This must be super simple but I can’t quite figure it out.
I’d like to create a single-line staff for a player for bass drum. But if I go the traditional way of adding a bass drum in Setup mode, it gets created as a regular 5-line staff.
I know I could create it as an instrument that traditionally gets played with a 1-line staff (e.g. triangle) but then the playback would sound like a triangle. If this is the best Dorico way of doing things, then how do I reassign its playback to a bass drum?
Layout options>Players>Percussion>One line staff presentation.
Take a look in the Players panel in Setup mode. Expand the card for the player holding the bass drum. If the instrument label is green, then the player is holding a kit; if it is blue, then it is holding a single instrument. Single instruments will always appear on a single line, while kits allow you to choose how each instrument should appear via the Players page of Layout Options.
@dspreadbury Forgive me if I’m missing something obvious. I’m now working on a player and stave called “Cymbals” and I’d like it to be single-line staff. But it’s blue, yet it shows up as a 5-line staff.
As a test, I added a new player/stave using Dorico’s default for “Marching Cymbal” and that’s blue too, but shows up as a single-line staff:
@MarcLarcher When I go to Layout options>Players>Percussion…, I don’t see a Percussion section, nor do I see any other options related to one-line staff presentation. Was this moved in a Dorico update?
(Note: if it helps any, the existing staves came in from a MusicXML import. So I’m trying to learn how to convert a track, like Cymbals, from a 5-line to a 1-line stave. Or, worst case, I can create a new player/stave then copy/paste the material over. But I’m trying to learn Dorico and figure out how it thinks, so it’d be helpful to understand this process.)
Cymbals is (by definition) plural. If one were to change the instrument to Suspended Cymbal, I think the desired one-line staff would appear.
Hi.
That is indeed interesting. Is your file an xml import? If you change the instrument (setup mode>player’s card>instrument sub menu > Change instrument…) to the same one (apparently) from the instrument picker, Dorico might behave correctly and recognize it as a percussion instrument. Then everything we’ve been suggesting will work.
