I’ve been really pleased with my Dorico experience up until this point. Out of any of the music notation software I have used, it’s by far the most intuitive. However, I am extremely disappointed in how lackluster Dorico is when it comes to anything marching band-related. For reference, I’m a high school senior who uses the program to write original pieces, experiment with and transcribe jazz solos, and arrange pieces for pep band. I consider myself very tech-savvy, but when it comes to the already existing tutorials online for adding sounds to drumline equipment in Dorico, I’m absolutely lost. I don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on drumline sounds, I don’t need it to be some crazy thing with a whole bunch of playing techniques, I just want my marching tenors, snares, and bass drums to actually be audible in playback. It can be the same sounds as their concert band equivalents, it can just be a random basic midi note honestly. It just needs to make a sound. Thank you in advance for any help
Welcome to the forum @Lucinda_Anderson
Just to be clear (for me), is it that you can’t hear the instruments, you can’t hear them loud enough, or something else?
Welcome to the forum, Lucinda. I agree that the lack of any marching percussion sounds included with Dorico is a problem, and we are working on solving that in future versions.
The default marching snare drums/cymbals/toms/bass drums percussion kits that are included in the instrument picker are intended to be used with Tapspace Virtual Drumline, but of course those sounds are not included with Dorico itself, which leaves you in a bit of a quandary.
What might be just about acceptable for the time being would be to create a new percussion kit that includes the same e.g. snare drum at different staff positions, and then write for them: it won’t sound much like a drumline, and all of the snares will sound the same, but it might be better than nothing?
In Dorico there are currently no drumline sounds. This isn’t a bug - I’m looking for a workaround. Apologies for any confusion.
Thank you for your response. What would the workaround be for bass drums and tenor drums, since they are pitched?
Well, for tenor drums you could at least add different tom-toms from the General MIDI drum set patch, as there are a handful of tom-toms in there. But for bass drums, I’m really not sure: there are two kick drum sounds in the GM drum set patch, but that’s obviously not really enough.
I would like to point out how “better than nothing” is not at all what many of us in the marching band community want to hear coming from Dorico. Considering the influx of users you are going to have following the “death” of Finale (myself included), I would think this would be a great time to capitalize and accommodate the needs of all these new users. There is now a HUGE market of US users who are looking for a new software to be their go-to for marching percussion notation and if the best we can get is “better than nothing,” then maybe our money will be better spent on a software that already better integrates our needs.
Is there any hope for an update geared toward the marching percussion side that will include much-needed updates like sticking input and roll playback? I really have loved getting to know Dorico over the past months, but marching band show design season is about to be in full swing and not being able to integrate basic functions of my old workflow is frustrating. Dorico not being more eager to tackle this challenge is more frustrating, though.
Welcome to the forum @ccox6545.
I’m sure there was no offence intended. Daniel was simply suggesting that it is the best solution for now.
Yet another example of the isolated US bubble of entitlement? (though I do accept there marching bands elsewhere)
I’m not sure entitlement is limited to the U.S. 
(Although we are certainly not immune to it.)
I do apologize. I wrote my post last night after a long, frustrating day of writing. I regret that is my first post. Sorry, @dspreadbury, I really do love Dorico, and one of the reasons is that I see you and your team so active in these forums trying to be helpful.
What I think I was really trying to get at is that it would be great to see some kind of updates in this area. There are lots of us who are really eager to sing Dorico’s praises. I have recommended it to all my buddies who are wondering where to go from Finale. We all work in the same vein of music and agree that this kind of update would take something great and make it unbelievably great.
Again, I apologize I couldn’t find a kinder tone the first time.
Don’t worry, no offence taken. As I said in my original reply to Lucinda in this thread, we’re very aware that marching percussion sounds are highly desired by some users, and we are working on improvements in this area. I hope that you will nevertheless find much to enjoy in Dorico in the meantime.
The question is though, what exactly is the timeline for this update? MakeMusic announced the sunset of Finale and pushed Dorico on us 8 months ago. Many of us bought Dorico, and have been asking about marching percussion ever since, on multiple platforms, but nothing has been announced and we just keep getting told to “enjoy Dorico in the meantime”. The problem is, we can’t enjoy Dorico if we can’t use it for what many of us intend. I’ve gotten 10+ orders for the marching season already, with many more to come in the next month, and I’m having to export my Dorico files into XML to reupload into Finale, (which we all know that XML is pretty much useless between programs) just to be able to write the drumline parts. This should have been figured out well before Dorico decided to stick their neck out as the “new Finale”.
Edited to add: Finale had VDLite, and I would settle for that. It’s better than nothing.
Welcome to the forum.
I’ve written a whole answer I decided to delete… I understand how disappointed you are, and hope this won’t last long before the situation is solved!
You can use the Garritan drum sounds in Dorico. I have made some percussion maps for some of the instruments, if that helps somewhat. (Although it says GPO5, it includes some GIFF VDLite maps.)
In fairness, the timing of MM’s decision was not really Steinberg’s fault.
This presumably was MM’s wording and their software recommendation (as it was their email we all received, not Steinberg’s) and perhaps it was made in haste without much thought as they walked out the door. Why they did not recommend the free trial and various links to videos etc. to help the transition, some helpful comments about what it could do, some links to Finale users having made the transition and what might be still to be implemented, bearing in mind it is only at v5.
I wonder what the reaction would have been if Finale had recommended MuseScore instead. What would their forum pages look like now?
Having dabbled in Musescore prior to all of this, it handles marching percussion natively much better than Dorico has so far. The marching percussion side of things is my only complaint about this program, I just wish it had all been sorted out prior to the marching season orders. I was in contact with someone on Facebook (who works for Steinberg) who said they would look into it, but I never received anything other than basically “I’m busy”.
Thank you so much, I’ll give this a shot!
I had bought a cheaper alternative to VDL (Spitfire Audio Originals Drumline) and attempted to do the mapping myself, but I never could get it to work and gave up after three months of constant frustration.
I didn’t intend for anyone to assume that the timing was Steinberg’s fault, but rather that I think this should have been fleshed out better before making this decision.
Edit: I’m having the same issue I was previously: the only playback/input sound I get is rim shots.
I’m sorry I can’t help much – it’s not really my area. Perhaps if you supply a document with the notation and instruments laid out as you want them, and I can add the samples and create a playback template, or Endpoint at least?