Problem with Finale...

[Rykua]

Well, I was composing something, and I ran into a problem with playback. I'm assuming this is because the baritones and the trombones occupy the same playback channel, or whatever it's called.

I have this one small section where the three trombone parts hold out the harmony in whole notes, while the baritones have a melody of quarter notes, eighth notes, and triplets. For some reason, every single time the baritone changes notes, the trombones just... disappear until they play their next note.



Is this a technical issue, and can it be solved? It feels weird not being able to hear how it is supposed to sound because of an issue such as this. I'm about ready to put the melody on a french horn and have the baritone play along with the trombones.

[stevel]

Originally Posted by Rykua

I have this one small section where the three trombone parts hold out the harmony in whole notes, while the baritones have a melody of quarter notes, eighth notes, and triplets. For some reason, every single time the baritone changes notes, the trombones just... disappear until they play their next note

It sounds like you are running into a polyphony problem. How many other parts are sounding - what kind of playback synth are you using - what's its polyphony?

Steve

[Rykua]

I'm not sure what some of that means. I use the default synth that Finale 2004 comes with. SmartMusic SoftSynth...

At the current time, I have just the Tuba, Baritone, 3 trombone parts, tenor sax, and bari sax playing at that moment. The tuba, three trombone parts, and bari sax are playing whole notes/half notes, and the baritone and tenor sax are playing melody.

Here's the .MUS file if it helps. It starts at measure 50, and gets worse at measure 54.

http://flat-cube.ath.cx/~rykua/GAndBProblem.MUS

EDIT: Correction... in that version that I linked, at measure 54, Trombone 1 also takes the melody, while 2 and 3 take the half-note harmonies.

[stevel]

I'm not sure what some of that means.

Polyphony is the measure of how much sound a synthesizer can produce at one time. For instance, in the old days, many synths had 16 note polyphony. But the word "note" here means more like "tone". A Tone is usually made up of 1, 2, 3, or 4 partials (or oscillators, waveforms, elements, etc.) therefore what often happens is, when you play a single note, it actually uses up 4 "notes" of your polyphony. If you chose a sound that used up 4 notes of your polyphony per one sounding note, then you could only play a 4 note chord maximum (4 x 4 = 16).

Now a days, synths have much better polyphony, usually 128 note for hardware synths, and more for computers which is based on processing power. However, if you use a sound card, your sound card might only have 64, or even 32 note polyphony.

One way around this is to choose patches (sounds) that use lss polyphony - usually the owner's manual will tell you how much polyphony each patch uses. Unfortunately, the sounds card people didn't really send owners manuals with the stock ones! Additionally, you don't have as many sounds to choose from so you're kind of stuck with whateer trombone sound you have.

I use the default synth that Finale 2004 comes with. SmartMusic SoftSynth...

Well I opened your file in 2004 and it didn't exhibit the same problem. I will say, I have had more trouble in 2004 with playback than any other version and sometimes I've had to rash a file and start over again to get it to play back. There are strange things going on. So it could be a Finale problem or it could be a sound card problem, or the smart synth, etc.

The real solution is to port it out to a synth and see what happens (or use a virtual synth that runs well on your platform).

At the current time, I have just the Tuba, Baritone, 3 trombone parts, tenor sax, and bari sax playing at that moment. The tuba, three trombone parts, and bari sax are playing whole notes/half notes, and the baritone and tenor sax are playing melody.

That really doesn't sound like enough to cause polyphony issues, and as I said, it plays back fine for me. I'm sure though if it's rainy outside and the moon is 3/4 phase, then it won't because that's how Finale seems to run!

But remember, anytime you use a virtual synth (which is what the smart synth is) it takes computer processing power to create the sounds. So like polyphony, too many things happening at once can bog down your system.

I would do this:

Set up the playback controls to play back only the problem measures.
Mute instruments one by one and see if that helps. Try different combonations to see if there's any one problem track.
Change the tempo up and down and see if the problem still exists.
Change the instrument sounds for those stave to see if it's the sounds causing the problem, or the notes, or just some weird glitch in Finale.

HTH,
Steve

[Rykua]

*nods* I did some experiments in finale, and I think I got it fixed.

I did an experiment... by starting a new file in Finale. I put a whole note for the trombone (that was tied to another whole note next measure), and I had a baritone with a moving half-note. It worked.

I did the same with moving quarter notes and it worked mostly...

When it got to moving eighth notes, every note faded the trombone's note.



I think it's more of a problem with my computer and its processor than the actual program, based on what I've read from your post and from this experiment. However, I am curious as to why it only does this when instruments are on the same channel. I could have the whole band playing at once with just the french horns with the melody, and the harmonies wouldn't be fluttering the way it is now.

But thanks for the help... perhaps when I get a new computer, and learn to deal with Finale 2007 (I have it... just I don't use it... because I don't have enough RAM... and, like 2005, I'm not used to the system [it's a really big change, IMO] ).