Issues with proper sustain pedal playback (vibraphone)
Posted: Wed Jul 14, 2021 3:17 am
Hello!
I recently got Tapspace's Virtual Drumline, which integrates right into Finale. While so far my experience using Finale with Virtual Drumline has been good with only a few minor yet fixable issues, I have experienced quite a bit of trouble trying to get proper playback for using a sustain pedal on a Vibraphone. I initially tried using the Smart Shape tool, which provided the right notation but did not affect playback whatsoever. Even after adjusting Human Playback and making sure that I chose the vibraphone sound from Virtual Drumline with sustain pedal control, I could not get it to play back properly.
After doing about 30-40 minutes of searching on Google for help with this issue, I found something that kinda worked. To my surprise, the Articulations tool provides pedal down and pedal up markings (The "Led." marking and the "*" marking, respectively), and this did actually play back properly. There are some limitations using this, however, because - if I understand the Articulations tool correctly - these markings can only attach to notes. This prevents me from doing the following:
1. Having a vibraphone part where the pedal is lifted up after a note has been struck and right before a rest
2. Having a vibraphone part where the pedal is lifted up and then immediately lifted down (Ex.: Playing one chord for one whole measure and repedaling to play a new chord for a measure without the previous chord bleeding over.)
This leads to me to my main question: is there a better way to achieve sustain pedal playback with greater control over when the pedal is down and when it is up? In addition, would it be possible to accomplish this playback with notation that looks like this:
For reference, I am using Finale v26 on a new Mac laptop. Any and all help with this topic is appreciated.
Dominic
I recently got Tapspace's Virtual Drumline, which integrates right into Finale. While so far my experience using Finale with Virtual Drumline has been good with only a few minor yet fixable issues, I have experienced quite a bit of trouble trying to get proper playback for using a sustain pedal on a Vibraphone. I initially tried using the Smart Shape tool, which provided the right notation but did not affect playback whatsoever. Even after adjusting Human Playback and making sure that I chose the vibraphone sound from Virtual Drumline with sustain pedal control, I could not get it to play back properly.
After doing about 30-40 minutes of searching on Google for help with this issue, I found something that kinda worked. To my surprise, the Articulations tool provides pedal down and pedal up markings (The "Led." marking and the "*" marking, respectively), and this did actually play back properly. There are some limitations using this, however, because - if I understand the Articulations tool correctly - these markings can only attach to notes. This prevents me from doing the following:
1. Having a vibraphone part where the pedal is lifted up after a note has been struck and right before a rest
2. Having a vibraphone part where the pedal is lifted up and then immediately lifted down (Ex.: Playing one chord for one whole measure and repedaling to play a new chord for a measure without the previous chord bleeding over.)
This leads to me to my main question: is there a better way to achieve sustain pedal playback with greater control over when the pedal is down and when it is up? In addition, would it be possible to accomplish this playback with notation that looks like this:
For reference, I am using Finale v26 on a new Mac laptop. Any and all help with this topic is appreciated.
Dominic