Creating Instrument Definition from Percussion Kit seems to have ID disambiguation issues

[VV1]

I’ve been trying to make a new instrument from Percussion Kits and keep running into problems with ID. The names keep reverting to other names that are not a part of the kit.
In this particular instance, I just made this kit for the third time from its constituent instruments- so a brand new percussion kit.
When opening the instrument definition editor, the name shows up as “Percussion (1 line kit)”. When I copy it to make a new name, it tells me its name in the instrument picker is “Percussion (1 line kit) Tko. 12”, Tko., 13", Tko. 15"…".

This name is based on a kit I made earlier consisting of Taikos.
But the current kit I just made and am trying to define has nothing to do with that kit. It was in no part copied from that kit. It is a completely different kit. None of the instruments inside the current kit are shared with that kit, and as I just said, the current kit was just combined from scratch.
I keep getting problems like this when trying to edit instrument definitions from kits, and it seems like Dorico keeps changing the name of the kit on its own, most of the time reverting to “Drum Set” when that is not the name that I chose.

[VV1]

Then I go and rename the instrument and Dorico decides to make a copy of it in the list and in the instrument setup in my score:

Why would it do that just from renaming the instrument?

I added the suffix “name in instrument picker” specifically to disambiguate it from any others, and as you can see in the list just above it, it made a copy of that specific name.

[VV1]

So then I selected the three dots on the instrument kit labelled “Drum Kit SD3 v2 2” and clicked “delete instrument”.
Well, that kept both instruments, but deleted my test notation, which would have been linked to “Drum Kit SD3 v2 1” as it was obviously the one that was already in the score; which then begs the question why Dorico would, not only duplicate it in the first place, but why it would label the first one on the list as “2”. I did not reorder them.

[VV1]

What is all this mess?

[DanielMuzMurray]

I’ve had this exact experience recently - I almost posted about it. I wanted to create an “Orchestral Snare” in addition to the Snare Drum that appears in a Drum Set. It kept renaming my new one “Snare Drum”. If I went to load my new instrument, nothing would happen. It was as though Snare Drum is “default” and isn’t possible to use to duplicate from.

Have you experimented with creating a new Instrument Family to assign your new, duplicated Instrument? Also, have you experimented with modifying existing Instruments that you don’t use e.g. some random world instrument that you’ll “never” use.

I’m sorry to say that I can’t remember exactly what steps I actually took to find a solution. It certainly wasn’t easy.

[DanielMuzMurray]

@VV1,

I just recalled that I think you need to save your newly duplicated instrument as (User) Default by clicking the star icon in the Edit Instruments dialog.

[Christian_R]

I may be wrong, but this problem seems to be related to this recently discussed topic.

[VV1]

Thanks guys but I was already aware of the white star and have posted about it. I had an occasion recently where I made an instrument, white-starred it and it did not show up in any other projects.

So, my kit here is white-starred (and every instrument inside it is white starred) and here is what happens if I try to add one to the project:

It treats the kit as a folder with 5 duplicate kits inside it! Where did they come from?

When I select one of those instruments it gives me-
“Drum Set” which I mentioned before is some kind of default name it keeps replacing my custom names with.

Not quite the way I saved it.

[VV1]

@DanielMuzMurray

Have you experimented with creating a new Instrument Family to assign your new, duplicated Instrument? Also, have you experimented with modifying existing Instruments that you don’t use e.g. some random world instrument that you’ll “never” use.

I just try to copy whatever is currently closest to the new instrument I am trying to define. It has worked numerous times, but the percussion kits seem to cause it issues.

[dspreadbury]

It certainly looks like Dorico is getting confused about which kit you’re editing in the instrument editor.

Percussion kits are handled specially in the instrument editor because, unlike pitched and fretted instruments, you cannot edit the contents of the kit there once it exists in the project itself. So you will see an entry in the list that says (in score), and where you cannot edit much beyond its name; but you can also select an otherwise identical item in the list that represents the kit in the project library, and that one can be fully edited.

(The reason for this difference is boring and technical, and reflects some intial implementation decisions made for instruments way back in the development of Dorico 1.x that with retrospect have turned out to be suboptimal.)

It is also the case that the name of a newly-created instrument as it appears in the left-hand list in the instrument editor can change when the editor is closed and reopened. That’s because of the way the name is built up from the data in the library, and until the instrument has been saved to the library (which happens when you confirm the dialog), the data isn’t there.

None of this is ideal, and had we started out building the instrument editor at the same time we introduced the concept of instruments in the software, we would have been able to avoid some of these pitfalls, but at this point the work required to fundamentally rethink this is somewhat impractical, and could also have an impact on the hundreds of thousands of existing projects that have already been created.

So what should you actually do about this? If you want me to take a look at the project that has a bunch of duplicated kits in it, I can take a look and see if the data allows me to tell where they came from, though I’m not sure I’ll be able to come up with a good explanation.

Otherwise, my recommendation would be to confirm the instrument editor dialog as soon as possible after you have created your new percussion kit. Then reopen the dialog, and continue editing it at that point. Try to do as much as possible of the setup of the kit before you create it in the project itself. Before you create the kit in the project and assign it to a player, consider making a copy of the project and working out the kinks there, then return to the project in which you first created the kit to make any corrections, and finally save it to your user library from there.

