Within Finale, I have used keyswitches successfully with the Garritan Jazz&BigBand library (using the Aria player) in order to control mute settings.  With Finale, the keyswitches are invoked automatically in response to text expressions.
 
Now I want to do the same thing in Sonar, and I believe I need to insert these keyswitches manually.  I have taken all my MIDI into a new Platinum project and set up all the routing for each track.  All the wind instruments are going through an Aria 16-channel instance, just as they do with Finale.
 
In perusing old threads here, It seems to me that keyswitches are simply MIDI notes that are out of the playable range of the instrument -- usually in the bottom octave.  The Garritan documentation says we have
 
open horn     0
straight mute     2     
cup mute     4     
harmon mute     5    
bucket mute     7
 
So I thought this should be as easy as insert a note event for F0 (= MIDI 5) in order to turn on the Harmon mute sound.  In Aria, I can see if any keyswitches have been recognized.  No keyswitches are ever triggering.  I have selected an instrument that supports keyswitches, and if I force the keyswitch manually in Aria, the sound changes as expected.
 
I feel like I am missing something really basic about keyswitches.  Can somebody confirm that this should simply be Note-on commands of C0, D0, E0, F0, and G0 for open, straight, cup, harmon, and bucket respectively?
 
Also in the event viewer, to the right of the data column that says "Data", there are two additional columns, which I assume are velocity and duration.  I notice that the second event for this instrument (trumpet) is Note C0.  I believe Finale inserted that at the beginning to clear any previous keyswitch settings.  If I change that to any of the other values, it makes no difference.
 
Any ideas?
 
 

I had a similar problem with Vienna Instruments. I discovered that the octave they were using was not the octave that worked for me (why I have no idea). When I tried the nest octave or two up or down, I found that it worked. I don't use keyswitching with Garritan, but it may be a similar issue.

michael diemer
I had a similar problem with Vienna Instruments. I discovered that the octave they were using was not the octave that worked for me (why I have no idea). When I tried the nest octave or two up or down, I found that it worked. I don't use keyswitching with Garritan, but it may be a similar issue.

Yes.  It may be something like this.  The Garritan package provides two sets of instruments.  They seem to be identical, but one is called "Notation" and the other is called "Standard".  I use the "Notation ones" under Finale -- because -- well, because it is a notation program??  I initially set up Aria under Sonar to use the "Standard" ones, and that did not work.  However, when I switched these to "Notation" the keyswitches now do work using C0, D0, etc.  I have no idea what the "Standard" files are for.  Supposedly they support keyswitches, but that did not work. 
 
So I am good.  Unfortunately Finale did not add the mute keyswitches to the MIDI, so I will have to insert them manually, but I can do that.
 
Thanks.

SONAR provides an adjustment "Base Octave for Pitches" in Preferences > Customization > Display

Ah, that is probably why I don't use keyswitching in Garritan - I use the standard patches, because I use Garritan in Sonar, not a notation program. So they didn't work right. well, we both learned something!

I use the Garritan libraries all the time in Sonar, but rarely in Finale.
 
I place a note in PRV (as well as some CC messages) for the keyswitches where I want the articulation. I usually make it a whole note so that it's easy to spot. Sometimes I forget which octave the keyswitches are in, so I open up the piano roll view and then click on the keyboard in various octaves until I find the right one, then place the keyswitch.
 
Remember that keyswitches aren't chased like CC's are, so if you change articulations a lot you should reset to a known state or rewind to a point where a keyswitch is placed to set the articulation.