Problems with violin artificial harmonics

[DaveTubaKing]

I am trying to get the correct playback for this passage;

I am using chamber violins 02-V1-6_harm-art_sus. There are four independant parts. The problem is they will not all play at the same time. Some will play with others but all four will not sound together. The easiest way of hearing the difference is if all the notes are written as block chords on one stave you clearly hear all four notes but when it is split between four staves not all the parts sound.

Each stave has it's own VI and channel.

Is it something I'm doing wrong?

I should also add that properly notated this pasage would be written an octave lower and sound two octaves higher but the VSL art harm patch only sounds one octave higher than written so such passages have to be transposed up an ocatve. Doable but inconvenient and wrong surely!

[andi]

Hello Dave!

Can you please check a few things:
Can you see an outgoing signal in the Sibelius mixer for all four Violin sections?
Do they send on different channels?
Do all parts generate incoming MIDI signals in the respective channels in VE (or MIR)?
Do you have some Live Playback settings for some of the notes in the Sibelius/Properties/Playback menu?
Is the box for Play on pass 1 unchecked for some notes in the Sibelius/Properties/Playback menu?

In order to get the notation right (without notating an octave higher), you could transpose the patch by an octave. In VI Pro this can be done in the Advanced/Edit menu.

I wonder what you are doing with the diamondshaped noteheads. I personally would create two voices for such a passage. Voice 1 is notated as it should be (one octave lower than you have it currently) and is exluced from playback (Play on pass 1 unchecked). Voice 2 is notated one ocatve higher (without the patch being transposed) and hidden from layout. So I would have voice 1 as "Layout voice" and voice 2 as "Playback voice".

Best regards,
Andi

[DG]

Dave is correct about the notation though (albeit an octave out). Artificial harmonics are notated with a normal note for the finger which is pressed firmly on the fingerboard and a diamond shaped note for the finger which is lightly touching the string.

DG

[DaveTubaKing]

@Another User said:

In order to get the notation right (without notating an octave higher), you could transpose the patch by an octave. In VI Pro this can be done in the Advanced/Edit menu.

I'm not too concerned about the notation as my current working method is to create a cleanly notated score then save a second copy as the performance score where I can mess the notation around as much as I want as no one will see it. That's not ideal as sometimes the notation is greatly adjusted and you can forget what the original notation was. Especially a problem in this score which is massive. I'm still working on that issue. I'm thinking of having three staves for every instrument the first with the clean notation which does not send midi the second with the same notation but adjusted as I need to create the performance and a third which has most of the CC data and keyswitch info etc. Staves two and three sending midi to the same VI. Problem is this score has 100+ instruments and therefore would need 300+ staves. So all a bit crazy.

I would however like the passage above to work. Whilst the workaround of putting all parts on one stave works it's tedious and there are lots of passages such as this throughout this 4.5 hour work.

But I'm just experimenting with this now - seeing how things may work.

[andi]

It may sound a bit strange, but I have heard from another Sibelius/MIR user that he had problems with instruments loaded to slots 42, 43 and 98 in MIR. Could it be, that one of the problematic instruments is played on one of these slots? If yes, I'd suggest to put these instruments to other slots.

If that's not the problem, please check some more things:
Open the problematic VI (Pro) instruments and watch the virtual keyboard. Do you see keys pressed down? What exactly happens? Do they create any sound? Do you get any sound if you click on the virtual keyboard?