Crash Cymbal in Drum Kit adds unneeded rests

I have a part for drum kit and when I add a crash cymbal to it Dorico automatically fills all the succeeding bars with whole bar rests. I tried using the “ends voice” option but that doesn’t seem to work and when I delete the rest it deletes all the other notes in that bar. I have also tried hiding the rests by changing their colour but that doesn’t work either.

I have attached a screenshot. Is there a way to remove these rests?

By the way I haven’t upgraded to Dorico 3 yet. Still on 2.2. (Mac)

You can’t directly remove rests in percussion kits, I’m afraid. If you have ‘Rests at start and end of voices in five-line staff presentation’ set to ‘Pad voice with rests’ on the Percussion page of Notation Options you might find it better if you set this to ‘Do not pad voice with rests’.

The other option is to select the crash cymbal and put it in the same down-stem voice as the other instruments in the Edit Percussion Kit dialog.

One final option is to select the note in the crash cymbal and do Edit > Percussion > Change Voice > Extra Up-stem Voice, which will put it into the special “emergency” voice that is not padded with rests.

Thanks for the reply. I tried those options and changing the crash cymbal to an extra up-stem voice was the only thing that worked, however, I now have the same issue with the ride cymbal and none of those options seem to work for that. In the end I just decided to set all drums and cymbals to the same voice in the notation options.


As a drummer I would say the best result (most easy to read) you get with the default setting for de drumset. You see very quick the right hand is playing mostly dotted quarters.See attachment.

Yes, that does look easier to read. For some reason that’s wasn’t the default setting for me. Maybe because it was a musicxml import from finale. I’ll redo it with the default settings. Thanks for that.

[UPDATE]
I changed it according to your suggestion and it’s perfect now. Thank you.