MusicXML percussion import errors from Sibelius

Hi, I’m trying to import a score from Sibelius but I’m running into issues with the default percussion map. To troubleshoot the problem, I tried importing the default drums into Dorico.

Attached is Dorico’s interpretation of the default drum kit in Sibelius (as defined on p. 396 of the 2018.4 manual). Black text is the instrument that Dorico to assigned the note, red text indicates what it should be, and red noteheads are different from the original. 17 out of 28 are imported correctly.

Further down are the same notes as triplets, which for some reason causes 6 of the drums to fail to be imported at all.

I don’t expect perfect import from Sibelius, but it do expect all of the notes to be imported in some way. If notes are assigned to unique but incorrect instruments, they can be swapped and positioned relatively painlessly with the Edit Percussion Kit dialog. If they are assigned to the wrong instrument as a playing technique instead of to a new instrument (as with Wood Block 2), or assigned to a new instrument instead of as a playing technique of another (as with Ride Bell), it’s harder to fix, but still manageable. If notes are not imported at all, then transitioning from Sibelius is extremely difficult.

I have experienced a similar problem with GM percussion mapping when importing xml and midifiles.

Daniel is aware and I’m sure he’ll look into the problem when he can.

I had to reenter all the drum notes again but it does help if you explode the drums prior to import (and then - even if it means setting them all to the same) drum, importing that and then transpose them to their ‘pitch’ accordingly. Hope this helps.

I’d be interested to see both your original Sibelius file and the MusicXML file you exported from it. We put a lot of work into trying to import drum notation from MusicXML files, but it’s not an easy problem, and although it’s possible that there are some problems in what Dorico is doing, it’s equally possible that Sibelius is not exporting sufficient information for Dorico to be able to import it. So please make a zip file containing your Sibelius test file and the MusicXML file you exported from it, and we’ll take a look.

Thanks for the reply! Here are the files. Imported into Dorico v. 2.0.0.1041 on Windows 10 Enterprise.

It’s worth mentioning that, besides playback, tambourine noteheads, and side stick noteheads, MuseScore renders the correct notation from this MusicXML file, so I don’t think Sibelius is exporting incorrectly.
drumtest.zip (41.2 KB)

Thanks for attaching your files. I’ve taken a look at the MusicXML file and it’s worth pointing out that there is no information of any kind in the MusicXML file that would tell Dorico what instrument each notehead in each staff position should correspond to: nothing in the file specifies that this staff position should be a kick drum and that staff position should be a pedal hi-hat, or anything of the sort. Dorico has to infer all of this information by way of heuristics. If you had edited the default drum map in Sibelius, the MusicXML file would not provide any information to help Dorico understand what you’ve done.

The aim is certainly to import all of the notes, and to then make it easy to fix up the mapping in the Edit Percussion Kit dialog, at which aim I believe Dorico succeeds pretty well. In the non-triplet notes in your project, all of the notes are imported, and the majority are assigned to what you would consider to be the correct instruments.

There is clearly, however, a problem that affects some of the staff positions in your MusicXML file with regard to how the import of tuplets is handled. We’ll need to look into this further, which we will do when we get a chance.