Finale Forum

I'm in the process of composing a collection of mandolin duets.

The Garritan mandolin patch is actually not as useful for this as the soft synth's mandolin GM patch, so when I created a template for the job I made sure to set it up with the soft synth mandolin patch.

Out of the blue - quite literally, SOME of the files have started playing back with a generic electric piano sound instead of the mandolin patch - approximately 1/3 of the 20 files are doing this. Those that do also will not respond to ANY other soft synth patch either - they are stuck on an electric piano no matter what I try to get them to play.

I have searched exhaustively throughout all the audio setting and soft synth setting and cannot find any differences between the files that play normally and the ones that are weirded out. I've tried switching to the Garritan patches and then back again and that make no difference.

I've even tried opening a fresh template (that file still plays fine) and copy pasting the data from the misbehaving files onto the template, and when I do that, the playback is again corrupted.

All files are accessing the same software synthesizer. I'm stumped.

I've been using Finale since version 2.0 and have never seen something like this.

If we could see the file we might be able to find the cause. Possibly, there's a MIDI command that is at play. It's hard to say.

Zuill

Check the Score Manager.
If it lists the wrong patch, you can change it there.

Score manager was the first place I checked.

I've looked for invisible patch change commands, but they would have to be at the very beginning of the scores - in the first measure, to disable the soft synth in this way because no matter what I change the patch to, it plays back as an electric piano, a somewhat dull one at that, not the standard GM electric piano.

And this happened randomly, across several files, affecting around 7 - 8 out of approximately 20.

We're just guessing without a file to inspect.

Zuill

Solved.

I created several arrangements using MIDI files originating from EasyABC - an ABC style notation program.

Turns out those were the ONLY arrangements the were playing back incorrectly. They were using the original ABC program changes.

I did a clear selected items only clearing performance data, and that took care of it.

Now if I can only figure out why these were okay originally THEN started playing the imbedded program changes weeks later I can call this issue solved!