sibelius 6 percussion sound help

Im currently working on a score that has many instrument changes in the percussion. The most recent instrument change I have used was moving two tom-tom parts to bells and crotales. However, the midi sounds do not play in the correct register for the bells and crotales for some reason. they will play from middle c and under, obviously this is no where near the correct register for the instrument.

Has anyone ever had a problem like this or know how I may be able to fix it?

any help is greatly appreciated

maybe you need to change the noteheads? select the notes and press alt+shift+(a number above the keys), i believe.

You will have to choose what is what you care more, the visual aspect of your score, or the sound, Sibelius is a notation software, designed to have the visual aspect as first priority, by "visual aspect" I mean what is going to be printed.

To make it sounds like you want in percussions, you have to design your staff type, you can create a new one or edit an existent, if you will use several notes within the same line, like short triangle, long triangle, muted etc, you can do two things:

In House Style - > Edit Instruments - > (choose your instrument type) -> Edit Staff Type

a)

Configure the staff type with different note heads, indicating the note corresponding the note head type, like A4 for Short Triangle, and x notehead, (for the Note, you may use "Choose Sound" and set the correct note, no matter if is named differently like "Low Conga", the General Midi order won't be the same of your library)

I won't be surprising if you set it all well, and still doesn't work, this is always a mess...

b)

Configure the staff type as "Pitched" (instead "UnPitched Percussion") then in Staff Type - > General edit the number of lines to 1 (or what you need), disable "Key Signatures" and perhaps "Initial Clef" too. Accept, close whatever...

Now you will have a line that responds to the note position like a C,C#,D,D# etc, and you will notice the different percussion sound. If you don't care about the visual aspect of the score, you write the needed notes for your needed sounds. If you do care about the visual, there's more job to do.

(Enable in View menu "Hidden Objects" )

In Voice 1 (blue) write the "visual" note, no matter if sounds wrong, the in Properties window, in Playback, disable the "1" (or more if repeating) so Sibelius know that note won't play anything, it will be only shown visually but won't sound.

In Voice 2 (green) write the "sounding" note, in its needed position, check the sound, and then seleect that note and use Ctrl+Shift+H to "HIDE IT", It won't be shown normally, and won't be printed, but it WILL SOUND.

If you give up and choose to work in a DAW with pianoroll like Cubase, it was a good call.

You just realize what a messy thing is this, that this thread was several days on 0 replies because nobody wanted to take the time to explain such problem....

SYS, you don't need to do all that hidden crap from years past. Sibelius 6 can fix that stuff. A little time with the Editing Instruments dialogs will do one wonders in getting correct sounds.

mmmm... well, it was the easier way for me, I turned all percussions lines into pitched ones, and Bingo, no need to create staff type for each one in Editing instruments...