Dear friends, I want to integrate a jingle bell in my score. I cannot find this instrument, nevertheless it exists as GM MIDI sound. How can I such a percussion system (which sounds)? Thanks!
Do you mean sleigh bell?
Vienna Sound Library has one even for free: Jingle Bells & Pummerin.
The Pummerin is a bourdun bell in Stephansdom, Vienna. It’s the biggest bell in Austria.
Garritan Personal Orchestra 5 library has sleigh bells (aka jingle bells) that I have used a couple of times with success being a Finale to Dorico user.
Yes, sleigh bells, jingle bells, in german “Schlittenglöckchen” or “Rollschellen”.
The Auto template wires sleigh bells up correctly. Halion has sleigh bells combi key.
So, to sum up, you don’t need to purchase or download any third-party virtual instrument to have a working sleigh bell playback; assuming you use Dorico Pro and have installed the optional (and included in the same license) HALion Sonic plugin as well as the Halion Symphony Orchestra (HSO) library or the Iconica Sketch library (both including such a sample), adding a Sleigh Bell instrument should work out of the box. If you don’t use the Pro tier (leaving you without the “premium” libraries mentioned), I would also assume that Dorico would pick the sleigh bell sample in the GM drum set included in the HALion Sonic Selection library which comes bundled with all Dorico versions.
(You can rename the instrument to Jingle Bell later if you prefer so without the playback being affected.)
Thank you!
A working sleigh bell, yes, but compared to the free(!) VSL bells
the HALion
sound more like a tin can (sorry, no offense, Steinberg).
Sure, they might have forgotten the sleigh bell at recording day and grabbed a pencil sharpener prepared with car keys instead. 
Anyway, a third alternative if you want to avoid download clutter (and prefer the real deal over the office supplies) is to use one from any of the GM kits in HALion (key B5 SPN):
I’d like to share a Percussion Map and Expression Map for the VSL Sleigh Bells.
The Expression Map is from the Small Percussion library (another free library) the percussion map supports single and multiphonic bells, single strokes and tremolo .
VSL Sleigh Bells.zip (1.6 KB)
I’m not a VSL employee nor evangelist
I don’t think Steinberg sampled real sleigh bells…synthesized ones just don’t cut it!
IIRC no GM sounds are sampled.
Do you mean none of the HALion GM sounds are sampled.
There are other GM libraries that are sampled.
Isn’t General MIDI a long-time standard of synthetic sounds, or are other set creators simply using the association between MIDI numbers and sounds to create updated sets?
Yes, plenty of creators have made “GM” sets that just follow the list of instruments.
The stock Garritan instruments for Finale have a “GM” section, which includes all 127 instruments, including Helicopter, Gun shot and Telephone, synth pads, Honky-tonk piano, etc.
Some of them, like the synth pads, are originally synthesised, but some are definitely re-used Garritan recorded instruments. (The Accoustic Bright Piano uses the same samples as the JABB Steinway Jazz piano.)
It’s not a requirement that anything marked GM has to be synthesised.
(Fun fact: MacOS still includes a GM synth set, based on Roland’s first synth module of 1991.)
No, the General MIDI specification says nothing about how sounds should be produced; it’s only a specification describing how physical or virtual MIDI devices are expected to respond to MIDI messages, including which controllers control what and which program change is expected to recall which “instrument”; how the underlying technology is implemented is up to the manufacturer.
Although, for most well-known virtual instruments nowadays the specification is seldom followed strictly, especially for “single instrument” virtual instruments, including (besides program changes having no effect) assigning the modwheel for dynamics as opposed to vibrato, assigning the sustain pedal for special idiomatic effects as opposed to the function of an actual sustain pedal and custom drum maps for drum kits as opposed to the standard GM percussion map.
What I believe is a source of confusion is that if you launch a MIDI file with your default program in either Windows or MacOS it will by default be played back with sounds based of the Roland Sound Canvas module (1991) where the sounds have a quite synthetic quality (as a result of the hardware limitations back then) which might make you believe that MIDI equals synthetic sounds, while in reality a MIDI file can have many more use cases besides being played back with sound modules first used by Nero in ancient Rome.
Thank you! The sleight bells of NP Orchestral Percussion are comparable in quality the VSL sleigh bells.