Hi all,
I have a score with a player with a triangle on a single line staff, and another player with a bass drum on a single line staff.
What is the best way to show these two players on one five line staff in the score; condensing of some kind or creating a percussion kit?
Edit: To answer myself – it seems that a percussion kit is the right way, but is it possible to combine said instruments into a kit without losing the dynamic markings?
I referred to my book How to Write for Percussion by Samuel Z. Solomon, perhaps this bit would be of interest -
My own approach in Dorico is as you discovered, I usually put everything into a percussion kit (sometimes I will change staff labels on the side, e.g. “Perc 1 / Perc 2 / Perc 3” or “Player 1 / Player 2 / Player 3” etc. And then use instrument labels above each instrument. It requires a bit of finesse with the engraving and notation options to get it to look nice and readable, with sufficient and clear space. But it works.
As for showing dynamics, unfortunately there is no way in Dorico to retain them with that view. They technically will still exist when you return to a single-line view in the options, but for a 5-line staff view they have nowhere to go without creating a chaotic mess, so the team has opted to hide them. Someone smarter than me may know of a way you could change their visibility in engrave and perhaps unearth them manually for that view but… otherwise I would suggest to manually add them using staff text labels which look like dynamic markings. That will work with immediate markings, though gradual markings such as hairpins might be a bit more work with custom lines…
FWIW I have never really seen an ultra-condensed score (undivided on a single staff) which has dynamic markings for multiple players. I don’t think that would be considered best practice.
Thank you for the detailed answer. In this case the music is really simple but I guess there will be two players involved – they can could certainly play from the same part (or three if the bass drum is doubled with cymbals!).
I will experiment a bit. Maybe condensing could also work if I change the instruments to 5-line staves.
So, I managed to paste from the single line instruments into the kit; then the dynamics transferred.
I set the notation options to pad with rests and bar rests, but on many occasions the rests don’t stay in line even if they could, it is a bit similar to the displacement that often occurs in condensing. Here it is easy enough to adjust, but is there a time saving setting for rest positioning in percussion kits?
