Hello, I am one of the, I’m sure, many people who will be migrating over from Finale. Just last week I finished setting up instrument maps in Finale for Bata drums, and now am trying to do the same in Dorico. I have attached an example of what I am looking to do. I am not worried about getting the sounds to line up with notation for now, but do think it would be a bonus for the future. Instead I want to set up the notation to work with the note heads that you can see. Ideally, I want to set up 3 new drums with three new names. Is it possible to recreate this? I am using Dorico Pro 5.
It’s totally possible in Dorico, both visually and playback! This whole Finale going kaput is a terrible time for me personally as today was the first day of classes where I teach, but here’s an example from a score I did in Dorico last spring:
I’m happy to expound on how to do this, but after Wednesday as I’m totally swamped right now. Just tag me or respond after then and I can walk you through it if you haven’t figured it out by then.
(And welcome to the forum!)
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I would very much like to walk through how you were able to do this! How were you able to assign different note heads to different notes? How is it possible to use a single line staff and note above and below the line? Good luck with your class and I hope to talk with you soon!
You can select multiple notes at once, right-click, and change the note heads.
I wouldn’t take that approach in this case. Setting up two percussion instruments and using the Edit Percussion Playing Techniques dialog to set up the desired noteheads for each instrument is the way to go. It’s late here in London and I’m frazzled after a very busy day (which was nominally a public holiday here in the UK in any case) so I’ve got to turn in, but I’ll try to find time to expand on this tomorrow.
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OT - no public holiday here in Scotland 
That will work for the short term, but I plan to use this template for projects that take up 25+ pages of notation. Thank you for your reply!
Admittedly I was talking out of my depth on this particular one. Daniel (and Todd) know better. Sounds like there’s a totally native solution you should use.
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Thank you for the reply. Would it be creating two instruments, setting the note heads for the desired sound, and merging them into a new instrument? I am going to see if I can figure this out tonight and will update the post if I do.
This spot in the online manual plus some of the context around it should be pretty helpful, I hope.
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That was useful for figuring out how to change the note heads. I figured out how to use shift+option+up or down arrow to change the note head. I am now wondering if I could set it up so each time I hit A on the keyboard it would come out as and X, and each time I hit G it comes out as a regular note head, and then extend this further for other types of note heads like + and (x) for other keys.
Below is what I was able to end up with where I used the above commands to change the note heads
I’ll have to defer to others with experience doing this.
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There are options in the Preferences to choose how you input Percussion (either following the percussion map or another option I don’t remember). In any case, I think this is something way easier to do with a MIDI keyboard attached (and many things go faster with such keyboard), as Dorico is all about meaning more than appearance. You don’t change noteheads, you change instrument and/or playing technique. Once you get the grisp of it, it totally makes sense and is powerful.
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That’s an interesting way to think about it. I was able to achieve the changed note heads above by changing the instrument playing technique and adding in different “sounds” for different note heads. I will explore the Preferences and see if I can figure out how to map the different techniques to different key commands and different keys on my midi keyboard. I also plan on using this when I don’t have a midi controller, so being able to use both will be beneficial!
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I have been busy working on another project with great success, but it is time to turn my attention back to this. Is there a way to set up key mapping for a midi keyboard so that when I want the different note head notations, all I need to do is play middle C? For example, the X for C, the filled in note on D, the triangle on E, etc.
There’s no such thing as what you describe (with the computer keyboard) but you might achieve that using a MIDI keyboard and the settings in the preferences :
According to your percussion map, you should be able to input different techniques, because there’s a key on your MIDI keyboard that triggers it.
Thank you for your reply! This is what I am looking to do with a midi keyboard. Where in the midi preferences did you find the percussion mapping? It is a little overwhelming.
I found where it is, and have been trying to change the settings around, but every key I hit on the midi keyboard shows up as an X above the staff, all with different sounds. Is there a way to map it so that certain keys give different note heads?
Look for it in the Library menu, under Percussion maps…
You should find the one you’re using in the list. If not, well, that means you need to create one! Or find it somewhere (on the forum would be the most probable place!)
Looks like the issue is that I haven’t set up a percussion map for this instrument. I will mess around with that and come back if I have any other questions. Thank you again for your help and patience!
Study how those are built up by simply opening one and checking out the different things (lines=MIDI notes, columns).