Dorico not playing percussion sounds

You can’t really approach using unpitched percussion in Dorico in the way you might in a sequencer, because there’s the added abstraction of needing to set up the mapping between the way the note appears in the score (either on a single line, or in a grid, or in a specific place on a five-line staff) and the MIDI note that’s required to produce the appropriate sound in the patch you’re using.

When you create a sketch instrument in Dorico, it will never choose an unpitched percussion patch by default, so you must have gone into the HSSE interface and chosen a specific patch. Although this is helpful for trying out which MIDI notes give rise to which sounds, this won’t help you get a “real” percussion instrument in the score set up and producing the appropriate MIDI notes.

I wrote a short post that introduces these various concepts a while back, and I’m going to link to it here:

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Part of the problem I had when I tried to delve deeper into this problem is that (unlike the Garritan example @John_at_Steinberg used in his Discover Dorico episode on setting up a percussion map) I could find no documentation describing which MIDI note in the HALion GM unpitched percussion files was assigned to any given sound.

Even when A could identify a Bell Tree sound at C5, I could not manage to attach it to a percusion map and a kit so that I could play it. Neither could I make Dorico load that sound by requesting it as a separate instrument in Setup.

I hope some time in the future that John could revisit this topic in a Discover Dorico session and go through that once again in more detail.

I suppose, Derrek you used the GM 129 Stereo GM Kit. It seems to be the usual mess Plugins, DAWs and also Dorico have with varying middle C locations.

If you play C5 on the Hallion keyboard you hear indeed a bell tree but on the Dorico keyboard it is on C6. C5 is midi note 72 on the Dorico keyboard and as per GM percussion map it a long whistle. The official GM goes only till midi note 81 A5. The Hallion kit apparently uses an extended GM version with sounds till note 96, C7 and if you add note 84, C6 as bell tree with natural technique on the Dorico virtual keyboard in the GM percussion map you can play and record the bell tree. Natural is per default the only technique you do not have to add in the instrument percussion playing techniques so no need to edit it.

I can hear the whistle and the bell tree on the HALion keyboard but (like Bill) could get no sound at all through the percussion map and kit I created. And I have still not been able to find documentation for the HALion GM 129 sounds.

I actually do not need the sounds for my own use, but I would like to understand the difficulty I am having with the mapping for use down the road when I do have a similar need.

I think we are not using the same setup. I just added a bell tree as instrument and Hallion SE 129 Drum Kit as VST and added note 84 to the percussion map like that all works. Including the Dorico virtual and my external keyboard.

You are probably trying to use it in a drum kit and there it is indeed weird. I created a drum kit with 14 instruments all in the Hallion kit. They all work correctly if I write them manually in the percussion grid score but on the Dorico keyboard and my external keyboard it is a mess.

The 14 instruments are remapped to the white keys from B4 to A5. On my external keyboard most sound correct and all but one (the instrument on position -7 on the grid) are recorded in the score but the 3 Toms I have in the kit give no sound when playing but after recording playback correctly. To make the mess complete the white 14 keys are not in the same order as the instruments in the grid . A big incomprehensible mess! On the Dorico keyboard (same keys used as external keyboard) all sounds are wrong. The sound follow the GM map!.

Attached a screenshot showing the manual input and the registered notes when I play the 14 white notes one after the other on the two keyboards. The first key B4 is not recorded for some reason independent of the instrument on that position.

I have printed out your diagram and will study it later.
Thank you.