How might I go about recreating this section of an orchestral score? I would like this to look as identical as possible.
I think the problem is for the second staff, with a percussion clef. You should not use a kit (the usual Dorico way to represent percussion on 5-line-staff) because the mark tree and bell tree are quite confusing. Not really pitched instrument but certainly not unpitched… So my advice would be to use them as pitched instruments, and change the clef so that Dorico shows the percussion clef. I have not done it myself, so maybe that last step can cause a problem. The solution would then be to replace an existing (pitched) clef that you would not use (like a G clef with a 8 above) and replace it in the music element editor by a percussion clef.
The portamento bit is easier, since you can hide noteheads and stems in Engrave mode. So you can use hidden notes to be the destination of those markings. Only do the whole thing once and use R to repeat those three times 
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What about having the perc labeled like that? Two staves with one singular label.
You could either combine both instruments in a one player and then add player labels. But then you may not have them as a combined Perc staff (which is presumably the main player).
I would probably just use regular ol’ staff text for labels.
Yes, that’s also the way I would do it. In more details:
In Setup mode:
Rename the percussion players " " (i.e. a space character).
Group them together so that those nameless players don’t get lost among the others.
In Library > Layout Options… > Staves and Systems > Staff Labels:
- Uncheck “Show player group names”.
- Check all the nameless players in “Show player name instead of instrument names”.
- Check “On all systems”.
In Write mode:
Enable Page view and hide all empty staves (Library > Layout Options… > Vertical Spacing > Staff Visibility > Hide empty staves = either “After first system” or “All systems”).
Add a Staff Text (shift + X) to the first percussion bar of each system wherever one or more percussion staves are apparent (i.e. “Percussion” for the first system, “Perc.” for the rest) with the options: Paragraph Style = Staff Labels, Alignment = right. I mean copy and paste.
In Engrave mode:
Reposition the staff texts in front of the percussion stave group at the beginning of each system, as shown in your example.
Check Library > Layout Options… > Players > Instrument Changes > Show instrument change label at start of flow.
That would be way easier if Dorico could display a player’s group name as an instrument/player name instead of a vertical text, but it doesn’t seem to be an option in Library > Paragraph Styles… > Player Group Labels.
Hope this helps.
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Great suggestions!
I arrived at a similar solution (project attached) in this thread here - How to create this consolidated braced Perc. section? - #7 by wing
In my version I did actually use the group name on its vertical axis which I don’t prefer, but I can live with it. I’m hoping in a future update they would add the ability to make player group labels horizontal; it would be especially handy in scenarios like this and more.
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Thank you, that does help. It seems like Dorico just needs a bit more flexibility with how to handle percussion. For example, (and I realize this is a bit off topic) I would like to be able to “share” percussion instruments between players. My orchestral percussion list is already a mile long, and would be completely overwhelming if I needed that giant list duplicated x4 to accommodate each player holding each instrument.
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This has been discussed before… search the forum.
Note that you can have one percussion player holding one instrument that can be added to as many layouts you need (one Layout for each real percussion player, plus ensemble layouts in case the players want different stuff).
Please be really specific describing what you need, instead of throwing out an idea that could perfectly be feasible (or not at all, depending on many details!) You will be helped much better!
I’m attempting to record an entire full score in Dorico using each flow as a cue within a larger work. The trouble is the percussion list is massive, and would be 4x even more massive if I had to duplicate the entire instrument list for each of the 4 percussionists.
The idea to simply “add a staff below/ above” solved my problem except that Dorico won’t let me have a 5-line percussion staff without a kit… and I can’t add a staff below/above if I have a percussion kit for a player.
So in essence, I want to have a singular percussion staff (labeled “percussion”/ “perc") always with the ability to add more staves as needed to accommodate more percussion parts present at any given moment, with none of the percussion instruments being mapped to a specific player, but rather treating them as a generic section to configure in their own way at the session. I’ve attached a few screenshots of what I’m going for. The triangle held by percussionist 4 in the second example will more than likely be played by another percussionist later in the cue- so the only option I’m aware of right now is to add another triangle to this player’s instrument list.
For purposes of this discussion, I’m not concerns about the parts- only the score!
The concept of “players” in Dorico is a novel approach; one that is thoughtfully created for how real people play real parts. The trouble is, for example, I would not expect each percussionist to have their own tam tam, but rather, they would share this instrument, along with all/most other instruments on the percussion list. My request is based on real-world usage, just the same as the rest of Dorico’s approach.
I can add everything to one player, but then Dorico is adding “percussion” staff labels to each line which looks a lot clunkier than have a singular percussion brace across 1-4 staves.
Well, you can select a player from the left panel and tick multiple layouts (right panel in Setup mode). Which means the triangle can be seen by multiple players. Which means they share the triangle!
Of course, you don’t want them to play with the triangle at the same time, so you’ll need to tweak those layouts so that they don’t show the triangle staff when you don’t want that player to use it (use a frame break at the start of the flow, double click it in Engrave mode and in the window that opens, hide the triangle staff).
This also means that the triangle won’t be in a kit, sorry for that. I don’t think you can circumvent that without creating four different kits.
I think that this is a valid point.
It’s not often I need to take this into account though i.e. I generally allocate a tam-tam to one Player.
This is fair! But I think over the course of a feature film or even a symphony/ complicated long form piece, this is entirely within the realm of possibility for percussionists to share instruments. It feels clunky and redundant even if the perc. lists are small.
The other thing that could solve this is being able to toggle certain instruments for certain flows, just like one can toggle players for flows. That seems more reasonable than the current options, and actually would help quite a bit in other facets, as the flute player playing only 8 bars of recorder for the entire work probably doesn’t need that information displayed for an entire musical/ opera/ film score, but rather just that singular flow.
I would like to say that I understand exactly what you mean. In film it doesnt matter the “player” we just need to get all the music on the score and often that means the instruments move around staves and duping these for each player is a crazy. The work around if you don’t care about playback is to create an empty ensemble player and just use divisi to add and subtract staves. or a single handed player and add/remove staff