With Finale, we often receive inquiries about “no sound from a specific instrument.” This is often due to three reasons:
(1) Problem caused by volume variations in GIFF
If the “no sound” instrument is a percussion instrument, it is most likely due to variations in the volume of the Garritan Instruments for Finale (GIFF) sample sound source that comes with Finale.
Among the GIFF percussion instruments, there are some instruments whose sound is extremely low. In reality, the sound is coming out, but even if you turn the mixer's volume to the maximum, it is buried in the other instruments and cannot be heard, so people say it doesn’t play.
In this case, try switching to SmartMusic SoftSynth only for the relevant instruments. Of course, the tone will change, but the difference in percussion tone between the sample sound source and the MIDI sound source is relatively small, so I think this is a practical solution.
Based on previous inquiries from Finale Technical Support, it appears that the following instruments fall under this category:
Triangle, claves, ratchet, castanet, sleigh bells, shaker, clapper, cowbell, agogo bell
(A longstanding low volume problem of the drum set “Fusion Drum Kit” has been improved in Finale v27 released in 2021.)
(2) Problems caused by installation failure
If you cannot hear the sound of a specific instrument other than percussion, try reinstalling GIFF.
When installing GIFF, a large number of sound source files are installed individually, so installation errors may occur on very rare occasions.
From our experience, this can basically be resolved by reinstalling GIFF. There is no need to uninstall the old GIFF; you can simply overwrite and reinstall it.
(3) Problems caused by Finale bugs
In Finale v26 and v27, there is a bug where only instruments assigned to channel 1 or 2 of bank 1 have a small sound when inputting notes, but this can be resolved by playing back once.
Specifically, there are many cases where the problem lies with the instrument placed at the top of the score, such as when you cannot hear the sound of a piccolo or flute in an orchestra, or when you cannot hear the sound of a violin in a string quartet.
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If the problem still remains after checking all of the above, go to the Window menu and open Score Manager or mixer, and make sure that the specific instrument is not muted.
In Finale, in addition to the mixer, you can also mute/solo individual instruments in the Score Manager, so if your hand slipped while operating the Score Manager and you accidentally muted something, it could be hard to notice later on.
(This may seem like a basic mistake, but there have been cases in the past where this was actually the cause.)