I’ve been bumping into some issues with percussion maps. This is the most egregious. I’ve got a nice hi-hat as part of one of the NI drum kits. It has quite a few articulations that aren’t anywhere in the Dorico set. I want to set up some playback techniques for those and then use various noteheads to make them happen. I don’t think there’s anything too unusual there. But this is very sensitive to the order in which you edit.
I created a new percussion map for the drum set, including the hi hat. I added entries in the percussion map as I inspected the keycap itself over in Kontakt. I added the keys, named them in the percussion map and added playback techniques as I went. For those places where there was no existing technique, I left the technique blank and made a note to myself to create the playback technique. Saved the percussion map, created the new playback techniques and then went back to the percussion map. I found those entries where I needed to add the technique. But when I selected the entry in the map, it appeared as blank in the little edit panel below, even though the note name, map name and instrument appeared above. If I add the technique in the editor anyway, it creates a new entry for that note in addition to the incomplete one. I can not clear that partial entry.
So I exported the map and took a look at the xml. As it turns out, the percussion map editor created an incomplete entry. There is an opening tag for but no closing tag. Dorico is making an incomplete XML file and that’s probably why I can’t clear that area. For those maps that don’t yet have a technique specified, it should look like this: or exclude the tag completely.
I’m attaching the exported library. Just look for the inadvertently-misspelled “Hi had closed” on 54. You’ll find several more examples in that file. I can probably hack the file to get through the current crisis, but that remains to be seen.
OK. But it gets more interesting. This first screen shot shows what I’ve been experiencing. You can see that I’ve selected an incomplete snare drum entry at F#1. The edit area is blank. It doesn’t contain the information from the selected area. My first assumption is that the information is present but a small bug doesn’t display it.
So I entered the technique in the field. This now appears (in the second screenshot) as a new entry (above the incomplete entry). I would have expected it simply to complete the entry, but it’s a new entry.
I still can’t clear that incomplete entry. So it looks like I’ve added a key switch alternative. There’s no way I can remove this zombie entry from the percussion map editor. If I export this file, then I can find the empty entry (with the tag I described in the initial post). I can correct it in a text editor, remove the percussion map in Dorico and import the percussion map with my correction. Everything is fine: the zombie entry is gone.
So I may have been incorrect about the opening tag, but this seems to be a clear indicator of what’s going on in Dorico.
OK. I have a workaround for the bug. But it is indeed a bug. Here’s how to drive it"
Percussion map NI Studio Druma (MC).doricolib is provided. Please note that I had to create a few new playback techniques.
Import the library and open in Dorico’s Percussion Map Editor
Look for the MIDI notes without playback techniques (for example on note 58)
Select in editor and press the Clear button. The selected area will move from Note 58 to Note 57, but the selected entry on the map is not deleted. It is not possible to edit this entry, either to clear it or complete it.
Now the workaround:
Open NI Studio Druma (MC).doricolib in Xcode or another text editor that can read XML.
Search for <techniqueIDs/> and you’ll see that this appears for all of the notes in the map that have no playback techniques assigned.
Delete all of the entries with this tag, save the file and re-import the map into Dorico. It’s cleaned up.
The issue of blocked PM entries occurring as you describe but also after other types of PM editing e.g of PM’S FOR user added percussion instruments has been described mutiple times in this forum.
Looks like the other solutions are close to what I found. Dorico can’t handle its own XML file when you leave an entry incomplete in the map. Too bad. Sometimes you want the entry without the technique as a placeholder to remind you it’s there. Then later you should be able to create the technique and finish the map–without having to bash the XML directly.
There’s some other really bizarre stuff in that editor when you add keyswitch alternatives. Editing the name of a new alternative may also edit the name of one of the other alternatives for the same MIDI note. For example, when you create the alternative, the new one will have “copy” appended to the name. If you start deleting the “copy” from the end of that line, then continue deleting from the right, the original name will start to be deleted as well. Hard to describe but it’s pretty odd. All in all, this editor doesn’t feel like it was written by the same engineer that wrote some of the others.
