Can’t find a way to temporarily separate voices on a percussion staff such that the cymbal roll on the top line gets the crescendo from niente above the staff, and then I can put other dynamics (decrescendo to mp) below the staff. Separating percussion voices seems to split stems, but doesn’t accommodate the dynamics. Any suggestions?
For drum kits I almost always go to Layout Options > Players > Percussion > and turn on single-line instrument view (the default being 5-line staff). This will expand every single part of your kit onto their own staff, which makes far easier to do advanced and detailed kit writing, as well as unique dynamics for everything. I very often prefer my cymbals to have a quieter dynamic than drums.
Then when I’m finished I return to 5-line staff view for presentation. Note that your dynamics will disappear (otherwise they would be a jumbled mess on top of each other!), but fear not – they are still operating under the hood for playback and can still be viewed in single-line view.
If you are looking to keep both dynamics visible in the score, then I would just add them from the 5-line view and use engrave mode to adjust their placement I suppose.
2 Likes
I do use the grid and single-line views as shown below. When I switch back to 5-line staff, the woodblock dynamics always disappear, so engrave mode isn’t helping much there. I’ve tried setting it up with a new cymbal roll instrument set to voice 2, but that’s not working either. Stuck.
As @wing says, the dynamics you create when viewing the single-line staff presentation type will indeed not appear when the kit is shown using the five-line staff presentation type. Those dynamics will be played back, but they don’t appear.
When using the five-line staff presentation type, it’s tricky to have different dynamics shown on either side of the staff: you need to ensure that when you create the dynamics, they are at different rhythmic positions. If you create another dynamic at the same position as an existing dynamic, you’ll replace the existing one. Once you’ve created the dynamic, you can flip it to the other side of the staff with F.
Once you’ve created dynamics at different positions and flipped them to the other side of the staff as necessary, you can move them with Alt+left/right to get them into the right spot.
The following rather nonsensical example only took me a few moments to create:
3 Likes
Ah, of course. That last part with putting them in different positions and then re-positioning back to where you want them was the Dorico trick I needed! Thanks guys!