Finale Forum

Using the Finale Garritan Instruments library (the standard library), selecting Piccolo Solo voice, this voice seems to give me a pitch that is actually 1 octave lower that the actual piccolo sound. I played the note in my piece in Finale 26.3.1.520, an F sitting on the top line of the staff, which matched the written note on this reference website:

https://www.vsl.co.at/en/Piccolo/Range

While the notes are the same on the staff, the pitch is the same but the octave is different. Does anyone know why this is happening? I am not a Piccolo player, and this changes the effect and impact of the instrument during playback. If I am missing something please direct me to resolve the issue. I do find the playback function very useful during composing but I don't want to rely upon it too much.

One octave off,

Are you applying it to a staff with Piccolo transposition ("Down octave" means it will be written down an octave).

Piccolo is a transposing instrument that sounds one octave higher than it is notated, or inversely, is notated one octave lower than it sounds. Is that what you are seeing? If so, then it is correct.

The score is written as combined Flute 1 & 2 and Solo Piccolo on one staff. The parts will be extracted separately. All notes are written as for the flute with the expectation that the Piccolo would play the same Flute 1 notes at 1 octave higher.

My question is that during playback, the Garritan Piccolo voice sounds equivalent to the flute, not an octave higher. When I switch the Garritan voices from flute to piccolo, the timbre changes but the notes remain in the same octave. Shouldn't the piccolo sound 1 octave higher than the flute when I switch the Garritan instrument?

Hope this is more clear, thanks

For a new user, expecting the piccolo voice to sail over the band one octave higher than the flute, Garritan is not giving me this for some reason

To get the piccolo to sound in the proper octave, you need it to appear on a staff with piccolo transposition, so I think you need to give it its own staff rather than share a staff with flutes. If it exactly doubles the flute an octave higher throughout, you could omit the piccolo staff from the printed score--it would exist only for playback.

OK, I'll try that. Thx,

It worked. I wonder what other voice issues you give up when combining instruments on one staff. I assumed changing the voice in Garritan would lead to an accurate instrument voice on playback, but in this case it lowered the Piccolo an octave to match the Flute.

Any other examples of this out there?

Cello/bass parts, I guess.

If you have a flute doubling on piccolo--that is, one player switching between the instruments, then Change Instrument in Finale should work.

Have you tried to give different channels (and patches) to the flute and the piccolo, each in his own layer ?

The part will be played most times with separate players. Both parts play similar music as in a standard American March.

I am not sophisticated enough on MIDI stuff to set up separate channels, which is why I went with adding a separate piccolo staff and hid it. Now I have bot the combined part for the score, which plays the flute line as it was set up to do, and the extra part and voice for the piccolo.

I'd be interested in how you might set up 2 voices for one staff line.

You can place the 2 lines in separate layers.
Then, in the Scoremanager, click on the triangle next to the staff to view all 4 layers. In the midi channel column, you can define different midi channels for different layers, and select separate instrument sounds for each layer, too.
You can create 2 new parts starting from a staff like that, one per layer (Use the Specify voicing button).

Just back with a new problem, thought I'd give follow up on this one. I added a separate Piccolo staff then hid it from the score view. This solved the problem and gave the flute and piccolo their own voices while allowing the printed part to be combined.

Did not try the layer 2 option.

Thanks to all who helped.