JABB & Finale Jazz Bass 2 pizz. to arco

[Roger Király]

Can anybody tell me how to insert arco notes into a pizz. bass part? My question applies to score notation/playback only, not "live performance" with my MIDI keyboard. I'm using the upright bass 2 (Chuck Israels). I tried to follow the instructions for keyswitching and "dumps" in the Finale manual, but they seem to apply only to GPO, not JABB. Thanks!

[Richard N.]

Roger,

Keyswitching doesn't work, because the basses are not keyswitched instruments.

There are two ways to achieve what you want - both require Upright Bass 2 and Upright Bass 2 Arco to be loaded into the Kontakt player.

The easiest way is to set up your score using the Setup Wizard and have two staffs for the bass - one pizz., one arco. However, I am guessing that you already have the score in progress so this may not suit your case.

With an existing score, with the pizz. bass already loaded and working OK, you have to load the arco bass into a free kontakt player slot, then you can either:

1. Create a new staff and use the instrument list to assign the new staff to the newly loaded arco bass kontakt slot.

or a slightly more elegant solution...

2. Use the instrument list to assign layer 1 of your existing pizz. bass staff to the pizz. bass Kontakt slot, and assign layer 2 of the same staff to the newly loaded arco bass kontakt slot. Then make sure your pizz. notes are in layer 1 and your arco notes are in layer 2.

If you are using HP for playback, then you will need to put the appropriate pizz. and arco markings in your score to ensure that HP uses velocity for the pizz volume, and modulation for the arco volume - this should work, but I haven't tried it myself (the HP bit I mean.. ...the layers bit will work!).

EDIT: Method 1. works fine, but the HP dynamics in method 2. don;t seem to work, even with the arco marking in place.

Good luck - and please report back with your success, failure, or any other queries.

Cheers :)

[Roger Király]

Thanks for the quick reply to my inquiry! I'm obviously doing something wrong since I'm still not getting the correct results.

Let me delineate what I've done and perhaps you will be kind enough to correct my mistakes! :)

The score I'm working with is a musical example for a textbook I'm writing. This example is simple in terms of the instruments used (the music is a whole other deal!) It's only for vibes and bass.

1) I'm using GPO for the vibes, so the GPO Kontakt player has only one slot loaded.

2) I'm using JABB for the bass part. The first slot of the JABB Kontakt player is loaded with Upright Bass 2.

Here's what I did, with a singular lack of success!:

1) I opened up the JABB Kontakt player and loaded the Upright Bass 2 Arco into the second slot (next to the pizz. bass.) I moved the Kontakt player's Mod wheel up to increase the volume of the arco bass.

2) I clicked on the Staff icon of Finale and selected New Staves (with Setup Wizard).

3) I selected Upright Bass 2 Arco and clicked Finish.

4) The score now has a staff for each bass.

5) Arco bass doesn't play.

6) When I check Finale's Instrument List, staff three has Vibraphone listed.:confused:

I screwed around with Finale's instrument list (changing staff three to 44 for contrabass and so on) but still no arco bass.

Without a doubt, I'm missing something obvious here---not the first or the last time that'll happen!

I hope I'm not going to run into the same difficulties when I want to have a trumpet part go from open to muted or have a sax part with a bass clarinet double!

Roger

[Richard N.]

Roger,

After creating the arco staff with the wizard, open the instrument list and select "new instrument" where it currently says "vibes" on the arco staff details.

Then you can set the arco staff to playback on the correct channel (pizz channel + 1).

To make sure that you hear something on playback - add an arco expression to the arco staff, and insert some dynamics.

[Roger Király]

Nope; still doesn't work. I give up. It's too much of a hassle and takes too much time away from actually writing MUSIC. I really think the Finale and Garritan people have hyped up the supposed "integration" of their software. I also find it interesting that Finale tells me to contact Garritan for advice and Garritan tells me to contact Finale.

[Richard N.]

Roger,

Can you post the Finale file and I'll take a look at it tonight.

If you prefer to email it, let me know and I'll pm you my email address.