Fiddle tuning, unwanted instrument change

Dorico
1

I have created a new variant of the Fiddle instrument. The variant is called A♭E♭B♭F Tuning. It is a transposing instrument so that written C4 sounds as Db4. I’ve saved this as a default so that it’s available in new scores. It is common to use this tuning for violin in Irish traditional fiddle music.

The problem I’m encountering several problems that may have resulted from this.

  1. In a new score that doesn’t need this Fiddle variant, when I try to add a Fiddle (normal variant) to a player, the option appears nameless in the dialogue.

  2. If I select the nameless option anyway, an unwanted instrument change appears at the start of my score. The instrument is called Violin instead of Fiddle.

  3. If I change the instrument to Violin intentionally, the unwanted instrument change remains. This is also true if I change the instrument to the Fiddle (A♭E♭B♭F Tuning) variant.

2

Duncan, would you mind uploading a little project that includes your fiddle?

3

Fiddle variants test.dorico (2.0 MB)

4

I suspect the unwanted instrument change may have been the result of musicXML import from Sibelius. Honestly, I’m not sure when these problems arose. However, there is still the problem of the “nameless” fiddle instrument in the dialogue for adding or changing a player’s instrument.

5

I’m not exactly sure what you did, but I deleted your variant and recreated it (roughly). It now seems to work as I would expect (there is no ‘nameless’ fiddle and both variants appear in the instrument selector)…
Fiddle variants test-edit.dorico (1.4 MB)

I would not expect Dorico to recognise the variant when importing XML (Dorico has trouble enough distinguishing vocal bass from instrumental bass!)