Randolph Peters wrote:I think this highlights the direction things have been moving for a while. To do a decent job of faking (playing back) large orchestrations, you need lots of channels. As you know, one "instrument" can eat up many channels just with all the variations in playing techniques. (e.g., arco, col legno, pizz., tremolo, sfzp, sul pont. and so on).
Finale's long-standing limit of 64 channels is too limiting for what a lot of people need and are moving toward. Doubling this amount to at least match what sequencing programs offer would be a good place to start.
At 2:55 PM -0400 9/3/04, dhbailey wrote:
Why are separate channels necessary for different sounds? Why can't the patch change at the appropriate place, on the same channel?
1) Patch changes are good in some cases, such as when you are playing a hardware synthesizer and you have many patches to choose from. Software synths and samplers are a different thing, however. Most of the time you need to set up one "instrument" per channel (or whatever the terminology is for that particular synth/sampler) and patch changes are ignored. I'm thinking of Reason, Kontact, SampleCell, VSamp, GIGA and I believe Garritan Personal Orchestra among others.
2) Only by having many channels can you get around the problem of having pitchbend or continuous controllers such as volume affecting other staves on the same channel. (For example, in an orchestral score I often have 5 or 6 staves of violins available all playing the same patch, but on different channels so that I can add glissando, or diminuendo on long notes without that affecting another track.)
3) Patch changes also have the disadvantage of not kicking in quickly enough. (Notes can get truncated off the top if there is not enough time for the patch to change with all of its effects settings and whatnot. Roland synths are especially guilty of this.)
Can Finale change channels in the middle of a staff? I had never thought of doing that so I've never tried. I thought the channels were assigned in the instrument list and that you can only assign one channel to a single staff.
You can easily change channels on a staff. I like to assign these channel changes to non-printing expressions. [With Finale's new way of documenting what each expression does, it is much easier to keep track of these things and to build up a personal library that makes sense when you re-use it in another piece.] In addition, you can have different channels for all 4 layers, chords and expressions.
If you want to port your playback to a dedicated sequencing program there is currently a big hassle of not being able to keep the same track setup for both Finale (64 channels) and say, Performer (which has had 128 channels for years, and now even more with Rewire and interapplication MIDI).
I don't think adding more channels to Finale would be too great a programming challenge. It would enhance a core function of Finale and it would meet the demands of a new generation of sound-producing software.
-Randolph Peters _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
