Hi everyone,
I’m trying to customize my drum kit mapping in Dorico and I’ve run into a bit of a wall.
I have created a custom Playing Technique for a “Hi-Hat Splash” (foot splash), and I want to assign it to a specific note/sound in my VST instrument (e.g., Groove Agent or Kontakt).
Could someone guide me on the correct steps to:
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Link my custom Playing Technique to a Percussion Instrument Playing Technique.
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Map that specific technique to the correct MIDI note in the Percussion Map.
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Ensure the notation appears correctly on the 5-line staff (using a specific notehead).
I want to make sure I’m doing this the “Dorico way” so it triggers the right sample every time I use that specific marking.
Thanks in advance for the help!
Hi Lucas and welcome to the forum.
- It’s not as direct as you seem to imply it, it’s actually a two-step process. You first create your custom playing technique and when you create it, you associate it with a playback technique. You can create your own playback technique if needed. Then you can create a percussion playing technique with a specific notehead that will trigger that playback technique.
- In the percussion map, you need to describe the instrument in Dorico that will play that midi note and the playback technique on the line of that midi note. Those three parameters have to be accurate in order for Dorico to trigger that midi key when that instrument is supposed to play with that playback technique. Make sure there is no issue with the middle C (C3 or C4 depending on the library)
- It is already ok with the steps followed in 1.
The problem is that I’ve assigned the same notehead set to both the open hi-hat and the hi-hat foot splash because it’s the best-looking option. Now, when I try to configure the percussion map, the correct sounds don’t appear as separate options for each one.
How could you do that? It does mean you give those two different notes the same playback technique. The instruments need to be different. And you might think that the hh pedal and the hh are two different instruments, but I’m afraid that under the hood, they are not. This is probably why it’s not working as it should. Dorico doesn’t know which key has to be triggered (and IIRC it triggers the lowest one).
Try another notehead set for the hh pedal to see if it solves it 
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… and then attach your project.
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Here’s the template. I’ve been trying to get this working in general, but I wasn’t doing it in any specific project. See if you can mess around with it and get the foot splash playback working correctly. If it’s not too much trouble!
You’ll notice that in your Percussion Kit, you are using the Hi-hat (pedal) instrument, placed below the staff:
However, in your Perc. Map, you have used the Hi-hat instrument rather than the Hi-hat (pedal) instrument (which only appears once, on G#2).
Basically, what I think is happening is that you are triggering an instrument that has no mapping (except for G#2).
I’d try removing the appropriate Hi-hat mappings - A0 and F#1?? - and then use the Hi-hat (pedal) instrument on those notes instead.
Does this work? If not, upload your edited project.
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Rings a bell…
Using the search feature in the forum could be useful 
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Hi everyone. I’ve tried everything and nothing seems to be working. If anyone has some spare time, could you please try opening an empty project and see if you can successfully assign a ‘splash’ sound to the hi-hat splash symbol? (The one that’s a cross with a small circle on top by default). I’d really appreciate the help!
I forgot to mention: please make sure to use the ‘Full’ Drum Set instead of the ‘Basic’ one. Also, I’m using Groove Agent SE as the VST and its own internal mapping. If you could test it with that specific setup, I’d really appreciate it!
