The Sibelius Forum

Hello
I have the latest version of Sibelius. I am scoring a piece for two synths for an pit of an opera. I am using "Change of Instrument" to indicate when a play will change his/her synth during a live performance. I have zero issues with Sibelius playback when I change the instrument to any sound EXCEPT Electric guitar.
On the first playback it will play and if I edit any of the music, or even click on a notehead, playback STOPS. All I hear in the playback is the finger slides of the guitar, zero pitch.

Measure 5. The Left hand of keyboard one plays the sound without issue. When I switched the righthand to the SAME sound. It worked for the first time. The moment I changed measure 10 to a piano sound, the ENTIRE right hand stopped playing. The Left hand plays fine.
I tried uploading a .sib file and this forum wound't let me. I'd be happy to send it so one of you can mess with the Left Hand to see if you can recreate the problem or mess with the right hand to see if you can fix the problem.

Thank you for helping me
Evan

If you zip the file, you can upload it then.

Here it is uploaded as a zip file

It will typically work on first playing. If there is a repeat, it will stop working. Of if you click on it or change instruments, it will stop working.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Post a 7.5 version, and I'll have a look. Might be a Play On Pass problem.

Here it is as 7.5 --thanks!!

OK. Well, I think that this might just be the way Sibelius is. Remember that Sibelius is primarily for producing scores, not playback. So....print your music and hand it to your players and go for it.
If you want playback, that's going to mean doing things a little differently. Why? For one thing, electric guitar. Some sounds just don't work right. There is no vibrato on the solo violin patch. Electric guitar and a few others don't respond to written dynamics. And, from your example, it seems that electric guitar messes up instrument changes. The more you work with Sibelius, the more you will find that, in some cases, you will need two scores. One for playback and one for printing out to give real players. For your piece, here are my suggestions if you want to give a recording to your players.
1. Create an Electric Guitar staff above the piano staff. Copy the top electric guitar staff into this new staff. Delete guitar music from the piano staff, and the piano music from the new guitar staff. You might not have to do that but I would. Use the faders in the mixer to pull down the guitar volume. When I look at the mixer for your piece, I see inconsistent labeling of channels. This makes me think that there is a problem with the way Sibelius handles instrument changes
2. Volume balance in drum kits is not good. I create three instances of the same kit. One for the high hat. One for the snare and toms. One for the kick. This way you can control the playback volume. Also, if you want open and closed hi hat you can put open and closed symbols over the notes, selectable from the on screen keypad. You might be able to do some of this with mic volume.
3. In my Sibelius, I can hardly hear your trumpets. You might need to create separate trumpet staves, also.

I know this all might not seem like an attractive alternative at this point. But it might help in the future to know what you are up against.

No software is perfect, and Sibelius has it's share of oddities.

Good luck.