Hi all,
while there are some middle eastern instruments available (Santoor, Oud, Nai),
a couple of instruments I’m missing are:
*Clarinet in G - very common in Turkish & balkan music. historically named “Clarinet d’Amore”.
*Qanun - it is a very common Arabic & Turkish instrument. it should have a double staff, not transposing.
you can assign the dulcimer sample to it.
thank you,
Ariel
Thanks for these requests, Ariel. I will try to do a bit of research into these instruments.
If I can add my request to this thread: the carillon.
The carillon is often a transposing instrument (with instruments existing in many different keys) written with a grand staff, which is the main reason for the request (there’s no transposing instrument in grand staff currently).
My mother (also a Dorico user, but not a power-user) plays a carillon in F, and uses piano as the instrument in Dorico.
But when she plays with other people / instruments, mistakes with transpositions can happen (because she manually transposes the piano part).
There’s a workaround of course: use an instrument like Horn in F, add a staff, hide out-of-range notes, and change the used samples in Play (there’s no carillon sample, but piano suffices).
You’ll discover many intricacies with the carillon (e.g. often the lowest notes are a B flat and C natural, with the B natural missing), but I hope this instrument can find its way into Dorico sometime!
It we are collecting missing instruments here, I’ll add: no sarrusophones. They turn up in a few 20th century scores for orchestra and wind band, particularly the contrabass which might be described as a contrabassoon on steroids. Renaming the corresponding saxophone is a workround for most of them.
Hi,
Any chance for some Korean instruments such as Gayageum, Geomungo, Piri, Daegeum, Yangeum?
If you can provide me with the vital statistics for these instruments, I’m happy to add them, Hujairi.
Hello Daniel and colleagues,
I would like to provide one website which is very good starting point for the Middle-Eastern instruments, maqams…
About the ouds there are some differences between them:
The Bulgarian Tambura,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tambura_(instrument)
Saz / Baglama,
Buzuq / Greek Bouzuki
could be also included as samples and
Dorico could be optimized for them, too… the TABs and Chord charts…
Of course you need to keep in mind that these instruments have different
sizes and tunnings…
Thank you in advance! 
Hi Daniel, I frequently write and arrange for mandolin orchestra and sadly Dorico doesn’t have the other instruments of the mandolin family.
It would be really helpful if these were available.
All of these requests would be satisfied by an instrument editor, of course.
Thanks for these requests, @anna2, and welcome to the forum. I’ve made a note of them and will add them as soon as I can.
I would highly recommend implementing an instrument profile creator. Dorico teams will be endlessly chasing request lists otherwise. If one is studying the world of instruments, you will always find more. I have a list of 200+ instruments to add, and that is only percussion, and those instruments are only the ones I chose out of a much larger available pool. It would be much more efficient (and prompt) if users could add their own ultrasubcontrabass kazoo.
Is an instrument editor in the plans?
There’s a few instruments commonly associated with Irish Folk Music that it would be good to see being added - uilleann pipes, celtic harp, bodhran and concertina as well as a couple from further away, the sopilka and the bayan.
Even without the ability to add what some might regard as exotic instruments to the catalogue, the ability to change names and the format of the names of existing instruments is an urgent need, particularly when working in other languages than English. An instrument editor, such as we had in Sibelius, would respond to all these needs and vastly increase the scope of work that can be done with Dorico.
David
Yes, an instrument editor is indeed in the plans, but it’s one of the biggest and most complicated editors we have remaining to implement.
At the moment we actually define instruments in a separate internal database application that knows how to export the data in the expected format, but that isn’t something we could make available externally. So you as users are not missing out on some hidden feature of the software that we are simply choosing not to release to you all – it’s a big job and it will take time for us to do. As of the time of writing, we have not yet prioritised this to the point that somebody is actively working on it.
Thanks Daniel.
I’ve tweaked a few of the XML Instrument / Definitions files but haven’t had the courage to try and add an instrument. I can fully appreciate how complex this editor would be.
It would be great if we had Bouzouki and Baglamas as instruments options in Dorico. These instruments are really so common in greek music. Just three pairs of strings: D4, A3, D3 for bouzouki and D5, A4, D4 for baglamas!!!
I too simply want a good mandolin plug in. Native Instruments “the mandolin” is an excellent vct at an acceptable price, but you have to also purchase full kontakt to use.