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Using your sound set in existing compositions

This document provides guidance on using Sibelius Services sound sets in existing compositions, highlighting the need to manage staves and instruments due to differing internal names. It emphasizes the importance of selecting the correct playback configuration and avoiding mixer adjustments to prevent playback issues. Additionally, it explains how to import custom instrument staves via house styles and addresses potential bugs that may arise during this process.

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Nedelcho Ninov
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13 views

Using your sound set in existing compositions

This document provides guidance on using Sibelius Services sound sets in existing compositions, highlighting the need to manage staves and instruments due to differing internal names. It emphasizes the importance of selecting the correct playback configuration and avoiding mixer adjustments to prevent playback issues. Additionally, it explains how to import custom instrument staves via house styles and addresses potential bugs that may arise during this process.

Uploaded by

Nedelcho Ninov
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Using Sibelius Services Sound Sets in existing compositions

Document version: 230611.1


Sibelius Services Home: https://sibelius-services.com

Introduction
When you import a Sibelius Services sound set, the patches have different internal names to the
regular instrument names NotePerformer and Sibelius 7 Sounds use. This is so that you can use
both at once without them clashing.

But it does mean that to properly use my sound sets, you need to add/remove new staves, or
change existing ones to a new Instrument.

This short document will take you through how to manage that.

Playback Configuration
All Sibelius Services sound sets have a “With NotePerformer” playback configuration (e.g. (“Glory
Days Horns With NotePerformer”).

Select this playback configuration for your score (and then save your file under a different name).

My playback configuration XML files have extra settings to avoid otherwise huge delays when
NotePerformer is mixed with external VSTs.

If you want to mix a number of libraries, then it’s best to use my tool: every installer ships with a
Playback Configuration Tool (run the installer, then click the top purple button). This allows you to
mix and match existing playback configurations.

Clear the mixer


It’s very tempting when you install new sounds to use the mixer to select playback devices.
Sometimes this works, sometimes it produces unpredictable results. But it’s something that you
should never do when you have sound sets.

It’s common in some styles of music to switch between different instruments on the same stave: for
instance, a Clarinet part being picked up by a Sax in big band. This won’t work properly if you’ve set
any playback devices.

Here’s what a fully initialized mixer looks like (you can see the mixer like this when you make a
change to your score such as adding a staccato).
The ideal for a mixer configuration is that all playback devices and instruments are surrounded by
brackets: like here (nil) means that it’s being automatically managed.

So how do we select and manage instruments?


You would always use “Change” on the Home tab to do this – either selecting a whole stave and
doing it, or selecting a passage (which would switch to the instrument and then switch back to the
previous one).

However, we need to make sure the instruments you need show up in that dialog box.

We need custom instrument staves are needed.

Those have to be imported into the score by importing a “house style”.

With your score open, go to “Appearance/Import” and you will see something like this (with fewer
available house styles):
Note that we only import the Playback Dictionary (which sometimes has extra technique text
settings) and Instrument Definitions. Everything else must be unticked to avoid overwriting your
own settings.

Viewing the instrument definitions

Here’s what the instrument edit dialog box looks like as standard:

What a house style import does is to add another “Ensemble” to your score (but only this one).

Here you can see “Glory Days Horns” added as an ensemble. Note that the patches are all prefaced
with [GDH]

This new ensemble will then be viewable as a drop-down in the “change” dialog, so you can apply
any of the new instruments to a passage or stave, or add new staves.
ARGH! The ensemble looks messed up!
Sibelius has a number of bugs, and this is one of them, reported but as yet unfixed.

When you import house styles, sometimes Sibelius messes up your brand-new ensemble(s) by
missing out patches, adding irrelevant ones or mixing them up.

This happens almost all the time when you have to import two new house styles (for instance, if you
were using Glory Days Horns and “The Grandeur” piano together, and there’s no way of getting
round this except to recreate the ensemble manually. Sorry.

So, let’s fix it. Here’s one example problem: there should be loads more instruments! Where have
they gone?

BUT! The instruments are still here. They’re just in the “Instruments not in Ensemble” list (at the
bottom).
Selecting all the [GDH] patches for Wind and then clicking “Add to Family” will achieve what you
want.

Press “Close” when you’re finished: Sibelius doesn’t save any changes to the instruments unless you
do that.

Top tip
If you click on “Edit Instrument” for any of these patches, you can also choose what their default
names are when inserted into the score. You can change these without messing anything up. We
chose to put the library name as a prefix on the score name so that people would realise what it
was.

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