Bonehead's basic guide to custom drum notation linked to custom playback sounds

Dorico
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(Originally this post was a request for step-by-step instructions for this complicated, confusing process. Although one person offered useful tips I didn’t get the detailed help I’d hoped for–so I worked out those details through painful trying and testing. I’m not sure I have all this right, but I’m posting the procedure I have so far for reference, and in case it helps anyone else, and for any corrections someone may wish to offer.)

Customizing percussion notation and playback

These steps are “simplified” in that they do not cover playing techniques and expression maps. They also assume you’re only setting up one instrument and playback sound but the same instructions apply in essence if you’re setting up multiple such combinations.

Dorico’s terminology is confusing. The term Instrument, which I’m capitalizing in these steps, refers to Dorico’s specification for the instrument in the Library->Instruments box—as distinct from the instrument in its abstract sense, as a concept or platonic ideal.

In the Library->Instruments box each instrument has an official title in the Name in Instrument picker field. I’m referring to that title as the Instrument’s designation since an Instrument also has (separate) “names” labelled as such in the Edit Percussion Kit and Percussion Maps boxes. So in these steps I use designation to mean the Instrument’s official, er, name. In these steps, you choose Instruments for your Percussion Kits and in your Percussion Maps by designation, not by “name.” (Designation is my term, not Dorico’s).

  1. Choose or create a Dorico Instrument in the Unpitched Percussion Instrument Family. Go to Library➞Edit Instruments and either:

    • Choose an existing unpitched percussion Instrument from the list; or

    • Make a new one (you have to start by copying an existing one).

    Either way, you can modify the Instrument’s details in the same box but I’m not covering that here.

  2. To define the Instrument’s appearance and playback function(s) in notation, go to the Setup tab.

    1. In the list of Players (as bars) on the left, click on the Player corresponding to the staff where the instrument’s notation will reside. Expand the Player if necessary so you can see Dorico’s internal name for it. Click the three little dots by the that name and choose Edit Percussion Kit.

    2. In the Edit Percussion Kit box, add your instrument (unless it’s already there). The “add” button isn’t labeled as such, it’s the small one with the plus sign. Click it to show the list of Instruments (the Instrument Picker). Find the Instrument by its designation, click it, and click Ok.

    3. The Instrument you added appears on the 5-line percussion staff. Move it where you want it on the staff.

    4. Optionally, specify a notehead (Edit Noteheads button), etc.

  3. To set up playback for the Instrument, go to the Play tab and click on the Player that has the Instrument (step 2 above) in the list of colored bars towards the left.

  4. Find and assign your sound to the player:

    1. Click the Track Inspector tab towards the top of the far left column.

    2. Just beneath that, under Routing, pick a VST from the dropdown. Just below that dropdown, pick a MIDI channel for it and remember that. Then open the VST for sound selection by clicking the Edit button, the one that looks like a slanty “e” in that same row off to the far right.

      What happens next depends on the VST — each has its own user interface. but:

    3. Using the VST’s interface, pick a drum kit or other set of sounds from those offered by the VST. Preview the VST sounds however the VST lets you do that (typically a virtual keyboard or set of virtual drum pads).

    4. Repeat steps b and c until you find the right sound.

    5. Once you find your sound, identify its MIDI note number and write that down, or memorize it.

    6. Don’t change the kit/sound set or VST now that you’ve got your sound. If you can figure out how, set the VST’s MIDI channel to match the one you selected in step b above. I can’t figure out how to set the MIDI channel for Groove Agent SE.

  5. Connect the Instrument to the sound using a Percussion Map. You can do that while you’re still in the Play tab, though you can also access Percussion Maps from any part of Dorico via Library->Percussion Maps.

    1. Go to the Perc. map row below the VST selector and click the button with the box and upward pointing arrow, Edit Percussion Map.

    2. In the Percussion Maps box, create or edit the percussion map you’ll use to link the Instrument to the playback sound. If you change an existing percussion map the changed map will apply to all your music/scores/files that use that map, I think, so it will generally be best to create new map. Do that by clicking either of the two little plus-sign buttons under the list of maps on the left. The second button makes a copy of the currently-selected map so you don’t have to start from scratch. Modify the map’s name at the top of the main part of the box.

