What is the difference between “instrument names” and “players”? (And where might I find this info in the Dorico Pro Help?)
Related question(s):
I found this in Layout Options:
Hello @newdansom ! Welcome back!
You can find the information you need in the operation manual at page 23.
But long story short:
In Dorico, when you build an ensemble, you are not thinking about the instruments you will use in the piece, but about the musicians who will play these instruments. At first, this may seem a little longer and unnecessarily complex, but there is actually a great advantage: it helps you create a precise mental scheme of how the instruments in the ensemble will interact with each other (and consequently, I would have a more precise and musical idea of what happens within a composition).
About the Layout options you are showing:
The first two options let you control the appearence of the staff label, and it will be related to the instruments only. So, even if you edit the names in the setup mode, it will show the label of the instrument in the score in that given moment. If you want to change the name, in the Staff Labels section, check the Show player name instead of instrument names. Then you can show in the score what you edited in the setup name.
Here’s a helpful page about the different names, specifically:
Thanks for the quick reply! regarding this:
Does that mean that, instead of violin 1, you would use the name of the actual human playing that part?* And, if so, what happens when you don’t know who will be playing that part?
And, by “player name,” do you mean, for example and actual person’s proper name? (E.g., John, Susan, etc.)
*This would suit Duke Ellington perfectly, since he had a deep understanding of his players’ strengths and weaknesses and could compose accordingly. (I wish I were so lucky!)
Does that mean that, instead of violin 1, you would use the name of the actual human playing that part?
Imagine you want to write a composition that must be played by 5 people, each one using two instrument (so ten instruments in total). In other music notation softwares, you would add 5 instruments and then manually change them throughout the composition. In the long term this is not efficient (also, it can be confusing at some point). In Dorico score setup, you add those 5 people and assign to each one the two instruments they are going to play. In this way, you don’t have to bother about instrument changes. Dorico will take care of it as you switch in page mode, adjusting the right instrument label in any moment.
And of course, if you need to change the labels in order to call the musicians by their own name, you can do that. This is helpful with very young musicians.
Ah … OK. So let’s say “Robert” is going to play alto sax and flute at various points in a piece. Does Dorico know when Robert has to switch instruments and then adjust the key signature as appropriate?
I guess the right question is - HOW does Dorico know when to change key signatures for the second (or 3rd …) instrument?
In galley view, it shows the staves of all instruments, if instrument A is played for 3 measures and then instrument B is played 10 measures after these 3 and both these instruments are played by player A, then Dorico sees the gap of “silence/rests” and detects an instrument change, doing everything accordingly.
I would love to see a short video tutorial of this concept, it’s a bit confusing.
Thanks for that helpful video. I did notice that the final result (in the printed part) one still has to enter the name of the actual instrument (e.g., flute) and then the change to piccolo. So I’m still not clear on where/when the option to create “players” becomes necessary (or even helpful).
I read this bit from the documentation:
Violin 1 is the player. Violin is the instrument.
OK. That makes sense. I guess I’m just not sure of the need for such a distinction since, in the case of one person playing multiple instruments, the name of the instrument (and any changes to other instruments) will always be in the score. Anyhow … thanks for comment.
Yes, but it provides consistency. You would not want your string section to be called: violin, violin, viola, cello.
Thanks!
No, you do not have to enter anything, that is the good thing! The ”To Picc.” and ”Picc.” are automatically added.
There is a reason for this distinction when it comes to percussion. Very often with percussion staves in an orchestral score, especially in the modern day, they are named based on the percussionist, such as “Percussion 1”, “Percussion 2” etc to keep track of the player rather than the particular instrument they happen to be playing at that time, like snare drum or glockenspiel. So in this case you may specifically want to use the player name instead of the name of their held instrument, to avoid having to rename the name of the “Snare Drum” instrument to “Percussion 1” and the glockenspiel to “Percussion 2” which might be even more confusing because then you can’t tell what instrument it is supposed to be. With this design you can rename the players “Percussion 1” and “Percussion 2” but keep the instrument names as “Snare Drum” and “Glockenspiel”.
I had a big commission once gor an orchestra where each player held up to nine different instruments. So yes, Robert playing the alto flute, the hautbois d’amour, an arabic flute and a tenor saxophone was a thing. All these instruments are reachable in galley view, and Dorico handles perfectly all the instrument changes automatically.
Just fyi that’s quite old documentation, ie for a previous version - possibly even 3.5.
Keep an eye out for the version number that’s displayed on the top left of the webhelp manual, or at the bottom of each page in the pdf.
