Create a new empty project, add a single player with unpitched perucussion. I am going to use hi-hat as an example.
Go to write mode, select keyboard, play F#2 - it will trigger HH. Play other keys and you will hear general midi percussion, no surprise there. Now go to piano roll editor and draw a note anyhwere - notice whatever note you draw, it sounds like HH. Ummm… that’s odd?
Now go to edit mode and select pads, create a couple of notes. Go to piano roll - they are B4 notes. Why??? If you play B4 on the keyboard, it’s certainly not HH sound.
However, play your creation, and you will hear HH.
Unless of course you chose AU3 other than Microsonic. Then all falls apart.
Add another player with Kick drum, observe the notes are also recorded as B4. And worse, use open HH or pedal - all are B4
Why is Dorico not using GM notes for unpitched percussion?? This makes it impossible to use any 3rd party instruments. Seems like such an odd bug.
Edit: hmm… there seems to be more magic behind the scenes. Exported midi is ok and even GM playback works in another project. Maybe magic just got corrupted on the project i was working on?
Edit2: indeed, on the corrupted project midi is exported as B4!
After spending some more time on this, it’s definitely a bug. Unpitched percussion only works as long as you use it with Microsonic.
If you create a player (e.g. snare), go to play mode to assign GM AU3 (i was using DigiStix2), and then to write mode, it doesnt work at all.
Interestingly, if younthen switch to microsonic, it’s wrong there to and the player is unusable from that point on (and you cant even delete it due to the hidden dialog bug).
I have a feeling that you cannot satisfactorily solve this at present in the shipping iPad version – I only have the development build on my iPad, where it’s possible to solve, so if the information I’m about to give you doesn’t match the version you’re using, I’m sorry – but hopefully you don’t have long to wait before we are able to release the new iPad update which will make this possible.
The problem is that when you are using a custom instrument, Dorico doesn’t know what percussion map it should use, or indeed that it should use a percussion map at all. In the track inspector in Play mode, open the Routing section and immediately below the plug-in selector, you should see a cog button: click this to open the Endpoint Setup dialog. Under Percussion map, choose e.g. General MIDI, and that should set things straight.
