Harp with SIngle Percussion line - No instruments.xml Hacking

Dorico
1

Hi All

I note the discussion on this forum regarding adding a single line percussion to a harp (at Add a single-line staff - #7 by beppe )

The provied solution in the previous post involved hacking the instruments.xml file. Since dorico now provided editing and creation of instruments, is the solution now possible using the intrument editor without hacking the instruments.xml file?

Is there a better way of doing this yet?

James

1 Like
2

As far as I understand from a brief glance through that thread, yes: you can use the instrument editor to create pitched instruments with a non-standard number of staff lines.

You could create a one-line pitched staff, set to use the percussion clef, not to show key signatures, that’s also a “type” of harp and so appears as a variant of harp in the instrument picker.

3

Hi Lillie _Harris

Thanks for responding

I can certaily see where to add a new staff with pretty much any cleff, but all the staffs are 5 lines. I would like to add a single line staff with either a percussion cleff of no cleff.

Is there somewhere I can create a user defined staff/cleff that will appear in the instruments designer dialog box?

James

4

You can’t add a staff with a different number of staff lines to an instrument: a single instrument has to have staves all with the same number of lines.

However, you can create a separate instrument and configure that with the settings you want to use. You can then give the separate instrument to the same player as the harp, and add notes to each as you would in a more typical doubling situation. Same principle as discussed in that thread.

Once you’ve set up this formation, though, you could always save the project as a template if this is something you write for frequently.

5

Thanks

I’ll give that a shot.

James