I’ve been banging my head with a lot of percussion issues in a large project right now, so found this post over on MET today pretty interesting. The thread starter, John Rogers, posted this image:
Aside from the fact the “to” indication should really be over the first rest, and I personally always use lowercase “to” so the eye is immediately drawn to the instrument name, what is your preferred way of handing this change and how would you do it in Dorico? Changing the Triangle to a 5-line staff is not an available option.
Regarding the staff, label, and clef change, C is obviously the Dorico default, and is by far the least appealing of the 3 here IMO. The staff/clef change is possible in A or B with a workaround like a chord symbol region, but that will also break a multibar rest in the part, so it’s not really that great of a workaround. With the chord symbol region workaround, you’ll now get the staff label of option A though.
There’s not really any way to override the staff label to get option B, is there? You can’t even do it with Text using a background color, as it won’t cover the label with the current drawing order.
I’m actually dealing with this a lot right now as the project I’m working on has 2 on-stage percussionists and 2 pit orchestra percussionists. Does anyone have any better solutions to handling percussion changes? Is there any way to have either A or B in the score and not have to come up with some workaround for the part? For those of you that do a lot of percussion work, do you prefer A or B for a staff label here?
I like B too. Typically I use the Player name, but only on the first system, then after that show the instrument. (I show the initial instrument as text, or use that Layout Option.) That way the conductor knows it’s organized by Player, but still knows what instrument is playing on each system. Adding the instrument as text on every system of the score, or at a minimum every even page, is quite a pain in a long project!
I’ve looked through a few, but do you have any favorite percussion scores I should check out? Just trying to see as many different ways of handing this before I’m too far along to change.
I gave away most of my percussion scores to the school where I was studying when I first started, so I don’t have any good suggestions. Bartok and Britten look good I think. I played the timpani part in the Bartok sonata some 40 years ago. Hard, lots of fast tuning changes. I’ve been trying to input some solo percussion pieces into Dorico. Nørgård, Ferneyhough, Xenakis, Stockhausen, Saariaho… but had to give up on all of them. I think the Dorico approach that you can view percussion as single-line instruments is more trouble than it’s worth. I wish there was another option, solo percussion with just the grid. It will be a lot of work for you if you go for the Bartok/Britten way. Maybe just stick with your version A. I don’t think you will hear any complaining from the players. I’m sorry that I can’t be of any more help Todd.
Jesper
I came up with an idea. Instead of the chord symbol region, I made a second xylophone instrument with just one line and an invisible clef. Added some hidden notes to it and changed the name at the instrument change to “to Xylo” .
Thank you Jesper, but I’m not even sure I’m gonna need a Triangle! (Original pic was from the Music Engraving Tips FB group) For the ballet I’m working on, the stage instruments are a Tres player, and 2 percussionists. Stage percussion seems like typical Latin percussion so far: batá drums, bongos, congas, bell, timbs, etc. I had set up my template with güiro and shekere too, but haven’t needed them yet. I haven’t seem much pit percussion yet, as the composer has only sent me some of the smaller orchestrations so far, so not a lot of action. (There’s a batá in the pit already too.) I assume there will be plenty of the standard stuff in the bigger movements, but no way to know until I see them.
With your files, there’s no way to have that single line combine into rests in the part though, is there? The lack of instrument change options, along with lack of staff labelling options, is gonna be a real problem with this project. I’m not really sure how I’m going to handle it yet. I may just bail and go with Dorico’s defaults to make my life easier, but aesthetically that’s the least desirable way of doing this IMO. I could also end up with 2 files, make the score look correct in one, and the parts will just be the default way in the other. There will almost certainly be revisions though (piece is approx. 45 minutes) so that means twice the revision work. It’s a bit frustrating as this is the first time in a while I’m running into issues with Dorico where I can’t really get the standard accepted notation even with workarounds.
Nope. There’s just not any good way to do this in Dorico when the number of staff lines changes. Nor is there an easy way to change the staff label. This is all simple in Finale with Staff Styles.
