When combining existing unpitched percussion instruments into a kit all added dynamics disappears. But if I remove the instrument from the kit the dynamics are still there.
This seems a bit odd…
Since kit instruments are individual instruments “condensed” into a five-line staff (if you ask for it that way), dynamics on individual parts will not appear on the combined part; but you can add dynamics (again) for the combined kit part.
In one sense this is as it should be, since you might want the hi-hat to get louder while the bass drum stays the same volume and the snare gets softer.
Oki, sounds logical!
I’m mostly using the kits for orchestral percussion, where I put every single unpitched instrument in its own kit to be able to present the whole percussion part on a 5-line staff and get the right instrument change notification. Sometimes I forget to put the instrument in a kit before I add the dynamics and gets a bit frustrated over having to redo the dynamics.
Dear fellow Doricians,
Am I wrong in thinking you can display your kit as one line per instrument in a separate layout ? That way you can very easily and precisely control the individual dynamics in that layout, without un-making any kit…
Yes, you can display a percussion kit as either a five-line staff, multi-line grid, or a number of individual single-line staves in any layout.
I just discovered the same after thinking I have finally finished entering a 40-minutes symphonmic work into Dorico 
. Honestly, that makes absolutely no sense - I can’t think of a scenario where you would want to hide the dynamics in the percussion parts simply because you have combined them into a kit?! The percussion parts are becoming a nightmare here, also when I choose to show them on a 5-line staff, all instrument names disappear and I have to manually add a percussion legend each time the player has to change instrument. Again, there is absolutely no scenario where a percussion part without any indications as to which specific instruments a player should use would make sense…
Is there any solution to show the dynamics I have already entered after combining them into a kit?
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I just ran into the same problem. My project has a couple of percussion parts that consist of multiple instruments. I need to use kits because I want a 5-line staff and I want to be able to decide which staff position is assigned to each instrument, and the only way to achieve that is by using a kit (though I’d welcome nothing more than to be proven wrong on this because, like the disappearing dynamics, this also makes no sense). I input the music on single line staves (it was more efficient in this project) but to my surprise and frustration, dynamics disappear when I set the kit to a 5-line staff in Layout options. I don’t know how it took me more than a year of using Dorico before finding this out but I don’t usually write very elaborate percussion parts. I agree that I can’t think of any scenario where this would be desired.
@silvanloher as for the instrument change labels, in the past I worked around that by assigning multiple percussion kits to the same player, each kit consisting of only one instrument. That way you can both determine the staff position of the notes and you get instrument change labels. This also should not have to be so cumbersome to achieve, so I hope that I’m missing a better solution.
Dorico’s system gives one the ability to fine-tune each percussion instrument’s performance without making a mish-mash by reproducing perhaps conflicting dynamic symbols under the five-line staff. One can add dynamics to the five-line staff if one wants to show all the instruments therein following the same dynamic; but I, for one, am quite happy with the way Dorico handles this.
Yeah, it seems to me that the percussion functions need some improvement. In the end, after a lot of frustration and headaches, I found out that for my symphony, it’s simplest to not combine the percussion instrument into a kit, since each of the two players only has to use 3 different non-pitched percussion instruments and the parts are not complicated, and they never have to use two instruments at the same time. I know that apparently orchestral percussionists prefer 5-line notation, but since the parts are fairly simple, I hope they will forgive me for using one line. No way I’m going to add all the dynamics and stuff anew, I want to finish my score now 
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I also don’t understand why you can’t just choose a 5-line system for each percussion instrument without putting them in a kit.
Well, then at least there should be the option to choose whether to show or hide dynamics when combining the instruments into a kit. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
How/where should different dynamics for different instruments in the kit be notated?
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Well, this applies only for percussion parts where the player never handles two of his instruments at the same time of course, as for example in an orchestral score. It wouldn’t hurt to have the option whether you want the dynamics to show or to disappear.
If I have all instruments in a kit shown on a 5-line system, the dynamics could justy be under the system, as normal. Alternatively, you should be able to choose 5-lines staff for unpitched percussion without combining them into a kit. It’s very annoying to have entered all and discover you have to enter all the dynamics again after combining them into a kit.
One can do that now by setting up a treble clef staff, making the key signature invisible and placing the notes where one would. It would not play back (although one could use hidden single-line instruments for that).
I totally agree with your frustration here about the disappearing dynamics (as well as lines, by the way, as I just discovered), but there is a workaround for making individual instruments have a 5 line staff. You can go to Setup mode, go to the player and the instrument you want, then edit the instrument definition and set the “Number of staff lines:” to 5. See screenshot. This doesn’t solve everything you’re trying to accomplish, but perhaps could help get you part of the way there.
