Multiple voices in one staff

[tgt114]

i am using finale allegro 2007

I am writing for a marching band pit. With pit writing the player often has a main instrument like a marimba, but is also surrounded by other instruments like cymbals, shakers, hand drums, etc.

i have 2 questions:

1) let say were talking about the marimba 1 staff. Everything written there for marimba plays back correctly, but i also have other voices written in the staff, which also play back as marimba, rather than their real voice. Is there ANY way i can get these other instruments(mostly auxillary percussion) to play back correctly?

2)Pertaining to the same staff, lets say i wanna write a cymbal part in between the marimba parts in a certain measure. How can i get the cymbal notes to appear as X's, but keep the marimba notes normal?

thanks ALOT.

[joseluis]

For question 1, I do not think there is any way to have different type of instruments on the same staff. Although you can have multiple voices esasily, the staff is declared as "instrument x" and everything there will sound as instrument x.
The obvious solution is to write different instruments on different staffs.

This is not a problem for your marching band; use the several staffs version to produce your midi or mp3 and rewrite everything in one staff for a compact score printout

[michelp]

1) let say were talking about the marimba 1 staff. Everything written there for marimba plays back correctly, but i also have other voices written in the staff, which also play back as marimba, rather than their real voice. Is there ANY way i can get these other instruments(mostly auxillary percussion) to play back correctly?

Use different layers, and in the Instrument list window of that staff, click on the triangle left of that staff and select a different instrument for each layer, with a specific midi channel and patch.
You make have to create a "New Instrument" to make sure you have a different instrument set up with its own midi channel and patch.

1) l2)Pertaining to the same staff, lets say i wanna write a cymbal part in between the marimba parts in a certain measure. How can i get the cymbal notes to appear as X's, but keep the marimba notes normal?

Again, you could use layers for that. Another layer can be used for cymbals. Select that layer with "show active layer only" and apply Mass Edit menu>Change ->noteheads-> x
For accurate playback, apply the method described in 1)

PS : Another solution if instruments alternate and never play together, would be a staff style applied to a "cymbal-only" region, with notation style set to Percussion->drum set