    3. Key step: Find and click on the row for your sound’s MIDI note number (step 4.5 above) in the map. In the list in the middle labelled (inconsistently) Drum Kit Note Map, look in the MIDI Note column, scrolling as necessary. If the note number doesn’t show up, click Show all below the list at the left. (Ignore the Name and Instrument fields for now—just be aware that if there’s already an Instrument assigned to that MIDI note number, you’re going to be replacing it in the map. It can still be used in notation, but it won’t play back with this map.)

    4. With the correct MIDI note selected, choose your Instrument in the Instrument field just below the list to the right, by clicking the three little dots there. Select the Instrument by designation from the pop-up list/picker and ok your selection. Back in the main box, add or edit name to the Name field—just understand that the name you enter there has nothing to do with connecting up the Instrument in notation with the playback sound. Select Natural in the list for the Techniques field, unless you have a better idea.

      Crucial: Click Apply before you click on/select anything else in the box. Your changes will be lost without warning if you don’t.

    5. OK the Percussion Maps box.

Done, except that you may want to test the notation and its playback to confirm it’s all working as you intend before you get started writing music.

NOTES (redundant)

Dorico lets you assign any individual percussion Instrument to any arbitrary location and notehead on any 5-line percussion staff. You can then assign any sound in any VST to that Instrument for playback.

A simple but crucial point that you might miss at first is that an “Instrument” in this context means a Dorico Instrument, a uniquely-named entry in Dorico’s library of instruments, accessible at Library➞Edit Instruments. "

To make the connection between the staff notation and playback sound, the essential step is to select the same Instrument by name in both the Edit Percussion Kit and Percussion Map dialogs. Both of these dialogs let you assign arbitrary display names to any chosen Instrument, but it’s the Instrument you choose, not it’s display name, that matters.

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I went through this on my first and second day of the Dorico trial period (I’m on day 3). This was a beast of an issue to tackle after only using the program for a few hours. Anyhow, I sorted it out with the good help of others on the forum. Once you have your kit set up (you mentioned that you already know how to do that), go to play mode (play mode or play view? – I’ve only been using the program for 3 days and don’t have the lingo down yet). In a folder, you’ll see each track of your percussion kit. Go to each part of the kit and add it’s own instance of groove agent (don’t add the same instance of groove agent to each part of kit. Go to vst and midi tab and add groove agents there). Now you have to make your own percussion map. You want E3 to be snare brush swirl? In the percussion map you are making, go to E3 and simply put the same of the instrument there (or E3 2, bacause the octave might be off). So now it should work. But it rarely does. That’s be because when you assigned the instrument to E3 or E3 plus octave, you might have assigned a variant of the instrument to that note. For example, say the instrument in dorico you are assigning is a floor tom. Well, there are different instances of a floor tom, and you have to remember which one you used in your instrument setup. You must know the exact individual instruments that made up your kit.

I think Dorico folks could streamline this process. It’s not intuitive – it’s clumsy. I get maybe why they made some of the choices, but it needs to be reworked. For example, for me to make a working instance of a Djembe, I never added any instrument that said “djembe” when I was making my kit. I added different instruments that would only have one variant. So for “slap tone”, I added jawbone instrument. That was simply because it was easier to keep track of in percussion maps. There’s only one jawbone, so when I add that in percussion maps, I know I’m getting the right one. And then I mapped jawbone to the the sound I wanted in groove agent. Then I edited the name from jawbone to slap.

I hope this helps. I’m not great at explaining it yet as this is my 3rd day with the program. In any case, even though I completely understand how to do percussion maps (and expression maps) in Dorico, I still think the developers need to refine it. But other than that, Dorico is so much fun to work with! WAY WAY easier than I had expected.

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Thanks very much for these pointers, @MatthewJohn . I’ve made some progress and I think I’m ready to write up the set of tested steps in the bonehead style that I was asking for. I’ll post these here.

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