a string quartet or are are these ensemble strings?
Which Sibelius instruments did you choose? It's important that solo strings have the instruments "Solo Violin", "Solo Viola", ... chosen. "Violin 1", "Violin I", "Viola", ... are for ensemble strings.
Have you reserved a channel and a program for each of your instruments? If you have two violins, you will have to assign two channels for the violin on the Manual Sound Sets page and in Vienna Ensemble.

Best,
Andi

[gdugan2]

Hi Andi.  Thank you for your reply.

Yes, I have set each instrument to the solo strings ("Solo Violin", Solo Viola", etc.), not ensemble strings.  

Yes, I've reserved a channel and program for each instrument in both Sibelius (in the Manual Sound Sets page) and Vienna Ensemble.  There are four channels in each (not including effects and the Master channel).  

Just to confirm all this, I opened the Sibelius session again, deactivated the current playback device, and activated/reloaded a new instance of VE, again using the matrices from the "Solo Strings" folder.  I reassigned the four parts in the "Manual Sound Sets" page of Sibelius and saved it.  

Upon playback, I found the same behavior.  When I place a staccato dot over a single note for the 1st violin, viola, or cello, they correctly play that single note as staccato, and then revert back to the sustain patch.  However, when I place a single dot over a note for the 2nd violin, it switches to staccato and doesn't switch back, even if I return to the beginning of the piece and begin playback.  It remains in staccato.  

Any other ideas?

UPDATE: I just created  a new string quartet using the "New Score" dialog, loaded my "String Quartet" Playback Device in Sibelius, and there was no problem with violin 2.  It played single staccato notes without a hitch.  The session with the problem was based on a MIDI file created by somebody else which I imported into Sibelius.  I wonder if there's something in the MIDI file, or in the "Open MIDI File" function of Sibelius that is causing the "stuck staccato."  I have tried looking for the problem by switching on "View Hidden Objects," but I can't see anything.  Any ideas on what might be causing it, or on how I can fix it?

[andi]

Hello Gary!

Sometimes Sibelius shows odd playback behaviour, when instruments appear more than once in a score. Often it helps, when you add the problematic instrument(s) one more time and cut the content of the old staff into the new one.
One other possible solution is reassigning the sound IDs in the Sibelius mixer (third line of each instrument). When you have two violins you will have the Sound ID strings.violin two times at your disposal. For the first violin choose the first one and for the second violin choose the second one.

Best,
Andi

[gdugan2]

Thank you for your suggestions.

I have tried reassigning the sound IDs in the Sibelius mixer.  This solved a problem I had in a different session where things were not playing back properly, but it didn't help in this current session.  

I will try your suggestion of adding the problematic instrument again and cutting/pasting the content of the staff into a new one.

[Oceanview]

 Hello Gary,

I've experienced similar things. A word of caution - when you choose manuscript templates from the New Manuscript list in Sibelius double-check the strings. I'm pretty sure that I chose the string quartet ms. only to discover that the staves were the wrong ones to work in playback. I had to go to the Create Instruments list and select Solo Violin, Solo Viola, Solo Cello, etc. In other words for playback purposes the labelling of staves in Sibelius isn't always what it appears.

In my view (and I think this is supported by the number of postings about articulations) the interface between Sibelius and Vienna needs improvement. There is too much problem-solving required at present, which is a massive distraction from the business of writing music and enjoying Vienna's inspirational samples.

Have you looked at the recent pdf about Optimizing for Sibelius playback - that's very helpful.

[gdugan2]

Hi Oceanview.  Thanks for your input.  I will keep that in mind.

As Andi suggested, I tried deleting the problematic instrument (violin 2), and pasting its music into a new staff, and this worked, sort of.  When I looked at the mixer in Sibelius, I noticed that the new violin 2 was set to channel 1.  I changed it to channel 2, as in VE, and the stuck staccato returned.  I changed it back to channel 1, and the problem was gone.

Thinking that there might be a problem with channels 1 and 2, I tried creating violin 2 on channel 5.  I found that music from the same staff in Sibelius played back to two different channels in VE at the same time.  Some articulations played on one channel, and other articulations played on another.  It was really weird.  

Obviously something is screwy somewhere.  I hope they get it figured out.  And by the way, what's up with detache?  I created a test session and detache was working, but when I try to insert detache into a different session, it doesn't work.  I can trigger every other articulation except detache.  It's a bit annoying.  

[andi]

Hello Gary!

Changing channels in the Sibelius mixer will unfortunately lead to problems. If you feel the need to change something there, change the Sound ID (third line in the mixer).

As for your detache problem. Remeber that the dictionary entries are saved with your score. Maybe you didn't update the detache entry in the dictionary of your "different session".

Also see my answer in an earlier thread.
http://community.vsl.co.at/forums/t/21540.aspx

Best,
Andi

[Oceanview]

Hello Gary,

I'm having the same problem with detache. I define it in the Playback Dictionary and that doesn't make any difference.

As for changing channels in the Sibelius mixer, there are times when, after changing things elsewhere (i.e. in Ensemble or Playback) all of the channels in the mixer come up as unallocated and one has to start again setting them.

The VSL/Sibelius interface needs more work on it. Perhaps unglamorous work compared to Vienna's other projects, but it would make such a difference to users to know that the articulations would work reliably.

[gdugan2]

Andi,

Thank you for the tip that the dictionary entries are saved with the score, and do not "travel" from one score to another.  Frankly, I don't know why Sibelius behaves this way.  Why would I want "detache" to work in one score, and not work in another?  If I change the dictionary, you would think this would apply to all scores.  On the other hand, I guess I can also see the benefit of having individual control over each score.  

Oceanview, 

When I added "detache" to the dictionary of a score, I deleted "detach <with accent>" because I didn't need "detach <with accent>", and I was afraid "detach <with accent>" would screw things up.  Also, when I added "detache", I made sure the Sound ID did NOT have an accent, since the Patch in Vienna does not use an accent.  This worked.  In addition, I know that I have to import this "House Style" into every other score for detache to work in that score.