Hello, I am sure this has been discussed already, still I am stuck, trying to write a combined part for a player, who plays timpani and in between some triangle, tambourine and cymbal. To make the life of that musician enjoyable, I am turning a handwritten part into something easier to read.
I used the Dorico procedure and get a result like this:
For my eyes this makes it look unnecessarily complicated, or is this what percussion players expect to see nowadays?
If we compare this with the source:
it looks more pleasant, as all instruments use a five line stave. Trying to make Dorico display these instruments on a five line stave are not successful from my side. Do I first have to build a tailored percussion kit?
There is another problem, in the main score at the beginning of each movement I only get the label of the instrument which the player will play first. What would be the best approach to solve this? Thank you for help.
In the many years I have been involved with music, I agree the 5-line staff all the way through looks better. And I agree with Mark, decades ago it was so much harder to move to 1-line staves. And the times that I did see it (which was rare), it always looked terrible (poor engraving).
With Dorico, many of the issues from decades ago are not problems anymore. The confusion of going from 5-line to 1-line is mostly gone. However, I personally like the look of 5-line staff more, just because it is so familiar to me.
With that said, I think your new part looks great and is very clear to understand. I agree with Mark’s assessment of more whitespace. Perhaps you might want to change note heads, such as the triangle being the triangle shaped note head.
If you are using Dorico 4, there is a way to change instrument to the player card name. That might be a way to fix your naming issue.
