Help with Concert and Marching Band 2

[TheAttidude]

Hi there!

Well, I'm a newbie with midi mockups and Garritan Concert and Marching Band 2 is the first thing I ordered beside Finale. I wrote something for a brass orchestra, so I decided to buy COMB2. Today it arrived and honestly I'm a bit overchallenged, because I tried to get into it and for now the piece sounded better with the midi-sounds^^
So are their any advices or tutorials especially for CAMB2, because I tried to regulate a lot, but I'm unable to figure this out.^^

Greetings.

[Jeff Turner]

The first thing you should do is read the manual to understand the terminology and what controllers are used.

In Finale, make sure you:
use the notation samples
name your staves correctly
load KS patches when necessary
adjust levels in the mixer
adjust ambience reverb to more dry, less wet
use expressions with the correct playback info
make sure human playback is using the Garritan preferences
put lots of markings in your score: dynamics, articulations, slurs, hairpins

[TheAttidude]

Thank for your answer!
The thing with the notation samples helped me a lot, because I was'nt able to figure out, what's the difference between these and the "normal".
Could you please just tell me what these KS patches are?
And how is it possible to fix the problem with the volume of each instrument, because everything is too quiet and adjusting the mod-level can't be saved.

[Haydn]

Make sure you are loading the Notation instruments which are designed to work with notation programs.

Jim

[reberclark]

T
Could you please just tell me what these KS patches are?
And how is it possible to fix the problem with the volume of each instrument, because everything is too quiet and adjusting the mod-level can't be saved.

KS means "KeySwitched" and indicates some keys low down on the keyboard that modify the sound (from a mute to open, from solo to ensemble (in COMB) etc.) It's in the manual.

If you are using SONAR please uncheck "Zero controllers when playback stops" and your levels will remain. Otherwise you have to place a small mod wheel controller at the head of each track.

[TheAttidude]

Thank you for the answers again! Really helped a lot.
Sounds much better meanwhile.
I often read something about dry- and wetlevels.
I could't find something like that 'til now...^^

[TheAttidude]

And one important question I tried to answer on my own 'til yet (didn't work^^)
is why the drums doesn't work. I wrote them down with the General Midi Map and gave this track the n-VDL General Midi Set. I can see that it should work, because their are signals in the mixer, but when I play the score there are just a few notes of the drum played. So I can only hear fragments.. =/