[VV1]

@dspreadbury

Otherwise, my recommendation would be to confirm the instrument editor dialog as soon as possible after you have created your new percussion kit. Then reopen the dialog, and continue editing it at that point. Try to do as much as possible of the setup of the kit before you create it in the project itself. Before you create the kit in the project and assign it to a player, consider making a copy of the project and working out the kinks there, then return to the project in which you first created the kit to make any corrections, and finally save it to your user library from there.

I’ve done all of that. Multiple times.
I tried rebuilding the kit yet again, and it just suffers from the same problems.
With the kit edited and arranged all before touching the “Edit Instrument Definition” page, when I click and enter that page, it still calls my instrument “Percussion (1 line kit) Tko. 12” Tko 13"…" referring to a completely different kit that is not in the project, and was in no way used to construct the SD3 kit here. No part of the Taikos were used or copied to make this kit or any of its instruments.

While I was able to save the instrument definition with a new name and have it load in a new project from the instrument picker, it erases all of the playing techniques I made for the cymbals.

Original:

Loaded from instrument picker in new project:

The techniques seem to get lost during the copy process in the instrument picker, as when I view the playing techniques there, they are missing.

Now, if I just save the percussion kit and try to load that into a player on a new project, Dorico erases both the name of the kit (reverting to “Drum Set”) and it erases my cymbals from the kit itself:

So I currently have no way of loading this kit properly into new projects.

[dspreadbury]

@VV1

With the kit edited and arranged all before touching the “Edit Instrument Definition” page

So do I understand, then, that to start this process, you are adding a player to an empty project, assigning a drum kit to that player, editing the kit, then when you’re happy with it, you’re going to Library > Instruments to save it to your user library?

I would suggest instead starting from Library > Instruments and designing the kit from scratch there. This edits the library directly, rather than migrating data from the concrete instruments held by the player into the library. In theory there ought to be no difference, but I wonder whether there is something subtle going on that prevents that from working as it should.

You can edit the instruments in the kit, their placement in the kit, and their playing techniques all directly in Library > Instruments before ever assigning that kit to a player in the project.

[VV1]

More of the same problems:

Simple percussion kit made from finger cymbals, saved the kit, then saved into new instrument definition “Finger Cymbals (Synchron)” yields this in new project:

A suffix “(1)” has been appended to the instrument by Dorico under library → instrument:

In the instrument picker, it appears with “Default”, “1”, “2” and “3”:

And here is how they appear when added to the setup:

Dorico is associating instrument and kit names with unrelated instruments/kits.

[VV1]

Then I created a percussion kit from a Gong.
Just a 1-line percussion.
I get this nonsense in the instrument picker:

I have not been editing any other gongs.
Where did that other detritus come from?
Why do they have semi-random numbers?
What is this junk?

[Christian_R]

@VV1

And here is how they appear when added to the setup:

Hi @VV1
Be aware that the three different views of percussion kits can have different independent positions from one another. Depending on how you positioned (moved) the instruments at the moment of their creation or after, in each of the three views, they will be numbered accordingly in the staves labels:

screenshots:

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I tried the method suggested here and here by @dspreadbury and all is clean and works as expected.

Hear a Dorico file with the two players holding the two kits created from the menu Library/Intruments beforehand. When loading the instruments in a player the instrument picker doesn’t show any extra/unwanted instruments. I suggest you to follow the kind invitation to upload a project, so that Daniel can look into it (you may have many extra “orphan” instruments, created in your experimentations, that are appearing):

Dorico file example:
custom kits with saved instruments kits.dorico (567.3 KB)

Result:

[VV1]

@Christian_R

Be aware that the three different views of percussion kits can have different independent positions from one another. Depending on how you positioned (moved) the instruments at the moment of their creation or after, in each of the three views, they will be numbered accordingly in the staves labels:

This is not what I was referring to (the numbered ordering).
I was referring to the fact that selecting the 4 different versions of “Finger Cymbals” from the instrument picker created “Drum Set”, “Finger Cymbals”, “Drum Kit SD3 v2” and “Taikos”.

[VV1]

@Christian_R

I tried the method suggested by @dspreadbury and all is clean and works as expected.

Not helpful when dealing with kits that are already made the other way (by constructing them on the player in the setup).

[dspreadbury]

If you want to attach a project here that shows unexpected duplicates in the instrument picker, I can take a look to see where they might be coming from. But as already stated earlier in this thread, if you can arrange your workflow such that you start by creating the percussion kit definition in the instrument editor rather than creating a concrete percussion kit held by an instrument in the project, you should find that things go more smoothly.

[witold]

Hi Daniel,
I have recently been working a lot on creating new percussion maps (Damage2, EZDrummer and enhancements of Dorico existing instruments to accommodate VSL libs), kits and instruments, all works perfectly, what makes me afraid of is eventually loosing it, should something bad happen. Maps and kits I have exported and have copies, what makes me worry is the instruments I have created (16 for EZDrummer, 18 for Damage 2 and 12 for VSL). Is there any chance to know where they are stored, so I could make backup copies, like I did with maps and kits?
I will be very grateful for your help here.
Witold

[witold]

OK, I found it. The custom-defined instruments are stored in userlibrary.xml file located on Mac in users/your user name/Library/Application Support/Steinberg/Dorico 5