How to achieve this timpani and small gong part? (percussion notation)

[Robby_Poole]

I want to start by saying that 90% of the time, Dorico’s handling of percussion notation is SUPERB and incredibly powerful. However, there are times when I am stumped. Or Dorico doesn’t quite have the feature set to make this work.

In this piece, a timpani player is supposed to play on 2 timpani while also playing on a small gong:

While I can fake this in Dorico, obviously the playback is incorrect. I am wondering if anyone can think of a way to notate this where it not only looks like it makes sense, but also plays back correctly? I tried in galley view to place the note on the small gong staff line, but the part looked very bizarre with a clef change, the gong note, a clef change, and the remainder of the timpani notes. It didn’t quite look correct, or easy to read.

A similar issue comes up often in mallet music for marching band or drum corps. The mallet players will play a passage on the keyboard, hit a cymbal attached to keyboard instrument, and then continue to play on the keyboard. The parts are often notated similarly to what is above.

I know that there is a lot on the plate for the dev team. But hopefully in the future this can be tackled, if there is not a way to do this currently. If there is a way to do this, can someone help point me in the correct direction?

Robby

[Derrek]

I can see putting the gong on a separate one-line staff for the Timpani Player and combining the two instruments in one Layout, but beaming the gong eighth-note with the Timpani notes would not be possible.,

The best solution I can imagine would be to write what you have above, suppress playback of the x-notehead and use a separate, hidden staff to play the gong sound.

[MarcLarcher]

Same idea here It’s a matter of mixing pitched and un-pitched percussion…

[Robby_Poole]

Thanks for the advice!

I’ll do what you suggest!!

I was afraid that was the only answer.

Robby