Forced rest duration for drum set

I cannot make it work to force a rest duration with a drum set as instrument. The following instructions work for other instruments, but not drum set: Forcing the duration of notes/rests
Is this a bug?

In most cases it now works pretty much the same way on percussion as on pitched instruments, though it didn’t do so until Dorico 4. The help page you’ve linked to dates from Dorico 1, which presumably you’re not using. Which version of Dorico are you using?

I am using Version 4.1.10.1082 (Jun 21 2022)

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create new project
  2. add single player
  3. select drum set (basic)
  4. add any time signature
  5. enable force (o) duration and rests (,)
  6. select any note duration shorter than the bar duration
  7. write into empty bar.

Expected Behaviour
forced duration should be shown.

Actual Behaviour
Nothing happens.

You may need to approach this slightly differently, Tim. In general the same rules apply to unpitched percussion as to pitched material, which means that you should navigate the caret to where you want the notes to appear and then input the notes there – you only need to worry about rests if Dorico doesn’t produce the expected grouping on its own (and again you should look at the options in Notation Options to see whether it’s possible to get the grouping you want by default).

If you find that the rests you have ended up with don’t look as you want them to, you can then use Force position and duration in the Properties panel to make an implicit rest into an explicit one, at which point you can change its duration in the same way you can a note, using the numeric values.

Thank you Daniel, this approach works. I didn’t know about the force position and duration option until now. Would it make sense to have the behaviour where selecting the break, enabling force duration and selecting the duration enables force position and duration automatically and sets the right duration?

That should happen, in fact, once you’ve got a rest other than a bar rest selected, I think.