'Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another'

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Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staf... - Mark Isaacs, 21 Mar 12:48AM
     Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Adrian Drover, 21 Mar 08:21AM
         Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Mark Isaacs, 21 Mar 09:04AM
             Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Laurence Payne, 21 Mar 10:31AM
                 Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Adrian Drover, 21 Mar 01:05PM
                     Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Mark Isaacs, 22 Mar 12:52AM

Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Mark Isaacs - 21 Mar 12:48AM (edited 21 Mar 01:55AM)
To draw out, and document, the lesson from this thread of mine http://www.sibelius.com/cgi-bin/helpcenter/chat/chat.pl?com=thread&start=711752&groupid=3&

When doing an Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another - e.g. from Piano to Celesta, a common orchestral player's doubling - for proper playback it is necessary to place an identical Instrument Change in BOTH the upper and lower staffs of the grand staff, at the same place. This needs to be done as two separate Instrument Change operations.

This was not obvious or intuitive to me, as I thought of these instruments as one instrument, and so needing only one instrument change. And indeed, the behaviour of things like dynamics between the staffs, and pedalling below the lower staff, reinforce the impression of "one instrument" in that they normally have a simultaneous effect of both staffs.

But for Instrument Changes, a grand staff needs to be thought of as two separate instruments. If you do the instrument change to (say) the top staff only, you do get the new sound on both staffs. But it's a false sense of security, as other properties of the first instrument will remain in the lower staff (like transposition) and pedalling under the lower staff will not affect the upper staff, as they are kind of divorced from one another. So it becomes a strange kind of hybrid grand staff instrument. Other gremlins might be possible too with this kind of wrong workflow.

I couldn't find anything in the Sibelius Reference, or on this forum previously, about this particular point, so I thought it was worth documenting in case anyone in the future is scratching their head as I did.

Sincere thanks to the generous forum stalwart Robin Walker who pointed out the issue to me, when my playback misbehaved.

--
A composer www.markisaacs.com
www.facebook.com/markisaacsmusic
Sibelius 6.2.0 build 88, Sibelius 5.2.5 build 37, Bob Zawalich plugins, Windows 32-bit Vista SP1, Intel quad CPU Q9450 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 27'' monitor, M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard, Bose Computer Music Monitor speakers, Sibelius Sounds Essentials, Sibelius Sounds, Garritan Personal Orchestra 3, Garritan Authorised Steinway.
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Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Adrian Drover - 21 Mar 08:21AM (edited 21 Mar 08:25AM)
I think it is fairly obvious to the composer that the instrument change only affects the staff it is placed on, and easy to duplicate by select & alt-klik. And there may be cases when the writer requires the performer to be playing both instruments simultaneously. Very likely in fact for a multi-keyboardist, and also to accommodate different stops for organ playback.
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Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Mark Isaacs - 21 Mar 09:04AM (edited 21 Mar 09:27AM)
True enough that you can have a situation of one player with each hand on a different instrument.

But you might have difficulty getting Sibelius to do correct playback, since if you read my post carefully you'll see that when I applied the instrument change to the top staff, the lower staff adopted the same sound (probably because it *is* a grand staff instrument) which would mean one might have trouble doing what you suggest and having correct playback (everything that I am on about is playback, not engraving, related).

As I mentioned, even though both staffs changed sound upon only the top staff's instrument change, other properties of the new instrument didn't come through to the bottom staff. Getting a celesta *sound* on the bottom staff made me think applying the change to the top staff only, was an OK way to do it. I later found that it was deceptive: though the bottom staff had a celesta sound, it was functioning with piano transposition (celesta sounds 8va) and also pedalling below the bottom staff did not effect the top staff.

So, based on that, trying to get a grand staff to have two different instruments playing back may be tricky. And it was easy to get a false sense, by the resulting sound, that the instrument change applied on one staff only had worked for both, when it hadn't, not fully. It's more complicated it seems, and there's potential confusion in both scenarios.

It may be obvious to you, Adrian, but it tricked me, and I am a very experienced Sibelius user. So I hope my post was worthwhile if in the future anyone else experiences the confusion I did.


--
A composer www.markisaacs.com
www.facebook.com/markisaacsmusic
Sibelius 6.2.0 build 88, Sibelius 5.2.5 build 37, Bob Zawalich plugins, Windows 32-bit Vista SP1, Intel quad CPU Q9450 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 27'' monitor, M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard, Bose Computer Music Monitor speakers, Sibelius Sounds Essentials, Sibelius Sounds, Garritan Personal Orchestra 3, Garritan Authorised Steinway.
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Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Laurence Payne - 21 Mar 10:31AM (edited 21 Mar 10:32AM)
I got a slightly different result. See attached
Attachment Capture.PNG.png (157K)
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Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Adrian Drover - 21 Mar 01:05PM
I just tried this on a double staff piano, Mark. I made an instrument change to celesta on the top staff and, sure enough, the lower staff still played back as piano while the top played celesta. I don't know why this is so as I looked at my playback preferences and "Use same slot for all staves of keyboard instruments" is checked. I do, however, use Yamaha XGM playback. Is it different when using Sib Sounds or Garritan?
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Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staff instrument to another
Posted by Mark Isaacs - 22 Mar 12:52AM
Some mysteries then, perhaps in how this situation interacts with differing playback devices. This is in terms of attempting different sounds on the two staffs of a Grand Staff instrument. My experience was different, unless I am mistaken in something.

But the fundamental point and content of this thread stands, which is simply to emphasise that when changing from one grand staff instrument to another, instrument changes need to be placed in both staves. On that, I think we can all agree.

--
A composer www.markisaacs.com
www.facebook.com/markisaacsmusic
Sibelius 6.2.0 build 88, Sibelius 5.2.5 build 37, Bob Zawalich plugins, Windows 32-bit Vista SP1, Intel quad CPU Q9450 2.66Ghz, 3GB RAM, 27'' monitor, M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard, Bose Computer Music Monitor speakers, Sibelius Sounds Essentials, Sibelius Sounds, Garritan Personal Orchestra 3, Garritan Authorised Steinway.
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Messages in this thread

Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand Staf... - Mark Isaacs, 21 Mar 12:48AM
     Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Adrian Drover, 21 Mar 08:21AM
         Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Mark Isaacs, 21 Mar 09:04AM
             Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Laurence Payne, 21 Mar 10:31AM
                 Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Adrian Drover, 21 Mar 01:05PM
                     Re: Sib. 6.2: Instrument Change from one Grand ... - Mark Isaacs, 22 Mar 12:52AM